#98 Transformation, Opportunities, And Meeting Emily Flake
A bit late today and I am getting the dreaded "email too long" because of too many images. You might have to click to read online...
What were you doing when the world shut down?
I had plans.
You probably did too.
I particularly remember that the thing we started vaguely paying attention to that was happening over in China in December of 2019 only seriously began to alter our American reality in March of 2020.
By March 13th every concert or gig I had on the books for the next 8 weeks got cancelled.
Up through the end of April, I think a lot of us believed it would be over “soon”.
We had no idea.
I’ll be totally honest. In those early weeks the first cancellations felt like a welcome vacation even though it was a forced one. I was pretty overloaded and approaching burnout and was grateful for some time off.
But by June I was becoming alarmed. My entire income as a freelance musician had dried up and my teaching studio had shrunk from a robust weekly load to the three students who decided to try having their lessons remotely using this new thing called Zoom.
As a person with a wildly unpredictable income stream at the best of times, I was ineligible for any of the small business Covid loans. Or unemployment. Or any other Covid relief outside of the small stimulus checks given to everyone.
I had to think of SOMETHING.
I turned my other main job. Coloring.
To be specific, coloring Comic Strips.
I have been coloring the daily and Sunday strips for “The Brilliant Mind Of Edison Lee” since 2006.
The possibility of coloring for other comic strips may have crossed my mind at some point but don’t think I ever gave it serious thought.
In a move fueled more by desperation than bravery, I reached out to John Glynn at Andrews McMeel Universal to see if they needed any coloring help.
Glory be – yes they did!
Five years later I now color all the dailies for eight features and the Sunday files for two. (Samples below.)
When I started with just two features, the pay only helped a little bit to take the edge of my panic over my harp future.
But as they added more comics to my load the money added up to enough to allow me to cut loose the parts of my harp business that had become frustrating.
It was liberating.
Having a new source of income meant I no longer had to schlep my harp through ice and snow and subzero temperatures.
I could stop driving 2-4 hours each way to play with that orchestra for that conductor I didn’t like.
No more smiling sweetly while some ill behaved child wrapped their sticky fingers around the front of my expensive instrument (while trying to climb it) or spilled their ice cream on my soundboard.
Most importantly, I could say goodbye to playing for weddings. FOREVER.
As I enter March of 2025 I can see the enormous difference in my working life. I am calmer with less of a sense of being ill-used. Or exhausted.
I really did worry that the Covid shutdown would crush me.
But it transformed me.
Don’t be afraid of change.
Copyright© 2024 Anne Morse Hambrock All rights reserved.
Opportunity
Sometimes it isn’t that you are wearing your bathrobe.
Sometime it’s that you don’t recognize that the thing you are looking at actually is an opportunity.
Cartooning Pilgrimages And Emily Flake
Cartoon By Emily Flake
Ohio State University is where my husband and I lost our cartooning virginity.
That sounds bad.
Let me explain.
There’s cartooning and there’s hanging out with cartoonists.
I mean that second one.
In 2007 there were not a lot of opportunities for professional cartoonists to get together to hang out. There was the annual Reuben award weekend (to which you could only go if you were a member of the National Cartoonist Society) and, once every three years, there was an amazing cartooning festival at OSU. The Festival Of Cartoon Art was open to the first 175 people to register, whether they were members of the NCS or not.
Though nationally syndicated with King Features, my husband was not yet an NCS member. We had looked with envy at online pics of the fantastic time all the cartoonists were having at Reuben weekend events.
That 2007 OSU festival was happening on April 25th.
I heard about it April 23rd.
I registered IMMEDIATELY, booked the hotel and begged my mother-in-law to watch the younger kids. (I also pawned off the foreign exchange student we were hosting to another family for her final day. I know I should feel bad about that. But it was only for one day. And she was kind of rude to our son, her host.)
We threw everything in the car and drove seven hours to Columbus Ohio.
Within minutes of our arrival we were surrounded by cartooning luminaries: Mike Peters, Wiley Miller, Ray Billingsly, Sandra Bell Lundy, Brian Walker, Rina Piccolo, Hilary Price, Tony Cochran, and - OMG – one of my personal cartooning heros, the legendary Arnold Roth to name a few.
I was all tingly.
(Oh, and at one of the lunches I sat next to the widow of Charles Shulz. In case I haven’t name dropped enough.)
And it was the sort of thing where no one acted like a celebrity and everyone just hung out enjoying the company of other people who all do the same very weird job.
OSU no longer does the sort of festival they were putting together in 2007 but they do regularly offer great programs and receptions. And you never know who is going to show up.
So I try to make regular pilgrimages over to what I like to think of as my cartoon mecca.
This past weekend the programming on offer was a presentation by Emily Flake (her cartoons appear in the New Yorker among other places) and an exhibit of work for the New Yorker by the incredible Ed Koren. We were also treated to a wonderful behind the scenes discussion of Mr. Koren’s work by James Sturm and the Koren family.
I enjoyed all of it but Emily Flake was a particular highlight for me. Her work is fantastic and funny and irreverent and spot on. Her presentation was even more so.
She does not currently have a substack but you can check out her website.
Coloring Samples
Books
If you like my work there are two book collections for sale.
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Keep The Messages And Comments Coming!
I appreciate the feedback and knowing how often I have struck a chord with your lives.
OSU Comic Art Festivals were better than the Reubens if for no other reason than we didn’t have to get all jazzed up in formalwear! I think the last one I attended was a carpool with Sandra and Mike Cope in 2010. And as for coloring, Anne, let’s chat on the side.
I really miss the OSU festivals. They were amazing.