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To Scam a Cartoonist

 


hajocomputerdump
This cartoon is by Hajo from Holland.

To Scam a Cartoonist
By Monte Wolverton

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from a woman who called herself, generically enough, Mary. She said she wanted to hire me to “make cartoony of” a portrait of her family, so she could give it to her husband for his birthday. She attached a photo of her husband, two kids and herself. (See the photo at the top of this web site). She also let me know that she was engaged in humanitarian work, shuttling between Nepal and Australia, helping earthquake victims. Commendable. Damn commendable.

Why not? I thought. I can squeeze it in. I quoted her a price—not cheap, but I have bills to pay, Mary’s humanitarianism notwithstanding. I followed my standard policy for people I don’t know (and some I do)—credit card only, half up front. She got right back to me and said she would be paying by check, and therefore needed my cell phone number. I got right back to her and said sorry—credit cards only and I don’t give out my cell phone number. I never heard back, and didn’t give it a second thought.

A day or two later I learned that a cartoonist friend had taken her assignment. He did the requested family portrait and received a check for the amount he had agreed upon—plus $4,000. He emailed her and she said no problem—she had miswritten the amount. Go, ahead, she said. Cash the check, send her another check for $4,000 and keep the rest. At this point my friend realized that scamminess was afoot. He never cashed the check, but he lost valuable time doing work for nothing.

I can cast no aspersions because I myself almost fell for it. In retrospect, as usual, I could see four red flags. Who can tell me what they were? Okay, never mind—I’ll tell you.

1) Mary’s family photo was a little too cute. An ecstatically happy Caucasian family at the park—all grinning idiotically, with exceptionally good teeth. It had that slick stock-photo quality. Further, a Canon digital SLR is strapped around Mary’s neck. She’s white and blonde, yet she writes in broken English. “Make cartoony of”? Okay, maybe she’s Latvian, but probably not.

2) Why doesn’t she have a credit card? After all, she’s got a spendy camera, she shuttles between countries, and the kids in her photo have designer jeans. She writes checks for this stuff?

3) Why does she need my cell phone number to write a check?

4) Why do I need to know about her humanitarian work? Perhaps she was just sharing.

Oh, I almost forgot. Mary’s initial email came through the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC) website. She was apparently looking for cartoonists to scam. Really — why editorial cartoonists? C’mon! We don’t make a ton of money. Most of us need other sources of income to support our cartooning habit. We fight for the oppressed and downtrodden. We stand against injustice, greed and exploitation. For that we get hate mail and death threats. Why not scam greedy hyper-capitalists and human traffickers instead? Here’s a suggestion for cartoonists. The next time a scammer emails you, go ahead and agree to do the work. Then send them a terrible, poorly rendered cartoon with awful perspective, garish colors, bizarre anatomy and confusingly tangent lines. Sign it as Marc Chagall. Few people will be able to tell the difference, but the scammer will likely be arrested when he or she tries to pass it off as genuine. And you’ll feel good.

Just kidding. I love Marc Chagall.


I’d be interested to know how many cartoonists fell for this one. I got this e-mail too.

I Googled the scammer’s e-mail address and found a post on the “Grand River Woodturners Guild” Facebook page, dated October 5th, warning of basically the same scam and noting that “all woodturners are getting this e-mail.” For the woodturners, the e-mail came from a man who was asking for a vase to be made for his wife. 

Thanks to Monte for writing this for us.

Daryl

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Blog Syndicate

E-mail Ouch!

FBI Director Comey threw an ugly curveball at Hillary last week when he re-opened the investigation into her e-mails. I love to draw people throwing ugly curveballs.

Yes, I know I should have done a live-stream video of this one. I’ve been taking a bit of a cold-infused vacation from my video regimen. I’ll start up again soon. Really.

I drew another cartoon about the Russians and Wikileaks that I didn’t color because the Comey investigation news came out as I was starting to color the cartoon; I thought the new story drowned Wikileaks out. Here’s my Russian general that, I would guess, few readers will see.

 

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Blog Syndicate

Hillary and Trump – @#%$!!

I almost didn’t draw this cartoon, because Hillary and Trump would never wear t-shirts and it just looked wrong – but then I got the idea of having them wear the t-shirts on top of their pant-suit and suit-suit, and that struck me as funny!

I also struggled with Hillary’s face in this one, as you can see in the video below. That’s the problem with these videos; all my struggles are on full display. The magic is gone.

In the next video I clean up my messy drawing and color it in Photoshop with my Wacom Cintiq.

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Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Gets the Boot

I’m not too happy with my Putin and Bernie in this one, but Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is great fun to draw. Her hair is fun. Somehow I’m guessing she’s be around for a while in one way or another.

Here I am drawing this one live (as of 1:00pm Pacific Time Tuesday, this had another hour to finish uploading – come back later if you are early!)

And here I color it in real time …

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Blog Syndicate

Hillary and the Email Storm

Hillary is a gift to cartoonists. The fact that she is humorless makes her all the more fun.

International cartoonists make a lot of use of the “@” sign to represent email in their wordless cartoons, something that is not seen so often in American cartoons. (They also go crazy with UPC codes in their cartoons, representing commerce or general, modern commerce.) Wordy American cartoonists could do with fewer words.

Most newspapers print my cartoons in black and white. The black and white version below is just line art, which I think is more elegant, but I find that newspapers prefer to take my color cartoons and grayscale them rather than use the more simple and elegant line art. In this case, that will give them more emails, I suppose.

I drew a similar, symbolic Hillary/email cartoon some months ago, with the “@” symbol as a ball and chain. Some readers didn’t get this one – maybe because the “@” needs a gap at the end of the curl, maybe because the idea of an “@” as email is just too obscure, and “@” rain will go over their heads too. I’ll find out soon enough.

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Blog

Hillary and a Tempest in a Teapot

Here’s my new one. I was trying to stretch this to make a better tea-party reference to the elephant, but I decided, nah, it is clear enough. Then I thought of putting the GOP elephant in a Fox New t-shirt, and I thought, nah, it is clear enough.

Here’s a Hillary, Benghazi, GOP oldie that will probably never grow stale. Hillary is a wonderful character – I’m looking forward to the campaign!

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Cartoons

Hillary E mail Scandal Tempest in a Teapot

Hillary E mail Scandal Tempest in a Teapot © Daryl Cagle,CagleCartoons.com,Hillary Clinton,tea party,tea,tea pot,elephant,republican,democrat,presidential candidate,email,e-mail,scandal,gasoline

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Blog

Hillary’s E-mail Scandal

I don’t quite understand the Hillary e-mail scandal. There was no law against her using her own e-mail at the time she did it. She had her own e-mail server and 50,000+ emails, but I also have my own e-mail server and 50,000+emails, so it doesn’t seem so strange to me. And if she hadn’t had her own server, all of her emails would Surely have been stolen and revealed by Edward Snowden, so in retrospect, it seems prudent. Much ado about nothing, I think.


E-mail is always a great topic for cartoons.


I’ve been thinking of updating the Hillary-general cartoon below to add an e-mail medal, and take out the stale medals about 2008 election news that everyone has forgotten (like “Michigan” and “Florida”). I drew this one when the daily pundit babble was about Hillary claiming she would make a much better commander in chief, compared to Obama.

I suspect Hillary would have been much more of a hawk than Obama, and would have gotten us much more mixed-up into the middle East muddle. If I had to choose between Hillary and goofy Rand Paul, I think I would vote for Rand Paul, just because I trust that he really don’t want our military meddling around the globe.

I remember back in 2007 there was a scandal about Karl Rove deleting his emails while he worked at the White House. Pundit hacks like Rove benefit from our short memories, as they attack Hillary now.

And please help us out with Cagle.com, now that the site is so much more expensive for us to host. Visit: http://cagle.com/heroes

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Cartoons

Hillary E mail Scandal and her Run

Hillary E mail Scandal and her Run © Daryl Cagle,CagleCartoons.com,Hillary Clinton, e-mail, email, server, president, Secretary of State, State Department, scandal, campaign, run, @

Categories
Cartoons

Hillary E mail Scandal and her Run

Hillary E mail Scandal and her Run © Daryl Cagle,CagleCartoons.com,Hillary Clinton,e-mail,email,server,president,Secretary of State,State Department,scandal,campaign,run,@