Comics fans have missed “The Far Side” since its demise in 1995.
For those who loved the goofy, single-panel cartoon, we have something new.
Starting Monday, you'll start seeing “The Flying McCoys” in The World-Herald.
Running in papers such as the Miami Herald and the New York Daily News since 2005, this irreverent comic is considered by many to be the funniest single-panel cartoon since “The Far Side.” In the cartoon, brothers Glenn and Gary McCoy take turns making jokes about everything in pop culture from sports and marriage to old age and holidays.
In addition to Gary Larson's “Far Side,” the McCoys mentioned several other influences: B. Kliban's work in Playboy, “Herman” by Jim Unger, artist Robert Crumb, “Looney Tunes” animator Chuck Jones and cartoonists Jack Davis and Mort Drucker.
The McCoy brothers both called in from southern Illinois to answer some questions.
Q: How do you come up with your ideas?
Glenn: They come at us from different directions. Sometimes we sit down and try to brainstorm over a blank piece of paper or we'll observe something and it just comes out.
Gary: It can be something pretty mundane and then you can dig a little deep to find something funny in what otherwise would be a normal situation.
Glenn: It will come right out of our heads and onto the page.
Q: How do you decide what form the idea should take?
Glenn: We do a lot of different things. We are both editorial cartoonists, and I do another strip. We also do work for magazines and greeting-card companies.
If it's a shade one way or the other, we'll say, “This seems like an idea for Playboy or Parade or this seems like a greeting card.”
Gary: We hold ourselves to a really high standard. We don't send anything to the syndicate that we feel isn't a strong gag.
Q: You have a lot of projects. Is it a lot to keep up with?
Gary: It can be kind of overwhelming. It keeps things exciting. I have a really short attention span, so it's actually nice for me. If I'm working on an editorial cartoon and then my mind starts to wander, I'll get a blank piece of paper and start drawing out or roughing out one of my gag cartoon ideas.
Glenn: It certainly doesn't get boring. When I'm working on my comic strip and have to redirect, I have two drawing boards, and I feel like I have to get up and move to the other drawing board. It would be like if I wore different hats and changed my comic strip hat to my “Flying McCoy” hat.
Gary: I think all cartoonists have these quirky things we have to do.
Q: How did you get into drawing and cartooning?
Glenn: We've been drawing since we were little kids. Gary started — he's a couple years older than I am, and I did everything my older brother did.
We stuck with it and we were really good fans of Charles Schulz's “Peanuts.” We collected the paperbacks and read them and reread them and memorized the punch lines.
We got into the strips a little deeper than most kids, analyzing and looking at panels and that fed our interest in cartooning.
From there, it branched out into Mad magazine and other areas. I think we always knew we were going to be cartoonists.
Gary: It helps that both of our parents are funny. When we would have a family get-together, the motive for us was to see who could be the funniest at the table and get the best laugh.
Glenn: Our dad has a smart-alecky sense of humor, and our mom has a really silly goofy sort of theme. We got a good share of both of that.
Q: How did you come to do “The Flying McCoys”?
Glenn: We were both cartooning professionally, but we never really collaborated. We wanted to work on something that we could collectively do, and we engineered it so it would be pretty free-form.
Some days it's talking dogs and some days it's real gallows humor with someone being beheaded. I'm a big fan of monster movies, so sometimes we have monsters in there. We both enjoy comic books and comic-book heroes, so sometimes there are superheroes.
Q: And your fans seem to enjoy it?
Glenn: It's funny where these cartoons end up. Gary once got a call from somebody in an Antarctic station near the South Pole.
Gary: I said I'd send him the original if they sent me something from Antarctica. So they said, “How about a photo of your cartoon at the South Pole?” I thought that sounded good, so they took my cartoon to the South Pole with the red and white stripes and sent me a picture of them holding my cartoon.
Glenn: In one of our books, we had both Whoopi Goldberg and Judge Judy in it. They both called and wanted copies of the strip.
Q: What's it like to have won and been nominated for a lot of awards? (Glenn McCoy has won nine National Cartoonist Society Awards, and Gary has won one. Each has been nominated several times more.)
Glenn: Sometimes we've been up for the same award and it makes it fun. We try to come up with something funny to do in the event that one of us wins.
One year, I won and as I was walking up there, Gary comes charging out of the crowd in his tuxedo and tackles me.
Q: Who are some of your influences?
Glenn: Charles Schulz was probably the biggest influence. Later in his life, we got to befriend him, which was huge deal for both of us.
The day my first comic strip ran in the newspaper, I was more excited that I ran next to “Peanuts” than actually having it run nationally.
Q: What advice would you give to aspiring cartoonists?
Gary: Bribing editors always helps.
Glenn: They're a greedy lot. (Both laugh)
Gary: Persistence. Practice and draw a lot. Work to develop your own style and sense of humor.
Glenn: The instinct is to draw like the people you read a lot, but ... if you write what you find is funny, there's going to be a percentage of people that share your specific sense of humor, and they're going to be your core audience.
Gary: If it's in your heart that you really want to be a cartoonist, but your friends and family are telling you that your stuff stinks, you should really listen to them.
Glenn: We don't need more competition. (Both laugh)
Contact the writer:
444-1557, kevin.coffey@owh.comx
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