How Did You Get Your Start?

James was kind enough to invite me here to share “how I got my start”. Ironically another magazine (a hard copy one wanted a similar story with more of a pre-biography) attached to it. I decided to combine the two an this is what I wrote. Thank so much James. Hope your readers enjoy. Sincerely, Rick London, Londons Times Cartoons
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How The Internet’s #1 Ranked Offbeat Cartoonist, Rick London, Founder of Londons Times Cartoons Got His Start
by Rick London

I like to think, and often tell people, “My life began at forty-three, but sadly it began at birth, in a small Mississippi rural community called “Hattiesburg”. I was born in the middle of the civil rights movement, and, when it reached its peak, I was just becoming a teenager. In many ways it was peaceful and quiet. On some days, I was afraid to leave my home. I was/am Jewish. The grand
wizard of the KKK lived two blocks from me. His son had a crush on my older sister (aged four).

Neither of the parents were too wild about this situation.

By the time I reached my late teens, I was forced (thankfully) to learn the martial arts (karate). In my young adulthood, I mastered it. This kept most of the nuts at bay.

My family, like most, were the epitome of “Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil”; not Ozzie and Harriett or Little House On The Prairie Dysfunction and struggle ran rampant in our upper-middle-class (considered wealthy) household. It was a silent war-zone. Feelings, thoughts etc. were not important. Only good grades and later medical school, law school, or running the family business.

So I became a cartoonist (in 1997), writer, and E-entrepreneur at age forty-three, and a college student at forty-five, and shoe designer at age fifty-three in 2008.

Though there was a university back home in Mississippi, the culture was slim pickings. I began jogging before the jogging craze. I opened one of the first health food stores in the region. I knew I was “different” but I didn’t know the whole story until around 1975.

I remember being at my maternal grandmother’s home, Ruth London. The caller was a man, an author named Steven Birmingham. He had written a best-seller called “Our Crowd”, and was now researching for his next book titled “The Grandees”, about Sephardic (Spanish) Jews in America.

My maternal family would be featured a great deal as they were one of the first in North America and we had some famous names in the lineage such as poetess Emma Lazarus, who penned The Next Colossus. The last verse of it appears on the base of the Statue Of Liberty “Give us your tired, your hungry, huddled masses” etc. Her best friend and mentor was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Another notable in the direct family line was Supreme Court Judge Benjamin Cardozo.

I discovered my maternal family owns a family museum, Gomez Mill House (gomez.org) which my great great, etc. grandfather Luis Gomez built in 1700.

As time went by I began writing essays and creating cartoons with my team. I can draw but not well enough for the specs I want in Londons Times Cartoons (www.LondonsTimes.us). I wanted the top offbeat cartoon on the Internet and, 7 years later it was, and still is Google’s number one ranked offbeat cartoon. I didn’t realize that many cartoons are group efforts, until I spoke with several top-name cartoonists. I was too naive to know they might hang up on me. Oddly, the bigger the names, the more generous and open.

Charles Schulz, founder of “Peanuts” was one of the most helpful. He advised me that many cartoons are team efforts, and if I had enough concepts and text, I could recruit artists on spec if they believed in my project. I began calling. Other helpful cartoonists included Leigh Rubin (spoke almost every day), founder of Creator’s Syndicate “Rubes”. Others included Jon McPherson (Close To Home), and Dave Overly (Speed Bump). All were instrumental in my start.

I faced challenges. I had a dysfunctional vagus nerve, and nobody knew what that was at the time.

So I was treated many years for major depression (it can often mimic the symptoms of thyroid problems). It was not until 1998 that I diagnosed it properly (based on an article I read in New Yorker). The Vagus Nerve Stimulator (an implant that goes directly below the skin at the vagus nerve, longest nerve in the body, was still in clinical trials, but testimonials looked promising. No amount of Prozac, Paxil, etc etc. put a dent in it. Of course not. It was not depression.

I had moved back to Mississippi after living and working in Washington, D.C., New York City, and L.A, to care for my ailing mother with cancer.

I was an embarrassment to my family as it was difficult for me to hold down even the most simple of jobs. I ended up living in an abandoned steel warehouse in the woods owned by a social worker/friend. She provided electricity, a phone line, and sink. No hot water, no bed, no air conditioning. I bathed with cold sink water for a year. I cared for my rescue dog “Thor” who was my best friend. (I didn’t have many left).

I knew I was not going to stay in Mississippi but I didn’t know where I was going to go. I could feel feel my own health declining due to (what turned out to be many years of misdiagnoses; I did not have depression), and bad living conditions.

I researched places. I had friends, and formerly had family in a unique town called Hot Springs, Arkansas. But a few years later, I suffered a major heart attack and somehow survived. I was given heart medicines to take the rest of my life. The side effects were so horrible I stopped them after three months, but didn’t tell the doctor I had started learning about treating it with herbal tinctures, healthier diet, and exercise (I had been a marathon runner in my late 20’s, etc.). All my vital signs, knock on wood, have stayed normal for 8 years.

However, in 1995, I decided to start dating again, and settled with a girlfriend. She advised me I had the worst case of sleep apnea she’d ever experienced. I did sleep studies, but didn’t sleep. The clinic said I did, and tried to sell me on the C-PAP mask. I put it on. It was excruciating. I told the ENT surgeon who suggested I try another size. I did. Same thing. Something was fishy. I had not slept and I knew it.

All this time I was writing magazine articles, creating cartoons, and now had 5 e-stores with over 150,000 cartoon licensed goods.

The media was calling me. I had become the first offbeat cartoonist to go green (with tees) at my Rick London Organics store (RickLondonOrganics.info), first to have series of offbeat stamps approved by the U.S. Post Office (at my special edition store RickLondonFunnyGifts.info), first to create a cartoon gourmet coffee gift basket, my own private label with cartoon mugs and matching coasters at my superstore (LTSuperstore.com), had the only offbeat cartoon to remain #1 on Google for three years going on four (including my superstore), and now I have ventured into non-cartoon projects such as creating “the world’s first famous love quotation shoes” (Shoes That Amuse). USA Today did a story on them last weekend. We’ve even added a President Obama shoe, including a famous love quote of his. U.S Keds manufactures them for me, and Zazzle prints and ships them. All my stores ship worldwide.

I had to stop school due to illness and that was upsetting. It affected me negatively, as did when my dog “Thor” died last year at age 22. He lived that long vet-free because I discovered the b.a.r.f. raw foods diet for dogs. Much on the Internet about it.

We have fans from ditch diggers to movie stars. Recently, actress Mariel Hemingway commissioned me to create her organic goods for her new online store. I am currently working
on those and they will be out in May. The AP Wire is planning a big story on it, and it should go worldwide.

So for someone who drifted around half his adult life, I can say there has to be a God in the universe watching out for me. If life were fair, I would not be here typing this. I should not be here
by any stretch of the imagination. There is a wonderful woman in my life and we love each other dearly. She is a school teacher, a very, very good and caring one (the type you remember) as was my own mother. Freud says “We seek our moms”. Maybe he was onto something. I know I was “Jung And Restless” and ready to settle down.

I am active mostly in animal and animal causes. I get asked by about 100 or more charities each month for signed cartoons for their auctions. I’m told they bring up to $200 each.

On March 22, 2009, Londons Times Cartoons celebrates eleven years. I started with $300, a beat up used clone IBM 386, a book called “Internet For Dummies” a phone line and dial-up Internet, the clothes on my back (no car) and my stray named “Thor”.

I now live in a beautiful part of Hot Springs, and my studio window looks out over a dead volcano that spews thermal water constantly. Millions of tourists visit annually to bathe in and drink the healing waters.

I am a very, very lucky man. I am not Bill Gates, but I am comfortable, and I do love very much what I am doing.

And I truly believe that we are all given a talent of some sort. We can choose to follow that path or deny it. I denied mine for many years. That is a living hell. A healthy choice is to explore it, ask questions, get to work, and be persistent no matter what challenge or obstacle the day faces. You WILL succeed, if you do that. That is a promise.

Rick London
LondonsTimes.us

Tags: Clothing, Comics, God, Londons Times, Organic, Pets, Self-Employed, Teaching