KAREN FAVREAU: Last Cartoonist Sitting: What I Did Last Night

Introduction

My name is Karen Favreau, and, for a number of years, I worked as a freelance cartoonist by night and a fill-in-the-blank by day. I’d always intended to create a cartoon archive online, but needed something to motivate me. Then I was diagnosed with Stage III Ovarian Cancer in October 2009, and suddenly felt very, very motivated.

I hope you enjoy the ‘toons. All the work is copyrighted, so, if there is one that you would like to use for a flyer or booklet or whatever, please give full credit to Karen Favreau. If your heart is into it, you can also make a small donation to www.ovariancancer.org

About Me

I blame the late, great MAD Magazine artist Don Martin and the nameless, faceless “monkeys chained to a drafting table drawing ARCHIE comics” for turning me into a cartoonist. I began my freelance career knocking out ‘toons for some of the free weekly entertainment papers aimed at the gay community in New York and Western Massachusetts back in the pre-blog 90’s. I even joined something called “The Lesbian Cartoonists’ Network,” courtesy of “Stonewall Riots” creator Andrea Natalie (we're here-we're queer-we got cartoons).

My drawing style was an ever evolving work-in-progress stirred up by night classes at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Eventually it got too difficult being both funny AND gay, so I switched over to a single-frame “gag” format. National Lampoon, Eightball and The New Yorker replaced MAD as my muse. A number of wonderful editors featured my work in their magazine, which include Funny Times, Valley Comic News, Nerve, and Factsheet Five (greatest hits and a little bit rock-n-roll). The best rejection letter I ever received stated “We laughed, but not hard enough—try again.”

Here are a few of my attempts at “multi-panel confessional underground commix.” The results are mixed.

Karen’s two biggest PRIDE AND JOY moments as a cartoonist:

1. National Lampoon prints one of my cartoons as part of a contest—it ain’t Maus, but it’s Don Martin-inspired silliness at its finest!

2. Funny Times selects my cartoon to be on the cover! (Incidentally, this has been my single-most successful cartoon, having been reprinted in numerous periodicals. And the funny thing is that, when I drew it back in the early 90’s, I’d never sent an e-mail or surfed that mysterious thing called the Internet).

I’ve also had the pleasure of seeing my work appear in a number of anthologies:

My cartoons also popped up in something called Ex-Lover Weird Shit and a compellation called Kitty Libber.

While I no longer freelance on a regular basis, I DO teach “Cartooning 101 Crash Course” workshops to kids at camps, libraries, schools, etc., which I enjoy tremendously.

KAREN FAVREAU:
Last Cartoonist Sitting

Introduction

Thursday, July 1, 2010

What I Did Last Night

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