Synchronicity

What a coincidence! Mark Parisi, who draws "Off the Mark", did a cartoon today about the Mona Lisa, the same day I did one! Different punchlines, and I think both were very funny, so no harm done.

What I find happens more often is that another cartoonist will draw the same idea I'm planning to do later. Mike Peters has been an especially frustrating guy in this respect. He did about a half dozen strips that I had planned on over the months that I was waiting for the site to launch. "The Hatchback of Notre Dame;" a puppet complaining that his parents/puppeteer were "too manipulative;" and the list goes on. It's no one's fault; two people just come up with the same brilliant idea at the same time! (For awhile, however, I harbored a secret suspicion that someone was finding out about my ideas and sending them to Mike...even though I've never met him.)

As I've said here before, I have every day's cartoon planned through the beginning of next May. I figure that one or two of those ideas, of which I may have conceived a year or more earlier, will appear in a similar form in someone else's strip before I get to use them. So goes the cartoon world. I did manage to convert the "manipulation" cartoon into one where the puppet says, "I've had it up to here"---which was funny, but not as good as the manipulation gag. Sometimes reworking the original idea can be funnier, though--today's cartoon was supposed to feature Leonardo da Vinci with his shirt sticking out of his zipper. While I pondered how to draw that without making it look obscene (I was thinking a plaid or checked shirt), I decided to check online to see what he would have worn. "Flowing robes" was the answer, so I switched to toilet paper stuck to his shoe, which I think is funnier anyway--especially since they didn't have toilets back then. At least not the white porcelain type I show in the next room.

I have a Picasso cartoon planned, and every time I see a Picasso appear in the comics (which isn't often), I think I should get going and put mine out quick. But then some other idea might get bumped and be done by someone else first, so I can't really stress about it. There are enough jokes to go around--I just hate it when one of the really good ones gets snapped up by someone else first. Today, we did 'em at the same time, and they were different takes on the subject--proof that create(ive) minds think alike.