Cartoon rejections

Remarkably, there were none in a pro-career spanning some 26 years from 1979 to 2005. Hardly the stuff of interesting reading. However there were a couple of abrasive instances between me and editorial staff over them changing captions because my words might tend to upset some segment of the  readership. The one I remember most involved today's revisited 'toon originally published in TravelWeek magazine c.1993/4.

Singapore Airlines had designated their Boeing 747 fleet 'Space-ships' as a marketing ploy... because the aircraft set new standards of spaciousness within the cabin, rather than an ability to defy Earth's gravitational hold. Qantas didn't respond in kind. Rather, they chose to repaint several of their 747s in stunningly colorful aboriginal motifs covering the entire fuselage of each aircraft. The editor or one of his minions thought my choice of words in the speech balloon together with the psychedelic nature of the aircraft colouring may lead some gentle folk to think of it being a DRUG culture reference! Well, THAT was the intention... lost completely by the stupidly irrelevant gibberish they substituted for mine! Luckily I have the 30 x 23cm original from which you can adjudge whether or not the caption required alteration for any reason at all. I don't have a copy of the published alternative (principally because it annoyed me so much all those years ago!).