The Beyond Incredible Story Of Cartoonist Rick London
Alexa Ferotina
In the late 1990's I met an interesting man while I was in college in southern Mississippi. His name was Rick London who later founded the Internet icon, the offbeat Londons Times Cartoons. I had worked in several places. Rick was the first boss that had any substance as to my marketing degree. I think it is safe to say he was and is a genius. He was not educated, but learned through life's hard knocks. I was about twenty or so. Rick was in his early forties.
He had just lost his mother to cancer, of whom he cared for for several years, and and shortly after lost his job in sales. He had nothing, and I took what he could pay me. I mostly did administrative and computer work just a few days a week at most. I was better at the computer and Internet than him (he didn't know computers at all) so we were able to help each other. He was a very savvy marketing and sales person, he just didn't know how to apply it to new venues such as the Internet. He was a fast study.
When I say Rick started with nothing, I mean nothing. He had an awful computer that was slower than a typewriter, a few books on how to work the Internet (he knew nothing about it or computers), and he slept on a cold concrete floor in a sleeping bag in a metal warehouse outside of town that a friend let him use. It had a phone line. He learned the Internet and how to use a computer, of course, a little with my help, but he read constantly. When he wasn't reading, he was writing cartoons, or playing with his stray dog. He got on the floor with the mutt and played like a child. His love for animals was uncanny.
Even though this warehouse was within driving distance of his home, people rarely came to see him. His own brother lived within 2 miles of the place and was "ashamed of him" as Rick described it. Rick had what the local doctors felt certain was depression. It was not until Rick left Ms and went to a major medical center that he discovered he'd been misdiagnosed and had a disease called TRD (treatment resistant depression), which has to do with the vagus nerve, and though mimics a mental illness, is not one. I have stayed in touch with Rick throughout the years and his progress is amazing. His websites are pristine, with beautiful cartoons and now cartoon merchandise stores all over the Internet. He even managed to finish three years of college in business at age 50. Until this day, he is the kindest, sweetest, most generous man I have ever met (aside from my own father).
Rick labored day after day from of that ugly tin warehouse for a year, as well as lived in it. Nobody would rent to him. He had access to a phone line and electricity and cold running water and that is all. He bathed in the sink (it had no bath). He ate what food he could find and what friends brought him. He didn't get to eat every day. He was obsessed with starting what he said would be "the biggest offbeat cartoon venture ever", as he was a very big fan of Gary Larson's Far Side. Nobody trusted or believed him in his hometown simply thought he'd lost his marbles. But I knew him better. I knew he had it in him. I'd never met anyone even close to being that creative. My beliefs turned out to be facts. I am writing this ten years later. He never really cared what they believed anyway. He knew they were narrow-minded as did I.
Londons Times Cartoons is the biggest and most visited offbeat cartoon site on the Internet by far. Rick decided to put a counter up in 2005 and has close to ten million now. He owns about ten peripheral gift and collectible stores bearing his cartoon images. He does not draw them. In an incredible move, he recruited a team of some of the best cartoon illustrators I've ever seen, and asked them to simply work on speculation. If nothing sold, nobody made a penny. If they sold, they split the keep. In any case, Rick offered these artists what was becoming a very visited website after a few years and a place to showcase their work and link back to their own site. But at first, if Londons Times Cartoons received fifteen visitors a day, it was a very good day. Today it receives about 4000 per hour. Of course he can afford his own domain now; in fact many domains.
There could be no great animal-lover than Rick, especially strays. He has taken in many. One was a beautiful bearded collie mix "Thor" who recently died at about age 21, or so the veterinarian thinks, and this wonderful dog stayed with him through his entire venture. I spoke to Rick last week and he is still grieving. Rick gives a percentage of all pet-related cartoon gift sales to various animal causes. He never fails to. I think he should have been a vet and sometimes he agrees but says "I will think about it for my next life," he chuckled when I told him.
Londons Times Cartoons, starting on a free domain with pop up ads everywhere and less than fifty cartoons, now boasts 8500 original Rick London images and stores featuring almost 100,000 cartoon items. If ever there was a Horatio Alger story, Rick London's is the epitome of it. Though he learned much from me (as I said, I was getting a formal education), nobody, and I mean nobody, had the street smarts and uncanny optimism of cartoonist and now successful entrepreneur Rick London.
Londons Times Cartoons http://www.londonstimes.us) The Incredible Story Of Cartoonist Rick London
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