I like playing with language. As a teen I listened to a lot of my family’s comedy records, and I found myself especially drawn to my sister’s George Carlin albums for his passion for words.
Likewise, as a cartoonist, I’m constantly on the lookout for phrases, idioms, and slang that I can examine more closely or poke holes in.
This cartoon came after a particularly agonizing writing session where nothing was coming to me. One of my tricks in that situation is to get one of my idiom dictionaries off the shelf and page through it quickly to kickstart my head.
I ran across the phrase “written all over his face” which thankfully suggested a number of visual puns, and after some cajoling, my brain finally gave me a decent cartoon.
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About the Author: Mark Anderson’s cartoons appear in publications including The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review. Anderson is the creator of the popular cartoon website, Andertoons.com, where he licenses his cartoons for presentations, newsletters and other projects. He blogs at Andertoons blog.
