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| 4/1/2009 1:00:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article | Drawing on experience
North Scott graduate makes a career of cartooning
By: Barb Geerts
of the NSP
While his classmates at North Scott High School were aspiring to be doctors or bankers or high-powered CEOs, Mark Anderson was engaged in the serious pursuit of a minimalist art form that offers astute observations on the human condition.
OK, so he was doodling. While this is a practice that teachers generally discourage as an unwelcome distraction, it would be a harbinger of future success for Anderson, who has managed to parlay his passion for pictorial renderings into a thriving Chicago business called Andertoons.
That's "toons" as in cartoons, those panel drawings underscored with pithy sayings that give readers a much-needed chop to the humerus. Anderson, whose other "odd jobs" have included cruise ship trombonist and metal screw salesman, has been drawing professionally for about 10 years - the last five as a full-time cartoonist.
This latest in his unconventional choice of careers has enabled him to be a breadwinner without leaving the comfort of his well-worn coffee table/desk, where he claims it all began. The father of two watches the couple's young children during the day while his wife, Margie, teaches a classroom of first-graders.
"I've got two little ones at home, so mostly I'm taking care of the kids. I get about two hours a day when I can actually cartoon," said Anderson, who briefly interrupted a phone interview to handle a potty-training matter with his youngest, 2-year-old Bonnie (her older brother, Henry, is 5).
With his talent for 'toons, Anderson has already managed to be a shoo-in favorite at career day at preschool. Some of his peers, however, have a hard time wrapping their minds around the fact that doodles can bring in significant dollars, if you've got the skill and drive - and a firm grasp of marketing.
Five-second 'story'
Cartooning, Anderson insisted, is more than just putting ink on paper.
" It's kind of a weird job because it requires a couple of different disciplines," he said. "You have to have some basic drawing skills. You have to be an artist and be able to convey characters and the scene and all those things, and get that across quickly. You have to be able to draw and you have to be able to write and you have to be funny."
He likens himself to a film director, without the Hollywood hoopla and big production budget. "You're in charge of everything," Anderson explains. That includes creating the characters, the scenery, the premise, the witty "dialogue" ... .
The difference is a cartoonist's "story" gets about 5-7 seconds of play. That's how long the average reader spends on a single-panel cartoon like Anderson's, according to the artist. "You have a small amount of time to get (your joke) across."
Apparently that's not a problem for the Windy City cartoonist, whose work has been featured in such national publications as Reader's Digest, The Wall Street Journal, Good Housekeeping, Forbes, The Saturday Evening Post and Woman's World, to name a few.
Anderson's first major sale was to Reader's Digest, which continues to be his favorite outlet, he said. When that initial cartoon appeared in the popular pocket-sized publication, he was so excited, he said he had to squelch the desire to point out his work to everyone in line at the checkout. "You want to show everyone: 'Look at me, this is me on page 41!' But you can't do that."
No, that is best left to one's inner child. Or mom.
Muriel Anderson, who now lives in Davenport, is understandably busting her buttons (is there a sight gag here?) over the fact that her son has found a bit of fame in the sight-gag realm of doodledom.
"I'm extremely proud of him. He's very artistic, very creative," she said of Mark, who described himself as the "caboose," having had three much-older siblings.
"He started drawing really early ... ," his mother noted. "He would always show you pictures (he'd drawn) and entertain himself and really laugh with it. He was just a delight."
Family jokester
Muriel recalled buying her pint-sized comedian a "big joke book" that he prized. "He really liked telling jokes, and he would tell them over and over. He has a really keen sense of humor," Mom noted.
She said the family members like to bounce their ideas off Mark, although he is seldom lacking in inspiration. "It's kind of fun because we're always coming up with scenarios and we always pass them on to him. We have a great time."
That is, except when they play "Pictionary" with Mark, whose family has now banned him from the game.
Muriel believes her son's cartoons are popular because of his keen insight and his conscious decision to stick to humor's high ground. "He sees the bright side of life. He's very intuitive. He sees a lot that we all miss because we're all in such a hurry all the time," she explained. "When you see one of his cartoons, you go, 'Oh, yeah, that's so true.' I think he has got insight into living."
"I tend to stay relatively gentle. I'm not trying to pick on anybody," Mark said of his cartoons. "I try to point out things I think are odd and confusing ... and say, well, this is kind of weird."
He said he gets a lot of his ideas from reading newspapers and generally staying up on current events. "I try to listen to a catch phrase, something that catches my ear. I play with it and see what I can do," Anderson explained. "You see if you can turn around and turn it into something funny."
His preference is for gag cartoons: single-panel drawings with a quick punch line.
Living on 'Peanuts'
Growing up in Eldridge, the talented cartoonist literally began to make his mark early on, coming up with his own take on the Sunday comics and studying the works of other classic cartoonists such as his hero, the late Charles Schulz, creator of the enduring "Peanuts" strip.
"I grew up reading 'Peanuts' and just loved Charles Schulz," Anderson noted. "He was a big influence. (I was always) trying to figure out how he did that."
He frequented his local library and began devouring books of cartoons -- everything from "Calvin and Hobbs" to the more sophisticated fare featured in The New Yorker. "I just absorbed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of collections and gleaned anything I could from those," said Anderson, who never took an art class outside of high school.
Muriel recalled that Mark was still in junior high when he created a cartoon feature for a school assignment, centering on the unlikely character of "Joe the Piranha." Then, when he was barely into his freshman year at North Scott, the young man's art teacher encouraged him to lend his drawing talents to the school newspaper, The Lance. He was a regular contributor to that publication throughout high school.
At that time, Anderson said he briefly considered a career as a cartoonist, but thought such a thing was merely pie-in-the-sky. "You draw these things and someone gives you a paycheck? That's crazy talk," he would say to himself. "But wouldn't that be fantastic if that actually would happen?"
However, it was Anderson's musical ability - not his drawing - that ended up winning him a college scholarship, and so he turned to tunes of a different sort. A talented trombonist, Anderson earned a degree in music performance from the University of Northern Iowa, then landed what many might consider a dream job as a professional musician on various cruise lines in the Caribbean. And indeed, it was ... for a time.
"Even that, after a while, gets to be a job. I've been to the Bahamas like 150 times. After about the first 25 (visits) it starts to lose its sheen," Anderson quipped.
When Mark and Margie were married in 1997 (the forgetful husband said he had the exact date engraved on his ring, ostensibly as a romantic gesture), Mark left the high seas and the couple settled in Chicago. Mark held down a full-time job during the day, while continuing to play at various Chicago venues at night. But he soon found that his schedule took him away from his family too much. "That's where cartooning sort of came (back) into it," Anderson remarked. "Once I stopped being a musician professionally, I needed something to fill that (creative) void."
And so he picked up his pen again, squeezing in some drawing time between sales calls at his day job. "I would cartoon first thing in the morning and on my lunch hours and when I got home," he recalled. Soon, sales of his quick-witted, social commentaries were going well enough that he decided to launch into cartooning full time. "My hobby became my full-time job," he declared.
Laughs from every angle
His panels bring anywhere from $10 to $1,000, depending on the market. The larger magazines with extensive circulation pay well, but Anderson said much of his bread-and-butter comes from the sale of cartoons for corporate use. Companies often hire him to create product-specific cartoons for calendars, newsletters, company presentations or marketing purposes.
"(One time) I had to do 12 cartoons about hospital gowns for a company that wanted to do a calendar to give out - about their gown and how it's better than the traditional one that's open in the back and leaves nothing to the imagination. There's only so many hospital gown jokes, and I think I did them all," lamented Anderson, who created a total of 41 panels from which company officials could choose their top dozen.
The artist said he is always sending off cartoons to various magazines, hoping to get one published for a paycheck. "You just do the cartoon because you think it's funny, and then you send it off. You hope they buy it. Everything that I don't sell to a magazine goes on my (newly redesigned) Web site (www.andertoons.com) and people can buy it from that."
Anderson has also published his first collection of cartoons called "Rub My Tummy and It's a Deal," available online through Amazon.com, as well as his own Web site.
Anderson said he often bounces ideas off his wife, who isn't afraid to say when an occasional cartoon has fallen flat. "God love her, she hears everything (I'm planning to put on paper). She's a good editor. She tells me when stuff's not funny," he said, adding that Margie has been "super, super supportive" of his decision to make cartooning his career.
He likes the fact that he isn't tied to the 9-to-5, and that every day is "casual Friday" in his workplace. "It puts food on the table and no one gets to tell me what to do. I don't have to go anywhere. I can sit around in jeans and a T-shirt and do this. And I can do this any time," which, he noted, was not the case with his trombone playing. "I don't bother the neighbors now. Nobody's yelling, 'You're sketching too loud! Turn down that pen, dagnabbit!'" Anderson joked.
His current challenge is embracing another hobby, since drawing has become somewhat of a 24/7 obsession. He decided that Legos, that beloved building block brand of his youth, was just the ticket. Anderson now has thousands, and the little plastic blocks are even finding their way into his cartoon panels these days.
The Scott County native said he plans to continue cartooning as long as there's a market for his creations. "For me, the (reward) is just being able to do it. You've got to have a strong stomach to stick with it. But every day I can keep doing it - keep getting checks in the mail and keep sitting in my little office - that's enough (for me). I'll take it," he said contentedly.
And what if the day dawns when the demand for doodles dwindles, and this latest chapter in the artist's life "draws" to a close? Don't bet on this free spirit signing on with corporate America.
Quips the cartoonist: "What's next? Maybe juggling, I don't know. Or snake wrangling. I sort of go for the odd stuff."
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