Cowboys with Artistic License
Rhinestones, tumble weeds, and poetic thought
The only thing I love more than a cowboy is a Rhinestone Cowboy. Have you ever seen such beautiful clothing? Last week I went to a honky tonk in Queens (yes it exists!) and everyone was dressed to the nines in leather, tassels, and jaw dropping embroidery. I was deeply jealous and also embarrassed that all I had on was black jeans and a sweater! The Rhinestone cowboy is so fascinating to me because in the cartoon world, the image of the cowboy is anything but fancy. He’s dirty, with holes in his clothes and scruff on his face. But that’s only one facet of the cowboy world! Cowboys can do more than watch the tumbleweeds pass by their dying campfire. They can win dance contests, be fashion icons, and maybe even get acupuncture? Please enjoy an array of cowboy toons from the finest in the biz.
Yours in the wind,
Hilary “In the highest 2% of Dolly Parton listeners on Spotify” Campbell
I once wrote a cartoon where two cowboys are texting “I can’t make high noon. Can you push to three?” because I am constantly typing that text. To my cowboy friend. Pictured here. (I’m the one on the left.).
Also, no– this isn’t a Brokeback Mountain joke, Editor who rejected this cartoon!
SARAH MORRISSETTE
There’s nothin’ better ‘n cowboy lingo. “I am fit to be tied ‘cause of yer highfalutin’ ways. Git over here lickety split so I can tan your hide with this here doohickey. Your shenanigans have plumb tuckered me out, and if you don’t watch out, Missie, I’m givin’ you the ol’ heave-ho. Damn straight I will. Bet your bottom dollar. Darn tootin.’” You’re going to land in court treating your nipper like that, you bet your bottom dollar. Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise.
Just like cartoonists, cowboys hate to be told what to do. Even with the threat of tumbleweeds that could scuff up your Luccheses, it’s still worth the risk to stride across any street when society tells you not to. It’s an integral part of the cow-toonists’ code.
I love a cowboy! Not a real one, per se. My cowboy is one of flickering light and shadow, and he twitches around in his assless chaps, grappling—humbly, gruffly— with civilizations’ greatest themes. Of course, that isn’t how my cowboy describes it. He says that all he’s grappling with is cows. “They don’t call me a themeboy, little lady,” he says to me, mounting his steed. “Themeboy, stay!” I plead, my tears pooling on the unvarnished wood of the saloon floor. “Don’t you want to build a life with me, a woman-slash-colorless-representation-of-domestic-life?” But he’s already long gone, swallowed, horse and all, into the sun. It’s miserable loving a cowboy, but I just can’t help it.
Like any self respecting cow-tooist, Gosh DAMN I love drawing cowboys. Their expansive starry skies, the flickering shadows from their campfires, their rootin’ tootin hats, the fact that they get to do whatever they damn well please for as long as they damn well want…unless it means their dog might wee on the sofa.
Cowboy toons are funny because you get to make a real serious guy say something funny. There's also a lot of lingo to use, a bunch of classic set-ups and tropes, fun background elements, the hot sun burning on your neck, drinking whiskey straight up, savoring every last drop, never knowing which day may be your last, when all of a sudden folks start hollering that a stranger walked into town, and you can tell by the gleam in his eye that’s he’s trouble, so you round up some of the tougher fellows but before you know they’re dead on the ground, shot by the stranger who can draw faster than a rattlesnake can get its jaws on you, shot by the fellow you will never learn the name of because you look down and you've been shot too and your last thoughts are on that whiskey, that whiskey and Susie Anne, with her golden curls, why didn't you follow her to Colorado? Susie Anne…Susie Anne…Susi-
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