Monday, November 03, 2014

Artist vs. Cartoonist

November 3, 2014
   I've had an inordinate amount of talks and speeches in the last three days, including two on Saturday, with a Lion's Club Legends of the West Luncheon out in Sun City where my 94-year-old host Bob McCrackin had just returned from an around the world tour with his 90-year-old trophy wife.

 
The Sun City Lions, Bob, 94, and his buddy, 88 (getting ready to buy a book)

   That took three hours (it's an hour, one way, out to Sun City). On Friday night I had a book signing at Changing Hands in Phoenix and drove down for that, another hour in and an hour out. Thin crowd, about 20 but sold a bunch of books. This morning I left the house at eight and drove out towards the White Tank Mountains to do a history talk at Pebble Creek Country Club. That was an hour and a half from Cave Creek. Big crowd, though and sold some books.

 
The big auditorium at Pebble Creek Country Club

   Gearing up for the big "201 Zany Zony" show at the Arizona Historical Society. Here is the card Dan The Man Harshberger came up with:



   I do have quite a few people who call me an "artist" instead of a "cartoonist" somehow thinking that one is a higher calling than the other. Of course, I come from a different point of view, and I happen to agree with one of my heroes:

"If you're not good enough to be a cartoonist, maybe you can be an artist."
—S. Clay Wilson, "The Checkered Demon," which changed my life: a Zap comic hero of mine