Actually, I Read it for the Cartoons…

A few months back I wrote about a conversation I had with Super Cartoonist Jerry King. Jerry sells a lot of cartoons to Playboy and told me that the one-and-only Hugh M. Hefner, founder and publisher of the famous magazine, personally approves and initials every cartoon rough that gets accepted. I thought that was pretty cool. Hugh started out as cartoonist and truly loves the medium.

I’ve sent batches of cartoons sporadically to Playboy over the years, and received a couple of nice letters from Michele Urie, the late, great cartoon editor, but no sales.

This May, I pulled together a batch of single panel gags and sent them off to the new cartoon editor, fully expecting another polite rejection.

Last week when I received the large manila envelope from PEI with a California return address, I knew something was up. Playboy’s editorial offices are in New York, but the Mansion is in L.A. There was even a cryptic "AW/HMH" typed on the label.

The enclosed letter was written on stationery embossed with the ubiquitous bunny logo, and paper-clipped to that letter was something even better. That’s right: one of my cartoon roughs with "OK HMH" written in blue pencil. Holy shit! I thought. I JUST SOLD MY FIRST CARTOON TO PLAYBOY! Yeah!

It was so cool. I was grinning like an idiot for over an hour.

The cartoon should appear in the December issue (I’m guessing) because it’s a Christmas gag.
I’ll let everyone know when it’s published.

I have to thank Jerry King for inspiring me to submit material to the magazine again. It's long been a dream of mine to be published in Playboy.

Now to work up another batch – and face the likely rejection. But that’s okay. I won’t take it personally, Hef.