Costco cartoon
contest leaves
‘em laughing
COSTCO MEMBERS ARE a funny bunch,
something that really has been driven home by
our second Costco cartoon contest. More than
400 wisecracking members submitted panels and
strips, giving our judges a tough but rollicking
time in choosing the winners. The top three
prize winners garnered $850 in prize money
provided by contest sponsors Crayola and
Sanford Brands, maker of Sharpie pens. And
The Connection came away with a treasure
trove of additional winners you’ll be seeing
in our pages throughout 2010.—David W. Fuller
ee
Costco: The Jurassic Period
IT SEEMS AS if Costco has been around forever. Reno, Nevada,
Costco member Jeff Hickman seized on that theme for his
second-place-winning entry.
“The notion of Kirkland mastodon fillets … and the husband walking into the cave brought it all together,” he says.
Hickman (
www.hickmantoons.com), a caricaturist and edito-
rial cartoonist, says this win elevates him to a different status,
He says, “It was really satisfying to know that I had climbed
to that elite group.”—Steve Fisher
cartoon contest
Costco Claus
MARK LAWLER HAS never actually seen Santa at Costco, but
he says he wouldn’t be surprised. “There are always characters
there when we go to shop,” says the 52-year-old San Jose,
California, resident. A self-taught artist who illustrates children’s
books and textbooks on a freelance basis, Lawler says that he got
to play Santa with the $500 Costco Cash card he received for his
first-place win. “The cartoon took longer to draw than it took to
spend the money,” he laughs.—T. Foster Jones
Life’s little moments
ACCORDING TO HIS MOM, Robert Peterson started drawing
when he was 3. He hasn’t put down his brush since then. Peterson,
now 52, has been a syndicated editorial cartoonist, a landscape artist (
www.rpetersonart.com) and a high school fine-arts teacher. He
is also an avid people-watcher, which is where he gets the inspiration for his cartoons. “You can get so much information from
your family and people in general,” says Peterson, of Nipomo,
California. “You can pick up little anecdotes here and there. I guess
from watching people is how I do it.” For his third-place award,
Peterson received a $100 Costco Cash card.—Tim Talevich
