This Week's Sneak Peek

I picked up a copy of Cartooning by Roy Paul Nelson at a used book sale recently, so I've been reading this 375-page book. It was published in 1975, so a lot of the information is well out of date: Nelson, an editorial and gag cartoonist and illustrator working in Oregon, writes in a time when several cities had more than one daily newspaper, and when local cartoonists had one significant advantage over national cartoonists who sent their work to their syndicates through the U.S. Mail.

In an early chapter, Nelson struggles to list any female editorial cartoonists. He was either unaware of, or unimpressed by, Etta Hulme or Kate Salley Palmer (Hulme began cartooning for the Fort Worth Star Telegram in 1972; Palmer would have just begun drawing for the Greenville News the year the book was published). On the other hand, Nelson includes one of the cartoons of Pete Wagner, who was still drawing for college newspapers at the time, so it's not as if Nelson wasn't trying to be as up-to-date as possible.

Anyway, I mention this book because there is a distinct possibility that a reference in chapter 5 was in my head when I came up with this week's cartoon idea.