This is another gag I sold to King Features Syndicate for their “Laff-A-Day” panel. The only thing I know about it is that it was purchased in 1977 and was scheduled for printing on October 12th of that year. KFS never returned my finished drawing or my rough drawing and I didn’t make a copy of either of them. Nor do I have a tearsheet of the published cartoon.
The above drawing is an old version of the gag that I had in my files, and the published cartoon probably looked something like this. I would love to see a printed version of the cartoon, in the unlikely chance that anyone out there has an archive of very old KFS “Laff-A-Day” panels.
UPDATE: Here’s an image of the published cartoon, thanks to Captioneer Mark Schaeffer:
7 Comments
Eli, that is a tremendous cartoon! Very, very funny!
Thanks, Joe, I always liked the gag also. I’m pretty sure I sold a version of it to another publication, many years later.
By the way, I noticed that you won the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest No. 933, announced in their March 24th issue. I got the news too late to mention it in my posting when I was judging my own Contest, but you can be sure I’ll be giving you a big shout-out in a future post!
Thank you, Eli. Always so kind with your words!
I’m sure it would be very hard to do, but maybe at some point you could post what you think are your ten best cartoons of all time. Or among your ten best of all time.
Just an idea…thanks again 🙂
It’s a good idea, Joe, and I’m sort of ahead of you on that.
So far, I’ve archived over 1,850 cartoons of mine that were printed in the various publications that were buying my stuff. Any time the gag was a particular favorite of mine, I would mention that fact in the blurb that I occasionally wrote below the posted cartoon. My typical comment would be something like: “I was sure that this gag would finally get me into The New Yorker, but to my surprise they didn’t want it, and I was very glad when it was accepted by ( . . . the name of the publication that finally bought it)”.
So I don’t think I’ll take you up on the idea right now — maybe some time in the future, though, when I run out of cartoons and other material to post.
I knew it would be hard to do – too many to choose from!
Love that little blurb about the NYer – great zinger!
Eli – found the published version! — check your e-mail.
Yes, it’s true, Anonymous (who is really Captioneer Mark Schaefer) did an amazing piece of detective work and actually found a print of this missing King Features Syndicate cartoon of mine from 1977. He also found and emailed prints of a couple of other old KFS cartoons of mine that I had posted with only sketches and that I had complained about not having an actual print of the final drawing. I’ll be adding these images to their respective postings in due time, giving plenty of credit to Mark for doing such a diligent job of research.
I also want to say that, encouraged by Mark’s efforts, I was able to find a few other printed images old KFS cartoons of mine, one of which goes back to 1968, over 50 years ago. I hadn’t seen those finished drawings in all this time, and they will all be duly posted to my archive in the future.
My most sincere thanks to you, Mark!!