Wanna Send Me Your Cartoon Idea?

The ironic thing is that if I used submitted ideas, I wouldn't be the kind of cartoonist you'd want to send your ideas to.

I started this blog several months ago and I’ve been tweaking it ever since. I’m afraid I might come off as an unappreciative asshole, so I’ve been hesitant. But I keep getting pushed to finish it by people sending me unsolicited ideas, so here goes.

Readers like to send me their ideas for a cartoon, and they often come in waves. There are times I’ll get three a day and other times I’ll get one over three weeks. Sometimes the wannabe cartoon writer will say he or she can’t draw so they suggest it to a professional cartoonist, even though some of them can’t draw. Cough cough cough.

But here’s the rub: Not only can’t I take your ideas, no matter how brilliant they may be, but I don’t want your idea. It’s not a burden to get your pitches, but since I get so many of them, I figure I’ll explain why I don’t and maybe save you a little time—or at least save myself the time from explaining again why I don’t take ideas from readers or anyone else, for that matter. In the future, I’ll direct them to this blog.

I do appreciate that people like my work so much that they want me to be the one to use their ideas. Thank you. But I’m going to lay out the reasons why I can’t and won’t use your idea. And no, I won’t make an exception for your idea. I have enough self-awareness to know I’m growing into a curmudgeon. My apologies.

Reason #1: It would be extremely unethical for me to sign my name on a cartoon I didn’t write. Ninety percent of a cartoon is in the idea, not the artwork (thank god). It’s also a violation of journalism ethics to claim something you did not create. Columnists can’t have someone else write their columns. I don’t see myself as being beneath or less of a journalist than a columnist, though the Pulitzer committee might. It’s also against my own ethics. I would feel dirty using someone else’s idea. I don’t know how plagiarists live with themselves.

And don’t tell me I don’t have to give you credit. I don’t work like that. And I can’t give you credit because I don’t work and play well with others.

Reason #2: My cartoons are my voice, not your voice. They have to come from my weird personality and my weird brain. Sorry, but you’re not weird enough, which you should thank the gods for.

Reason #3: Cartoonists are not hired guns or unhired guns at that. We’re NOT trying to find ideas, we’re trying to write them. We’re not illustrators. There’s a difference between a cartoonist and an illustrator. Some people do both, and I have illustrated for features in newspapers and covers of alt-weeklies, but those are different assignments.

Reason #4: Your idea will not be in my writing style. Again, go back to the weird brain thing. I bet people sent Don Martin ideas, thinking they could get that strange. Come to think of it, he did illustrate for writers. and worked and played well with others. OMG! Am I weirder than Don Martin?

Reason #5: I’m expressing myself and the uniqueness of my cartoons is that they’re a part of me, even when they suck.

Reason #6: I’m not going to like your idea, and don’t take offense to it because I don’t like most cartoons from other cartoonists. Most of them bore me. I think only around ten political cartoonists are doing great work at this time, and they’re among the best in the history of this business, while the rest are a bunch of unoriginal lazy thinkers.
Most of the time when a reader pitches me an idea, I’ve already seen it or it’s some long wordy complicated thing I can’t even finish reading. Readers also tend to pitch very obvious ideas (draw the Trump library with a porn section. Yeah). Sorry. But that also means you’re writing at least as good as some professional cartoonists. I can think of about 20 cartoonists who can’t write as well as the people who submit ideas to me. Go read a Mike Beckom or a Dana Summers cartoon (two guys who are not smart enough to be political cartoonists) or even worse (but not much), a Joey Weatherford cartoon. I don’t even understand that guy’s shit. Michael Ramirez and Gary Varvel have a habit of drawing the same ideas because neither puts any effort into their writing. Ramirez is usually two days behind Varvel. Gary McCoy’s work looks like he does accept ideas from readers…if those readers are racist homophobic toddlers with extremely low IQs.
The only people who pitch ideas worse than readers are editors. Editors suck at writing cartoons. They can be phenomenal writers, just not cartoon writers. A person whose instincts are to kill something irreverent, because they don’t understand irreverence, can’t write political cartoons. The only thing an editor might be worse at than writing political cartoons is pitching a subject for a political cartoon. I once drew a pop-tart cartoon for CNN (sorry, Richard).

Reason #7: I reject a good portion of my own ideas. Have you seen my blogs of roughs? And I like a lot of my ideas that don’t make the cut. Why would I consider other people’s ideas when I’m killing my own?

Reason #8: I don’t need any more ideas on Donald Trump. Since 2015, almost every idea that’s been pitched to me has been on Donald Trump. I got another one of those today. There may be one submission that wasn’t on Trump and I congratulated the person, then told them I wouldn’t use it. If you ever pitched a cartoon idea over the past eight years, admit it. It was about Donald Trump. People who pitch cartoon ideas are like teenage novelists writing vampire books. You guys are turning Donald Trump into Twilight. I know… I know…your vampire novel is different from all the other vampire novels. If you want me to read your idea before I reject it, because I’m going to reject it, you have to make it on something other than Donald Trump. And then I’m going to reject it.
Even though we will draw several cartoons in a row about the guy, cartoonists are sick of drawing Donald Trump. We don’t draw him because we want to as much as we have to. If I was ever going to use a reader’s idea, which I’ll never do, it won’t be on Donald Trump.

Reason #9: I’d never be able to accept a compliment again. Someone would say, “Hey, great cartoon today,” and I’d have to respond, “Yeah, I didn’t write it.” At my last newspaper job, I’d often get complimented for the cartoon that ran in my place when I’d take a day off, usually a cartoon by Mike Luckovich, and I hated having to say, “Yeah, that wasn’t mine.” Luckovich himself told me that happens to him too, and he would just accept the compliment.

Reason #10: A political cartoonist has to be able to stand by his cartoon and defend it. It’s a lot easier to do that if I wrote it. How lame would it be if I used the excuse, “Oh, don’t blame me. I didn’t write it”? And sometimes when I have to explain or stand behind a cartoon I drew months ago, I have to go back and figure out what I was talking about then. I often don’t understand my own work if it’s from a few months ago. What was I thinking about? That cartoonist looks like a lunatic…oh, shit…It’s me.

Reason #11: A political cartoonist is a solo act, or at least they should be. A political cartoonist is more John Lennon than The Beatles. If I was one of The Beatles, I like to think I’d be John writing weird songs like Across the Universe or I Am the Walrus, but honestly, I’d probably be stuck in the middle and be George, getting two songs on an album while fucking around with a sitar. For the record, I love George. Don’t come throwing sitars at me.
There is a duo who creates political cartoons but they’re terrible. Think Hall and Oates doing Jingle Bell Rock…but making it racist. Or think about going to a Hall and Oates concert, and Daryl announces, “We’re going to let Oates sing all the songs tonight.” Please don’t message or comment to enlighten me that Hall and Oates don’t like each other anymore. I already know. Play with me here.
Back to that duo, the art sucks as does the writing. I wonder why it takes a team to produce such shitty godawful political cartoons and why they can’t just suck on their own. They suck so much that I can’t remember who they are. Yes, the duo is conservative which means they don’t even understand how political cartoons work, and they definitely don’t understand how journalism ethics works. They’re not as much Simon and Garfunkel and more like Donnie and Marie…if Donnie and Marie were singing off-key and lying racists. “I’m a little bit racist…and I’m a little bit homophobe.” It’d be as if Gary McCoy and Mike Lester were a singing duo.

Reason #12: I can’t get in the zone. You know how an athlete plays great one night, like a basketball player hitting threes all night but only hits a couple or none the next game? Cartoonists do that too. Somedays, my threes are bouncing off the rim. I just can’t hit it. In the past, when an editor would order an assignment I wasn’t into, like the time my editor at The Free Lance-Star ordered me to draw a cartoon welcoming a Boy Scout Jamboree to town, finding my zone was impossible…especially after my morale sunk after he threatened to fire me if I didn’t draw it, and then still tried to fire me after I did draw it. If I can’t get at least a little excited about the cartoon, then I’ll never find my zone. I won’t get excited by ideas that are not my own.

Reason #13: When a reader sends me an idea, I’m a little offended. I know they don’t mean it, but I’m still a little hurt and at the same time, I should be flattered. It’s a compliment you want your idea to be drawn by me, but if I did use readers’ ideas, then you wouldn’t like my cartoons enough to send me your ideas. That’s irony. The reason you like my cartoons is because I write my cartoons.
What you should do is send your ideas to a cartoonist who sucks. I have numbers if you need them. That’s a lie. I don’t have Dave Granlund’s number, I might have Ramirez’s number though. When you call, tell him you’re Gary Varvel.

A while back, there was a cartoonist who was a plagiarist. He was notorious for stealing ideas and even after being called out a few times, even being told by his syndicate to cut it out, he just couldn’t. He was a major cartoon klepto along with being a tracer and even using clipart. And, he loved to steal my work. So, I got into the habit of telling people who pitched ideas to me, that they should pitch their ideas to him because he LOVED using ideas that weren’t his own…and that they should tell him Clay Jones sent them.
Which wallet is mine? It’s the one that says “Bad Motherfucker.”

I’m sorry if I come off like a jerk with this, but it’s the truth…and it’s the same truth for most political cartoonists who are all much nicer than me. I’m a jerk. But if this blog lands well, I have other subjects I want to gripe about, like being bombarded every day by people who constantly send me YouTube links, people who send memes, or people who say “anywho,” or people who say, “Think about all the material you’ll have,” and don’t get me started about those who put ketchup on hotdogs, or…

You can still send me your ideas if you feel the need to exorcise them from your brain. Sometimes I’ll draw a rough of one of my ideas that I know I can’t use, but just so I can move on to the next idea. I can’t explain it. Just keep in mind that when you send an idea, it won’t be used, and I’ll probably send you the link to this blog.

Ideas are not topics. I might draw a cartoon on a subject a reader informs me of, but that’s rare because I get news alerts out the whazoozy. Also, please don’t send me a news article on a subject I drew about the day before. That’s very insulting, coughkarencough.

To all my colleagues who’ll use some of this in the future, or just glad someone else said it because they’re too afraid to say it themselves, or too smart…you’re welcome.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to figure out what I’m drawing tomorrow.