I have also been exploring the possibility of selling Spanish language foreign rights to a company in Spain. They would then do a translation in Spanish and sell them directly. I will say this is unlikely to happen. They don’t seem very willing to pay a reasonable advance/royalty for these rights, and are not very forthcoming in details on the process of doing the translation. Maybe another company will be better. I get a fair number of inquiries about having the book translated, especially into Spanish, but the cost is prohibitive to do it via self-publishing. Hopefully this will end up working out, it would be cool to see the book in Spanish!

Readers may or may not know I am a member of a web collective of cartoonists known as The Cartoonists Studio. TCS is sort of a virtual gathering place for cartoonists with pages for each member that includes bios, photo tours of their studios, news about what they are up to and links to communicate with them. It’s supposed to be a place that fans can go and “meet” the creators of their favorite cartoons. TCS is probably best known for its cartooning “contests”, where aspiring cartoonists create comics and compete for various prizes. I know it used to be a syndication deal but the latest prize is 4 weeks of mentoring by one of the professional cartoonists from the group. I know I have said I am not very big on art contests, but as they go these are good ones… they don’t own or place any claim on the artwork submitted, and while online voting factors in ultimately a panel of pro cartoonists choose the winner. The main attraction is feedback from people making their living doing cartoons.

TCS started something new this week… a blog. I know, blogs are so last decade, but this one will have entries by the many different cartoonists from the group, answering questions like how they got started, what their process is, etc. It’s worth looking at because of the diverse group and the many different views and answers you are bound to find there. The first entry is from Tom Batiuk of “Funky Winkerbean” fame, telling us about the first cartoon he ever sold. I wish the answer was a little longer and more involved, but maybe future posts will be a bit more indepth.

I’m not sure how often there will be posts on TCS Blog, but it’s a bookmark-worthy resource.

This week I thought I’d do my Doctor Who series sketch digitally and record the process like I have done once or twice in the past, but I somehow messed up the video recording. Thus, I have simply a digital sketch and no video. Sorry about that. Oh, and here we have the eighth Doctor, as portrayed by Paul McGann.

I’ve got an illustration for an upcoming MAD book due by this weekend, so blogging might be spotty for a few days.

This weeks Monday MADness is not something of mine but a link to a classic MAD piece originally run in MAD #80, June 1963. Just click on the image below to go to a website called “Letters of Note” for the complete article, which is genius.

So, why am I doing this for “Monday MADness” this week, as opposed to posting some old piece of mine or some pencil roughs or something? My reasons:

1. Long term thinking: I’ve only been in about 100 issues of MAD. Doing the math and factoring in there will be an additional 12 issues out over that time, plus about 3 more as I run those additional 12, that’s only 65 weeks of material. I have done 6 installments already. That means I’ll run out of material on Monday, June 30th, 2014. Now I’ll never run out of material.
2. Someone else was dumb enough to post an entire, copyrighted article from MAD on the internet, so I am not going to get in any trouble for it!