Many MANY years ago, after I had graduated from college and moved to Miami to start my illustration career, I was working at the Miami Herald as a staff illustrator. I was doing the Sunday Viewpoint illustrations which were the main front page illustrations for that section. I was doing a black and white line illustration for a story on Martin Luther King and had just finished it but wasn't totally happy with it so I did another. After I finished the second one I put it away in my flat file drawer to give to the editor later that day. I took the first one which I was going to trash anyway, which was a drawing of many people of different ethnicities carrying a giant Martin Luther King bust, and started to doodle on it. I drew a large speech bubble with a lot of silly phrases written in it like, "I had a dream I was wearing a glittery purple vest and rolling a giant glazed doughnut down the street." Afterwards I left it on my desk and went to lunch.
When I arrived from lunch I noticed a large crowd of editors and other staff artists gathered around my cubicle grumbling loudly. When they noticed I had entered the room they all turned around and looked at me with a look of horror on their faces which made me think what the hell was going on. Just then, the head editor for Viewpoint pushed his way through the group of people, waving around in a fit of rage, my first drawing with the doodle speech bubble, and started yelling at me. He shouted, "What the hell is this? We have to go to press in one hour!!! What am I supposed to do with this?" I looked at him and started to laugh. He looked at me in disbelief and shouted back, "What the hell is so funny?" I calmly pushed him aside, went to my flat file and pulled out the second piece I had done and handed it over to him saying, "I believe, this is what you are looking for." He started to laugh nervously and there was a overwhelming feeling of relief in the room. I then said to him, "Oh by the way, don't EVER come snooping around my cubicle again when I'm not around!"
The story with the illustration ran on time, as always, and all was well with the world.
Happy MLK day everyone!!!!
