Saying goodbye to a Boca Beacon staple: Hortoons by Dave Horton
Quite often, a good laugh is all anyone needs. Those who can provide it are valuable and should be treasured.
That being said, it is with much sadness that we say goodbye to our “Hortoons” cartoon and its creator, Dave Horton. He has been one of our cartoonists for almost 20 years but, after the hurricane and some other family business to attend to, he has decided to quit while he’s ahead with Hortoons.
“A lot of my friends moved away (after the storm) and I don’t blame them,” he said. “They lost much more than we did. We were lucky. My house is surrounded by destruction but it survived. The office/warehouse was destroyed and I work on it every day until it’s good enough to hire new employees.”
One thing Dave will be focusing on are cryptids, which are a passion of his. If you didn’t know, cryptids are creatures such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, Moth Man, etc.
“I love cryptids! My graphic novel is going to be different from the usual. It’s going to be called ‘The Last Sasquatch.’” he said.
Dave was born in Kankakee, Illinois, a town he jokingly (not really) says has been listed as “The Worst Small Town.”
“The town was voted ‘worst place to live in America’ for two years in a row,” he chuckled. “I attended a rough High School in Kankakee. Being able to draw superheroes saved me from getting beat up. I learned that thugs and bullies respect cartoonists, for the most part. I was also a good runner on the track team so I was able to out-sprint the rest of the troublemakers.”
If you haven’t guessed it yet, Dave is one strange human being. But that’s what it takes in his business, one where his favorite quote is, “I’m a cartoonist, not an artist!”
If you don’t say it like McCoy, it doesn’t work as well.
Dave went from drawing on everything when he was very young – including grocery lists, which he would illustrate for his mother – to creating cartoon graphics for articles in local newspapers when he was in high school. When he wasn’t even old enough to drive he sent some greeting card ideas to Hallmark. They used one of his ideas to make a “Peanuts” card, which is quite coincidental because, years later, he met one of his heroes, Charles Schulz, at a National Cartoonist Society Convention. He signed the greeting card for Dave that day. and he signed it. “I worked as a Hallmark Cards artist and writer for years. In college at Illinois State University I worked at the school newspaper and developed a comic strip called Fubar Fun. That won the Best College Comic Strip.
Dave and his wife, Diane eventually moved to Florida in 1998 and purchased a print shop on Sanibel Island. That’s when Hortoons came about. Diane and Dave now own Nature Brackets, a home decor company with nature-themed products and he’s always getting into something crazy … Bigfoot-related or not. His Hortoon cartoons can be found on Etsy, where a collection of books, stickers, magnets and t-shirts are available. He also came up with a sticker, “WTF (Welcome to Florida)” that has become very popular.
“I’m always doing something creative or I’d go crazy,” he said.
His “Best of Hortoons’ will be seen in the paper for a few more weeks.
