Know your markets (and limits)

Knowing your markets is an important thing to be aware of when you draw gag cartoons. Sometimes you can guess which magazines might like a certain cartoon, but every now and then you get a surprise, and a magazine such as The Spectator takes a mother-in-law joke when you really didn't expect it.

However, with the following cartoon I knew only a couple of mags might entertain using it, so when they rejected it there was nowhere else to go, apart from this blog. I should point out my thinking behind it before anyone takes offence (oh, and I've censored the caption slightly for this online version). I do not in any way want to belittle AIDS, or charity, or the people who genuinely support certain causes. My issue is why should one cause be more 'fashionable' and worthy of celeb endorsements than another? It's something I've thought for a long time, and I was prompted to draw this back in May after the charity Wateraid issued a report about '...the inequity between the diseases that are killing children and the amounts of money being spent on them'.

I suppose the point I was trying to make might not be obvious, which would make it unpublishable (that, and the likelihood that it's not any good- who knows? Not me, I'm just the bloke who came up with it, so I'm biased). Perhaps I should steer clear of political stuff and concentrate on talking animals and mother-in-law jokes.
(Moral outrage aside, I quite liked this drawing, so these two WAG wannabes have been recylced in a new cartoon, minus ribbon, so might one day see themselves in print)