The Business of the Cartoon?

In the beginning there was a cartoonist, a mammoth-hair brush and a cave wall in France.  The cartoon was born.

Then there were cartoonists, a chisel and the wall of a pyramid in Egypt.  The hieroglyphic/sequential art/a comic strip was born.

Then came the industrial revolution and mass media in America in the late 19th-early 20th centuries.  Daring and imaginative young men who told stories and designed fantastic worlds and delighted us all.

Then came the homogeneous decades of the mid-20th century when advertising draftsmen wrote books about the "business" of cartooning and sucked the life out of all of us.

But in retrospect...they're kind of cool to see.  The tools they teach are all valid.  And whether it be a mammoth-hair brush, a chisel or a rapidograph...cartoons is cool.

More tomorrow.