{"id":3551,"date":"2007-08-03T11:44:58","date_gmt":"2007-08-03T19:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/08\/03\/cartoon-a-very-useful-id-card\/"},"modified":"2007-08-03T11:44:58","modified_gmt":"2007-08-03T19:04:46","slug":"cartoon-a-very-useful-id-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3551","title":{"rendered":"Cartoon: A Very Useful I.D. Card"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/zena.secureforum.com\/cartoons\/show_toon.cfm?toonID=2353&#038;toonList=2353,2351,2346,2347,2342,2314,2295,2248,2218,2165,2150,2139,2110,2111,2106,2080,2081,2082,2039,2033,2009,1965,1930,1859,1860,1518,1457,1308,1251,1247,1248,1227,1223,1217,1206,1194,1185,1175,1162,1148,1129,1118,1100,1088,1076,1065,1061,1052,1029,1024,1017,1007,1002,998,992,977,968,964,946,938,930,921,912,885,873,869,856,850,841,839,809,803,794,780,774,764,759,750,725,710,712,705,702,697,691,663,651,639,628,609,598,574,568,565,554,545,532,527,525,515,510,502,496,479,467,459,441,438,431,425,418,413,400,378,372,370,358,353,328,319,307,305,303,301,300,290,287,286,285,284,277,271,272,270,262,258,250,247,241,238,234,226,218,209,208,202,191,190,189,188,187,186,181,178,171,165,161,138,137,136,135,134,132,115,112,108,105,102,99,88,85,82,78,75,68,70,71,72,73,74,69&#038;index=by_artist.cfm&#038;artist=10\"><img src='https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/08\/penisid.png' alt='Cartoon: If Penises Came On I.D. Cards' \/><\/p>\n<p>(Larger version can be viewed here.)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is actually a cartoon from years ago, which I just redrew this week. Here, for comparison, is the original cartoon:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img src='https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/08\/penis_id_original.png' alt='Cartoon: If Penises Came On I.D. Cards (original version)' \/><\/p>\n<p>Normally I don&#8217;t go back and redraw cartoons. But I&#8217;ve always been embarrassed by the drawing in this cartoon; I drew it in about two hours, when I was very tight against the deadline, and I&#8217;ve never been able to look at it without wincing. Things I dislike about the drawings in the original cartoon:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s completely graceless.<\/li>\n<li>The expressions aren&#8217;t good (except for her expression in the final panel). <\/li>\n<li>His face in the close-up is boring. <\/li>\n<li>He&#8217;s looking under the ID card instead of at it in panel three.<\/li>\n<li>Except for the final panel, there&#8217;s no use of body language to convey expression.<\/li>\n<li>The proportions of the heads are &#8220;wrong.&#8221; Which is an odd thing to say, I know, because my heads are <em>never <\/em>anatomically accurate; but there is a <em>consistent<\/em> non-anatomical way I draw heads, and compared to that, these heads (especially the boss&#8217; head in panel one) are wrong.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So when an (the?) editor of Z Magazine&#8217;s German-language sub-site asked me to reletter this cartoon into German (he provided the translation), I decided to redraw it before sending it to him. I retained the basic layout, although I pulled the &#8220;camera&#8221; back in panel one so I could do more with body language. I kept her facial expression and body language the same in the final panel, almost line for line. Other than that, I redrew the whole thing. I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s one of my best-drawn cartoons ever, but to my eyes it&#8217;s a decent-looking cartoon, with some nice linework here and there. (I played around with adding backgrounds, but they always seemed to detract from the strip.)<\/p>\n<p>So I emailed the editor the newly redrawn strip. The next day, he emailed me back, to let me know he hadn&#8217;t realized there were <em>two <\/em>versions of the strip. Could I instead reletter the <em>other <\/em>version, which he said was &#8220;clearly the better one&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>Heh.<\/p>\n<p>(I should mention that the Zmag editor is a nice guy and a pleasure to work with.)<\/p>\n<p>Things the Zmag editor liked better about the original version:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In the original, her body language isn&#8217;t so cocky from the start, which the editor thinks is more natural for the situation of a subordinate being talked down to by her boss.<\/li>\n<li>In the original, &#8220;moderately acceptable&#8221; is &#8220;a fact perceived as being rooted in the employee\u2019s inferior sex that also justifies her continuing to be a lowly subordinate&#8221;; in the redrawn version, the boss&#8217; body language makes it an accusation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I can see the editor&#8217;s point. Frankly, the boss&#8217; body language in panel one of the new version is over-the-top. My reasoning was that the bigger the change in the boss&#8217; attitude between panel 1 and panel 4, the funnier the gag, but perhaps I overdid it.<\/p>\n<p>I like the subordinate being cocky from the start, and did that on purpose. This gag is of the form I think of as &#8220;the mystery explained!&#8221;; the reader sees something that seems unnatural or doesn&#8217;t make sense, and then the resolution of the strip (in this case, the caption) provides the explanation. Making the scene a bit unnatural from the start &#8212; by making the subordinate character weirdly cocky, because she knows something the reader doesn&#8217;t know (that she has a penis ID card) &#8212; is what builds the mystery, which in turn makes the gag work.<\/p>\n<p>In my opinion. On the other hand, obviously the original cartoon worked better for the Zmag editor, and it&#8217;s hard to argue with what works better for a reader.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, I have to follow my own tastes when it comes to my own cartoons. We went with the redrawn version (and the editor was very nice about it!); if you&#8217;re interested, <a href=\"http:\/\/zmag.de\/cartoons\/penisID_in_german.png\/view\">you can see it in German here<\/a>. (A whole bunch of translated cartoons in German &#8212; including several more by me, and a couple by my pal Kevin Moore &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/zmag.de\/cartoons\">can be viewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Larger version can be viewed here.) This is actually a cartoon from years ago, which I just redrew this week. Here, for comparison, is the original cartoon:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cartooning-comics","category-gender-and-the-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}