My name is Rick London. I began writing concepts for comics as a student in Dallas in 1974. I also drew rough drafts but was not very good at the illustrative part, though I seemed to excel in the creation, development and writing side (of cartooning).
In 1985, while living and working in Washington, D.C., some friends took me to a Gary Larson Far Side exhibit. Though I'd followed the cartoon in the paper for years, I was hooked by the large hanging posterboards. I remembered my shoebox of comic ideas and found them.
In 1997, while back in my hometown caring for a sick relative, I found myself out of a job. I moved into an abandoned tin shed with electricity and a phone, bought a banged up used IBM clone 286 and I was off to work using AOL as my conduit to the world. I launched Londons Times Cartoons using $300, my late dog Thor, a book titled "Internet For Dummies", and some barter skills.
I contacted well-known working cartoonists such as Charles Schulz, Dave Coverly, Leigh Rubin, Jon McPherson and several others who gave me wonderful tips on how to launch such a project. Several even took on mentoring roles. It was here I learned that many cartoons are team efforts. I wanted ours to be "art as well as cartoons". I feel they are.
I was diagnosed with Autism at age 60 (am 62 as of this writing). My wife was not surprised :) I was.
I created LTCartoons.com as a team effort. I create the concepts, develop them and assign them to 3 very talented illustrators. Several of our senior illustrators are Tom Kerr, Sergey Rudenko, and German Garcia. Rich Diesslin who has his own cartoons managed us for about 12 years and also illustrated a good number of cartoons for us. Rich now owns and runs three cartoon properties of his own and is not with LTCartoons now. Tom has his own fine art and caricature business and continues to create for us. Sergey and German work on their own projects and work for us as well. It is a tight magnificent group of creators.
Our offbeat cartoons and gifts have been Google #1 ranked since Jan. 2005; we vary from one to three on Bing (this is out of 700,000 results). I am still floored about that. I have about 4000+ mostly color cartoons on my main page, and around 75,000 gift items in my shops such as Rick London Gifts.
My beloved wife Lee Hiller-London, founder of Hike Our Planet and Lee Hiller Designs, is actually the talented one in the house. She is a nature/wildlife photographer and very good artist. We are active in hiking, environmental issues, animal rights, autism education, and children's, women's and disability rights. We are both happy quiet mountain-dwelling vegans.
In March, 2017 the project will be 20 years old at which time I'll compile our 4th book which includes offbeat cartoons and quotes that I've written. Again, I hope you enjoy, and thank you for your support, and thank you Bored Panda for publishing our cartoons.
More info: LTCartoons.com
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