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My Rude Cartoons

rude cartoons scribbly g trouser snake comic

This post is about my ruder Scribbly G cartoons and my thoughts and challenges in making rude cartoons. If you’d like to see more, click Read More—otherwise, keep on scrolling.

I’ve loved rude cartoons for as long as I can remember. I love anything you’re not supposed to talk about. When I got into cartooning, I used to draw whatever popped into my head. Whether it was rude, dark, sick, or stupid, I didn’t care. I’ve never really cared what people thought about my cartoons.

I’ve felt the pull of social media encouraging me to make comics a certain way, as well as magazines pushing you to create cartoons that fit their standards. Making cartoons for other people is fine, but it’s never as fun as just playing around, trying to make your friends laugh. I’ve cut back a ton on social media and have been focusing more on making my own cartoons—and one of the types I want to get back into is the rude cartoon.

Rude cartoons are tough. Some people hate them. Reddit even marked my whole account as NSFW because of a few rude cartoons. I don’t show any nudity, but somehow, I still get flagged as not safe for work. I can only assume it’s someone having the same issue as the robot above, because for real—there are way ruder cartoonists on Reddit who aren’t flagged as NSFW. I don’t care, though. I’m enjoying making cartoons on my own site, so the less I post on Reddit, the better for me, I guess.

Teachers Panties cartoon by scribbly g

I do try to squeeze in some rude or dark comics for the editors. I’m not sure how many of you know (or care) how single-panel cartooning for magazines works, but you send in batches of ideas, and they pick from there. Occasionally, you’re given a specific topic, but most of the time, you pitch ideas, and they take what they like. I’ve pissed off many editors by pitching things that aren’t suitable for their audience, but I keep trying to sneak something inappropriate in.

Occasionally, I do get something through that I was certain would never get published. Bob Mankoff at Air Mail seems to have more appreciation for rude cartoons than most editors. In fact, the first cartoon I ever sold was actually to Bob Mankoff at Air Mail, and it was this cartoon below.

Now, I don’t know if this sold because different people saw it in different ways. How I meant it was: Mr. Bull came home early and was angry to find his wife being touched by Mr. Farmer. Just a silly, easy joke. But some people saw it as a statement about milking being wrong or bad. A lot of vegan folks were really into this cartoon, so I don’t know if that’s why they chose it? Air Mail’s audience leans more toward the vegan trend train. Who knows. It sold, and it was the first single-panel cartoon I ever sold—plus, it was one I actually kinda liked.

While we’re on Air Mail, this was another cartoon they published that I was 100% certain they wouldn’t.

Stripping banana cartoon

This was another rare sale that I actually really liked—again, to Mr. Mankoff. This one caused them a bit of grief, with people whining about sexism or whatever. It’s a fucking banana, you fools. And also—strip clubs are a real thing. I don’t understand how someone could be offended by this, but again… y’all and your first-world problems. 😄 Come stay in South Africa for a month—you’ll soon get over being offended as a hobby.

Abra Viagra cartoon by scribbly g

One magazine I never got into—and by got into, I mean never had a cartoon published in—was Hustler (though I did get into Hustler a lot as a child). You know when people say stuff like, I buy Playboy for the articles? I was that weirdo—but with cartoons. I used to read the cartoons in those old porno magazines. A lot of them were awful and not funny, but occasionally, there’d be one that made me laugh. It was also a style of cartooning I had never seen before, which made it exciting to me.

For a while, I submitted cartoons to Hustler. Not that many—I think I tried twice—but I never heard back, so I gave up. I got spoiled with magazines because I got into Air Mail, The Times, The Critic, The Oldie, etc., pretty much right away. So when Hustler didn’t respond, I was like, whatevs, your loss.

The real struggle with making rude cartoons is figuring out what to do with them if they don’t sell. Most cartoons that don’t sell, I can still share on social media. But, dudes—I’m followed by my mom and my wife’s whole friggin’ family. I’d be very uncomfortable with them seeing my rude cartoons.

Okay, I lie—I don’t actually care. But my wife? She is VERY uncomfortable with her family seeing the rude cartoons I make. My wife hates rude cartoons.

It’s not just her family, though. Some people get really upset when they see a rude cartoon and send me messages telling me how disgusted they are. I shouldn’t care, but it does play on my mind. I guess it’s just something I need to get over because I really enjoy making this stuff.

This cartoon above was another dumb, quick idea that took me years to post. I was so worried about people screaming at me that I kept putting it off. Looking back, it’s really not that bad at all. But after the backlash I got from that stupid buff cat cartoon, I was overthinking everything.

It took me a long time to realize this First World problem thing I keep mentioning, but I really believe that’s where the disconnect is. Where I’m from, we have real problems to worry about. But where my audience is—from the first world—you have no actual problems, so you go out searching for things to be upset about.

buff cat cartoon by scribbly g

For real—the average person would look at this cartoon and go, haha, the cat said “pspsps” to get the girl cat to come over. But, dude—the over-the-top, whiny messages I got about this confused me for so long. I was called all the names Americans throw at you on the internet when they don’t like you.

This was the cartoon that made me realize: having access to a huge audience also means having access to a huge group of crazy people. People you’d never hang out with or talk to in real life.

It’s still one of my favourite cartoons ever, though—and the crazy, whiny fools can fuck off and go read Garfield.

rude Viagra desert island cartoon by scribbly g

This one is a little rude. I found it funny. It’s another that doesn’t really fit anywhere, but I liked the idea, so I drew it.

rude-split-the-bill-cartoon-scribbly-g

And finally, this one… I won’t bother sharing it online because I now know better and can kind of see why people might get upset. I still don’t agree with getting offended over a cartoon, though.

It’s like the people who get upset over this stuff think that the guy who drew it acts like this—like it’s me or that I approve of what the dude’s doing. That’s so weird to me because, obviously, people like this exist, and the cartoon isn’t saying he’s a good guy. I just drew a comic about a douchey dude.

And the funny thing is—by him making that comment, he’s pretty much confirming he’s not getting lucky tonight.

So, that was a collection of my ruder comics. They weren’t really that bad. I do have way ruder sketches that I’ll get around to posting one day.

Noice! Chat later.

—G

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