When artist Mo Faraz sent me this drawing, the first of a series that he plans to publish weekly and sell, I was charmed. It’s reminiscent of the kind of pieces one used to find in car magazines, back in the good old days. Although Mo has sent some accompanying description of this drawing, entitled “Ombudsman”, and what he’s trying to accomplish, it seems a bit irrelevant to me. Or even slightly confusing, as the cartoon’s point is a quite obvious. To me, anyway.
Or maybe I’m not getting it, at least as intended? To me, the whole point was that the “gates” are hinged on the sides, like car doors, so naturally, our Gullwing driver would like to find gates that are also hinged at the top. Maybe we should just skip Mr. Faraz’ attempts to elucidate his work? Or am I missing something? Or is he saying the same thing in more arcane wording?
Either way, his appreciation for classic sports cars is spot-on in terms of the execution, and I look forward to sharing his upcoming weekly posts with you.
His site and catalog is at mofaraz.com
Notice how the Alfa is posed on a service lift, its natural position.
(ducks/runs/hides)
I heartily agree with you, eggsalad.
My 1971 Alfa Romeo 1750A Berlina was so infatuated with one of the mechanics and would make every attempt to hang out at the garage.
No matter how much I could babe my car, Berlina is like a child yanking at mother’s hand to enter the candy or toy store at every opportunity.
What’re you running from…. The truth? 😉
Lord, knows my Alfa needs tons of work.
Other than the great running engine and smooth 5spd tranny……. Everything else is falling apart. Ha!
Art is in the eye of the beholder and in this I got something completely different. I thought of an old Austro-Hungarian palace with it’s new money owner there to throw out the titled, penny-less occupants. The 4 oclock is when the palace was open to tourists. The ombudsman referred to the current newspaper usage of the guy who decides what is fair.
I liked the drawing and look forward to future installments.
I don’t get the Gullwing cartoon?
Does he feel his car is so priviledged that it needs it’s own entrance?
Enlighten me.
Reminds me of a Marin County driver whom I stopped for a trasfic violation.. All she could come up with as a feeble attempt as an excuse was a nose-in-the-air “THIS is a Mercedes-Benz!
…to which hope you answered… “A*#H%$E$ can drive any kind of car”.
Really? What a jerk.
I hope your reply was, “Okay,…,, Well, THIS is a ticket.” 🙂
That was how I took it on first reading it, but I also see Paul’s angle of “cars with side-hinged doors should enter through a side-hinged gate, cars with gullwing doors should enter through a gullwing gate”. Maybe not that the car is privileged, but just different.
My first thought was that at 4 O’Clock the guy feels that he is allowed to open his gullwing door. But this doesn’t sound like the joke intended. Not sure about the punch line, but I love the artwork.
I assumed the same. Didn’t notice the caption at all at first. Its fun to see this type of old car mag comics being kept alive.
“Not sure about the punch line, but I love the artwork”
My thought exactly
For some reason this style of work and humor reminds me of the British magazine, Punch, which ceased publishing 2002. I remember looking at it when I was a kid in the early sixties, going from cartoon to cartoon.
An old rule of humor is that things that require explanation are not in fact funny!?
+1
+2
Yup. Excellent art, but maybe he needs to team up with a caption writer.
Excellent artwork , I hope to see more of this man’s Auto Cartoons .
-Nate
Put the driver in a uniform with tall hat and caption it ‘The changing of the guard.’
(With apologies to Mo.)
Fantastic rendering. Looking forward to many more.
As for humor – there is none.
The car illustrations (as well as the cars selected) are reminiscent to me of box artwork for Dinky, Corgi and many European models/toys of the ’50s & ’60s.
Humor is very much of a time…of a place…of an era. Pretty sure our Prius humor will be lost among readers born in 2030.
His artwork is beautiful.
+1
It’s nicely drawn, but I also don’t get the humor. Looks to me like the author is stereotyping Mercedes drivers as conceited.
The gate doesn’t open till 4pm. The Mercedes driver doesn’t want to wait. He thinks he should be allowed to enter now because he’s special. The guard is the “Ombudsman”, because he is there to keep the peace.
That’s exactly, what I was guessing.
Ditto here.
I’m thinking he started with the car and then tried to come up with something to do with it.
I’m reminded of the cartoons by the British cartoonist Russell Brockbank that used to run in Road & Track.
You mean this Russell Brockbank?
* The difference is, I actually get Mr. Brockbank’s punchline. 🙂
Yep, that Brockbank.
When R&T started running Brockbank’s cartoons, then editor/publisher John R. Bond said they were often subtle and needed to be studied for a minute.
My favorite Brockbank cartoon shows a big mansion at which a New Year’s Eve party is clearly in progress, with two identical generic late ’40s British sedans (no particular make/model) parked side by side out front. A man comes out onto the porch and looks at them for a minute. Then he turns around and heads back in, looking dejected. He’s drunk, and when he saw the identical cars, he thought he was seeing double.
Would be better to use mid-00s Toyota compact wagons, just to layer on a joke about a glitch in the Matrix(es).
More Brockbank…
Looks like he was a BMW Isetta fan.
Maybe he was a Chrysler Corporation fan – all the other cars are Mopars.
Having looked at the press release, it seems clear that Mo Faraz is neither American nor British, and what we have here is Mo’s failure to recognize that humor is culturally based – that translating words into English dosen’t automatically bring the cultural references, puns, or the other building blocks of humor along.
I’m sure it’s Mo hilarious in whatever culture Mr. Faraz springs from, but the humor is absolutely lost in translation
The arcane nature of Mo Faraz’s humor makes me believe that he has a bright future as a cartoonist for The New Yorker (the magazine, not the Chrysler).
His drawings are excellent, and his interest in classic cars is obvious, so I hope that he catches on somewhere. Road & Track had comparable cartoons in the 1960s, and I think that they could fit into some current publications. The British classic car magazines Octane and Classic & Sportscar come to mind.
it reminded me of the seinfeld episode where they struggle to infer the meaning new yorker cartoon
Very nice art.
Totally didn’t get the caption, my first thought was that he had already gone through the gullwing entrance because he is in the car..