I started working for cartoonist Rick London, founder of Londons Times Cartoons, when I was 21 years old and still a student at a nearby state university. I'd had a number of jobs, but he was the first boss I had that taught me pragmatic knowledge in the real world. Rick did not have a formal education, he does at the time of this writing, but the year was around 1997 or so.



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.

Rick had nothing but the shirt on his back when he started and a lot of good ideas. He had managed to say several hundred dollars from his old job, and he bought a beat-up pc for a few hundred (probably worth $25) but someone "saw him coming", he had books on the Internet, and a favorite that he was always reading was "Internet For Dummies". His stray dog "Thor" slept on a sleeping bag with him on the hard concrete floor in this horrible warehouse that he called "Corporate HQ". It was also his home for a year.

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.

Rick is a tremendous animal lover; he took in a beautiful stray, "Thor" who recently passed away 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 "At age 53, I will consider it in the next life, if there is one".

Horatio Alger has nothing on Rick London. Rick's cartoon site now has 8500 cartoons and his product stores about 100,000 or more products. He even has his own line of gourmet cartoon coffees and even a cartoon casual wear line of designer clothes. The man, is really just getting started mid-life. How can one not admire such a determined soul?