"Gravity. It Isn't Just a Good Idea. It's the Law."

Once in New York, I worked at establishing myself as a freelance humorous illustrator. One of the things you have to do is send out promotional mailings showing off your skills.

The Gravity phrase still just existed as words, but sitting staring into space one night the image finally came to me that would allow these few simple words to become a poster.

I originally published it as an 11"x17" two-color piece, and sent out about 500 of them to a mailing list of likely prospects I had assembled. I got two new clients from this mailing who were, coincidentally, right across the street from each other on Madison Ave. One was the cleverly named Madison Avenue Magazine, for which I did humorous illustration and occasional layout work for several years.

The other was the cleverly named Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. They liked my Gravity Poster mailer so much they asked if I could create a humorous full-page feature like it every month, with the Gravity piece being the inaugural cartoon. It appeared in the July 1982 issue, and thus began my Mooney's Modules feature, which ran every month for three years.

It was a dream job, and not just because I had idolized Asimov since my teens. I would come up with wackier and wackier stuff, and to their credit they let me get away with most of it. I think sometimes they published pieces that they didn't really get. I know for a fact they sometimes published pieces that I didn't really get.

This was the first mass-market appearance of the phrase, "Gravity. It Isn't Just a Good Idea. It's the Law." I was on my way to...

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