From the Mack Rowe and Neil Shawen 2001 book “Jest for the Health of It!” you get to learn the “Puntifications” behind the creations. The first of eight start tomorrow. But as an introduction to these Puntification lessons, here is page 63:
“Collision or Collusion?
Creating the Toons
So how do we put PunToons! together? As I’ve said, “we” means myself and Neil Shawen. Because of all the years we’ve known each other and punned together, I invited him to join me (drew him in?) in creating PunToons! Neil immediately developed a case of what I called pun angst. He was concerned about how we would keep coming up with new ideas each week. I said to him that I believed our English language is so marvelously rich and profound, the possibilities are endless. Then he quickly pointed out that English does have many variations for a single word, such as necktie. So we have an endless variety of words to play with. We have proceeded on that faith, and it works–time after time! It’s knot hard!
Other words for Necktie: tie, ascot, foulard, Windsor, Half-Windsor, bow, string, four-in-hand, cravat.
We’re Making This Up As We Go Along
This is how it goes. Neil works up a page of pun ideas over a couple of cups of coffee. Then he faxes it to me. I mean to tell you, puns fill the page! I think his being a cross-word puzzle junkie helps.
So I read it over, mark it up for ideas, and add some of my own puns. I select a series of puns to weave into a toon theme using my characters. Then I work through a pencil draft and fax it to him. He comments and faxes back. I work it over as a final pencil drawing until I like it (and the characters like it too!) Now I am ready to go to the final inked version. We chew through this team process each week. At this writing we have produced over 1000 PunToons!”