Rex Hesner > Rex's Quotes

“The consensus in the cartooning world is that a great drawing won’t save a weak gag, but a great gag can survive mediocre artwork.”
― Phil Witte and Rex Hesner

“By classifying cartoons according to type of humor, we are not plucking them up with a tweezer and inserting them into specimen jars to be put on a dusty shelf for exhibit, like a nineteenth-century taxonomist at a natural history museum. That would kill the funny.”
― Phil Witte and Rex Hesner

“We also acknowledge that library shelves at universities are jam-packed with weighty tomes that analyze humor in its many manifestations in art and literature. We have not read any of them or even seen them for that matter, but we’re pretty sure they exist.”
― Phil Witte and Rex Hesner

“Many if not most cartoonists–and standup comedians for that matter–are social critics, at least to some degree. They poke fun at the failures of our institutions, hypocrisy of politicians, foolishness of bosses, and unfairness of life in general.”
― Phil Witte and Rex Hesner

“Cartoonists get their ideas from the same place that all good ideas come from: some blend of conscious and subconscious thought. Accessing that place, however, can be tricky, perplexing, and sometimes distressing.”
― Phil Witte and Rex Hesner

“Cartoonists see life through a comedic lens that enables them to imagine a cartoon, just as comedians can turn an everyday experience into a comedy routine.”
― Phil Witte and Rex Hesner

“The cliché setup provides that shortcut, allowing cartoonists to present complex situations in a single frame.”
― Phil Witte and Rex Hesner

“Basing a cartoon on a well-known character, whether fictional or historical, quickly draws a reader into the joke.”
― Phil Witte and Rex Hesner

“A caption should reveal the gag, not explain it.”
― Phil Witte and Rex Hesner

“The difficulty of producing a successful cartoon increases enormously when the cartoonist can’t rely on a caption, sign, speech balloon, or words of any kind.”
― Phil Witte and Rex Hesner