Dear Laughter Lovers, The most frequent question I get as a cartoonist is “Where do you get your ideas?” I used to say “Cleveland,” which was disingenuous, even though I once did get an idea there. I’ve dealt with this topic before and will deal with it again, periodically, until I run out of ideas about it—which I won’t, because all ideas come from other ideas. The classic formulation is ex nihilo nihil fit—nothing comes from nothing. This goes for cartoons as well. All new cartoons are variations, extensions, or combinations of exisiting cartoons, with enough of a twist to count as different. And all that means is that, even though you’ve seen the previous ideas, you still find the new one funny. For example, in the Sidney Harris cartoon below, death is not a tall, scary figure.
And in Arnie Levin’s “Working Holiday” cartoon he’s in a golf cart, his scythe in with the clubs.
I recombined these elements to create something different enough:
Getting ideas is like getting a loan. If you already have money, it’s easy to get more. Likewise, if your mind is already stocked with ideas and associations, more are likely to come your way. Of course, what it’s stocked with is important.
By the time I became a New Yorker cartoonist, I had transformed my brain (mostly),
which provided the associations to create more ideas.
And so on, ad infinitum, ad humorem, but hopefully not ad nauseam. Cheers,
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