Some More Cartoons, Old And New

But which I had forgotten to post here!

First, some cartoons that got published in the Kringkrant, a periodical sent to all the members of the artist’s society De Kring.

I struggled with what would or would not be acceptable for a while. They can suspend your membership if you offend someone over there, and cartoons don’t allow for much subtlety. Then I found something that worked: the society has a storied past, famous Dutch writers and artists would go there to get drunk and misbehave and the society is secretly a little bit proud of that image. So I thought it was safe to exaggerate that aspect a bit.

They had a new cocktail bar. “Members of the society love the new cocktail bar.” And then the woman behind the bar suggests cocktails with suggestive names.

Your eye is guided from the caption to the dialog balloon to the woman to the smiling man, which is the punch line.

A “binnenkring” is a place where society members who share interests can meet. So I wondered what a yoga-binnenkring would look like among a crowd of heavy drinkers.

Personally, I gravitate toward wordless cartoons. They usually tend to not be laugh out loud funny, putting a smile on your face at best, but good ones can put a smile on your face. Cartoons with captions can be hilarious, or they can be on-the-nose.

Interestingly, I only enjoy these wordless cartoons when I’m in a happy place. I love how cartoons create imaginary worlds with these little people.

I’m still searching, looking for what fits me, but it’s incredibly rewarding to finish a cartoon.

Here are some wordless ones:

For this one, you need to know that the map this scientist is looking at is a depiction of a “Feynman diagram”, a way to note a specific interaction between elementary particles.

The straight lines are electrons (matter) and the wiggles are photons (energy). Remember Einstein’s E=mc squared? That’s this: mass turning into energy and vice versa.

One of the ways to come up with wordless cartoons is to imagine “what can this also be?” And a manhole cover can also be a bicycle wheel, at least in cartoon land.

The wedding night would be a bit late for a bride to find out the groom sleeps on a bed of nails.

And a Pharao building a bricks and mortar Maslow pyramid.

I thought about posting wordless cartoons without accompanying text, but I see other cartoonists on Substack adding a lot of commentary on their own cartoons and it really does work! It’s kind of like with radio where you could listen to one song after the next, but it is more pleasant to listen to a radio program when a DJ fills the gaps between songs with gab.

Anyway, that’s enough gab. That’s it for now!