Cartooning Mondays

(clock-wise from top-left: Dash the Dachsund, a Chihauhau, Marbols the Cat, intern bird, a pig, Hilarity Hare, Hilarity (again), a sheep dog).

Sketches. ink on paper, 2013

Have I never discussed Cartoon Mondays on Monotonae? Well, then this is going to be a poor introduction to it. My apologies.

Above in the mix of anthropomorphic critters are Dash, Marbols, Hilarity and an intern bird. They were created for my attempt to make a weekly comic strip at work after I was hired at Cartoon Network in 2001. You see, I thought I’d be able to find a few free minutes at days’ ends here and there. I thought I’d be able to do a little work satire to blow off steam or deflate some of the ridiculous aspects of the job, much as I had with BackSTAGE and STAGElights when I worked for Disneyland’s French Market Restaurant, Second Hand Comics at Disneyland’s New Century Timepieces, and mini-poster series at Disney Consumer Products. It turned out that free minutes were hard to come by. The strip died after, I don’t know, maybe two dozen irregularly posted installments.

A few years later, I pitched it to the Network as an idea for a series of two-minute shorts.

Now it only lives in my repertoire of things I sketch at work, I think largely because there’s something about a character by the name Hilarity that just shouldn’t be allowed to fade.