It’s pretty common for cartoonists to come up with similar or even identical ideas. It happens quite a bit actually. It’s a little more rare to have the same idea and have them run on the same day – which is what happened for tomorrow (or today 12/7/12, depending on when you’re reading this). My comic and Glenn McCoy’s “The Flying McCoy’s” panel both have a panel depicting The Grinch waiting to use a porta potty with a caption that plays on the line from the original television special, “And the Grinch’s heart (we both changed it to bladder) grew three sizes that day.” Any other time, similarities like these are interesting but otherwise not noteworthy. But having the same ideas on the same day in the same newspaper is uncanny.
Anyhow, after talking to my editors I found that Glenn’s is actually a rerun from last year. I called Glenn at home and after talking, we both acknowledged that, although coincidental, this happens, especially to single panel cartoonists, quite a bit and that it’s pretty common to have similar thoughts even if they originated in different ways.
Fortunately, for this particular panel, I can recall the exact moment and date that inspired my version of the cartoon. I was watching ABC’s Shark Tank (one of my favorite shows). One of the entrepreneurs had enlisted the help of Seth McFarlane (of Family Guy) to help sell his idea to the Shark investors. At one point, one of the investors made a comment to which Seth replied using the narrator’s line, about the Grinch’s heart growing “three sizes that day”. That got me thinking about what other organs might grow in size – which is when I came up with the Grinch’s bladder.
Here’s a clip of the show. To see the Seth’s remark, skip to around 6 minutes and 15 seconds in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9EGjNEXaCI
Here’s a link to ABC’s full episode: http://abc.go.com/shows/shark-tank/video it aired on 11/2. I submitted my roughs 6 days later on 11/8. And 4 weeks later, the rest is history.
Here’s the rough:
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