Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Behind the scene: a cartoonist speaks
Today's guest post comes from cartoonist JC Duffy, one of the two artists who comes up with the scenes for which our readers create captions. We asked him for his reactions to our latest contest, which appeared online in February's ACP InternistWeekly e-mail newsletter and then in our print edition.
"Our anesthesiologists are on strike."
JC says:
When I create my own cartoons, I generally think of a gag first, and then illustrate it. Although once in a while I'll do it the other way around. For me, the latter is harder than the former, and usually when I see The New Yorker's caption contest drawing I'm stumped as far as a punchline. And when I see the winning entry later, I think, "Of course. How obvious!"
Being a New Yorker cartoonist myself, I've submitted drawings for their caption contest. What I try to go for is something that's visually incongruous, throwing things together that don't usually go together. And since I'm not the one who has to come up with the caption, I can get as crazy as I want. When a cartoon is driven by a good verbal gag, you can have that gag delivered by one person talking to another person at a bar, or whatever. But you can't get away with that in a caption contest. The image needs to be more striking, surprising or evocative, and make the reader wonder what the heck is going on in the picture.
Other than making a caption as concise as possible, I really know of no formula for creating a funny cartoon. After doing it for many years, it's still largley a mysterious process to me.
posted by Ryan DuBosar at
3:00 PM
ACP Internist hosted Grand Rounds on June 16, wrapping up the best of the medical blogosphere. Click here for the complete wrap-up.
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American Journal of Medicine
Also known as the Green Journal, the American Journal of Medicine publishes original clinical articles of interest to physicians in internal medicine and its subspecialities, both in academia and community-based practice.
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A collaborative medical blog started by Neil Shapiro, ACP Member, associate program director at New York University Medical Center's internal medicine residency program. Faculty, residents and students contribute case studies, mystery quizzes, news, commentary and more.
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Interact MD
Michael Benjamin, ACP member, doesn't accept industry money so he can create an independent, clinician-reviewed space on the Internet for physicians to report and comment on the medical news of the day.
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The alter ego of Kevin Pho, ACP Member, is the closest thing to royalty in the medical blog world.
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The Public Library of Science's open access materials include a blog.
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