Hidden Messages in the Art

Early in my editorial cartoon career, I began hiding messages in the art.

When my daughter, Debbie, entered the University of Texas at Austin. I told her that I was bad about writing. "But if you will look in the editorial cartoon each week, I will hid a message just for you."

Usually it was a simple, "Hi, Deb!" But when she was elected president of her Freshman Baptist Student Union Council, I hid, "Congrats, Pres!" Then, on the eve of the Texas-Oklahoma football game, it was, "Beat OU!"

Soon her classmates and friends were in on the secret; then their families at home started watching.

It was not until my fifteenth anniversary as editorial cartoonist of The Baptist Standard, when they interviewed me for a feature story, that that the editor and staff found out.

In the meantime, my son had entered college and was added to the messages. Then another daughter. And when Deb got engaged, her engagement announcement was included and her fiance became a regular.

Over the years since then, there have been wedding announcements for each of my chidlren, birth announcements for each of my grandchildren, notices of the dates on which the grandchildren accepted Christ and/or were baptized. There was a Christian Home Week when I hid the names of each of my children and their spouses as well as the names of my wife and myself.

There was a Christmas when I hid the names of the 19 family members who were our guests for Christmas dinner.

Some Special Messages

Some of those special friends and subjects included:

My Final Hidden Message

Then there was my final message, in the last two cartoons drawn for The Baptist Standard. After 30 years and six months' service under three editors, I asked the incoming editor to go to lunch to discuss what changes in approach he might want to take. The  answer was that he was not going to use editorial cartoons.

I thought of several excellent messages to hide in my final cartoons. Rejected all of them. But that's why the familiar signature that I had used in more than 1,500 cartoons had a slight variation.

Instead of "by Doug Dillard," it read "'bye Doug Dillard."

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

"Where do you get your ideas?" is the question most asked over the more than 30 years -- more than 40 years since I began Brother Blotz.

The editorials came first each week, first by mail, then by fax, later still by email. And sometimes in a hurried phone call when the editor changed his mind in the eleventh hour. My job was to come up with a powerful visual portrayal of the main thought of the lead editorial.

It was what I called, "creating within a straight-jacket." But as with the development of any skill, the more you do it, the easier it gets.

Brother Blotz and his friends are another matter and another story.

Deadlines were always tougher than ideas.

The cartoon had to be in by noon each Friday. The cartoons themselves rarely took an hour or more to draw, and the editorial usually was in my hands on Monday or Tuesday. But finding that hour in a busy schedule that spanned three or four careers during the 30 years was sometimes a tall order.

For years, my record was during a 22-minute interval between flights. I was president of Mayes International, the fundraising firm, criss-crossing the country with as many as seven landings a week overseeing operations for seven national and international campaigns including Campus Crusade's Billion-Dollar "History's Handful" campaign.

I landed in Detroit 22-minutes and several gates away from a connecting flight to Washington, DC. I stepped across to the nearest pay phone, called The Baptist Standard to see what the editorial was, and stopped the secretary midway into the first paragraph.

"I've got my idea," I said. Sitting at a snackbar table, I sketched the cartoon and dropped it into a mail slot on the way to catch my flight.

The Record