Career Goals

We close out April with another Rhymes with Orange gag written by yours truly.

RWO's creator, Hilary Price, retained the dialog from my sketch, but changed the setting. 

As always, working with Hilary is a delightful break from the solitary labor of cartoonery, and I look forward to more chances to aid and abet her.

Please feel free to review our many collaborations here.

Draw Blood

Here's my latest collaboration with Hilary Price.

This one grew out of a very simplistic spin on a cartoon trope, shown in my submission sketch, below.

We both thought the gag as submitted wasn't quite satisfying, though we liked the idea of the wolfboy's father being the culprit, and agreed to see if we could come up with a better comic. 

We hit a dead end, but, two weeks later, Hilary told me that she had woken up with the idea that resulted in the published comic. Oftentimes, the cartoonist's brain continues to churn, even while sleeping, with the goal of salvaging a gag. This one worked beautifully.

You are encouraged to view all of our previous joint efforts here.

Finally, I feel obligated to share the earworm I'm experiencing as I compose this post. Please enjoy the words and music of the late Warren Zevon.

Office Space

Here's my latest contribution to Hilary Price's Rhymes With Orange.

Click for larger view

For cartoon scholars, here's my original sketch.

Hilary reversed the reader's point of view, deleted one criminal, and edited the dialog, all of which improved the gag.

In my own webcomic, I present gags in a vertical panel, so working in a strip layout, a wide landscape space, feels very different. 

Hilary's version of this gag took advantage of those dimensions, and it reads very smoothly left to right, without any unnecessary elements. The story unfolds with a very particular choreography. First, the sight of the distressed victim and musclebound enforcer creates tension. A third character appears at the door, and we wonder why he's there -- more questions. Finally, we read the cordial explanation setting the lost traveler on his way.


I have two more gags in RWO this month, so keep checking in. All of the earlier ones are archived here.

Decisions, Decisions

In addition to my webcomic, WaynoVision, from time to time I collaborate with my pal Hilary Price on her daily panel, Rhymes With Orange. Over the next week and a half, she'll run four of our joint efforts.

Here's today's comic.

Click for larger view

As is often the case when we work together, the published cartoon bears little resemblance to my initial idea.

My sketch toyed with the similarity of the words "stalemates" and "soulmates." We thought it might be interesting to show pigeons sharing a crumb of stale bread, which added a layer to the gag, but then Hilary came up with the very funny comic we see today.

This process of revision and reinvention happens all the time when a cartoonist is working on a gag, with an early sketch or phrase serving as a seed that sprouts in unexpected ways, if it survives at all. Going through a few iterations of a gag with a collaborator can be more productive, generating something that neither artist might have come up with alone.

Our earlier collaborations are archived in this blog's Rhymes With Orange Crate. Feel free to poke around.