Monday, July 04, 2005

July 4, 2005 cartoon

Because my cartoon is so literary, sometimes I get a little nervous about providing sufficient attribution when I directly quote someone else's writing. It is a cartoon, however, so this can be a little difficult. I am usually presenting the quote in the context of a conversation between two characters, which I would like to read and sound... conversational. At the same time, it's not exactly practical to footnote a comic strip.

I'm guessing the blog might be able to help me here, in terms of full disclosure. In today's strip, the "one author" I am referring to is Bill Moyers, of whom I am a huge fan. The Owl character is loosely based on him (I'm hoping he wouldn't be too upset about the word "old"... that doesn't refer specifically to him, it just sounded right for the character). I went to see Moyers speak at the Paramount Theater in Seattle a few weeks ago, and the quotes and basic argument came out of some notes I took. He is an outstanding public speaker... if he is giving a presentation in your area, I highly recommend seeing it.

The idea of "identifying up" came from a good article from a couple weeks ago by Arlie Hochschild.

1 comment:

Dr. Haus said...

Hey, Ben, I've been reading your strip for awhile. Good to see that the long-awaited blog is now up. I tried the blogging thing myself once, but my satire couldn't match up to the sheer hilarity and awesomeness of General JC Christian or Badtux

I gotta say, you've got some interesting material, but the most successful editorial cartoons I've seen can cut down on the words and let the pictures do most of the talking. If you make your strips too wordy, people will lose interest in the punchline and/or the point halfway.

Not trying to be rude here, but this is just my two cents.