Ja, well, no man is an island

JA WELL NO FINE is a perculiar South African expression which includes a positive, a negative and is probably the most non committal response to any situation.  Back in 1987 I was given carte blanche by the then editor of the newpaper then called The Sunday Star and was asked to produce a cartoon that was anything but political.  As an exercise for myself, I decided to tackle one of the oldest cliche cartoon ideas - the desert islands gag.  I simply wanted to see how many cartoons I could extract in that limited situation and learnt a lot along the way e.g. if one saw a daily cartoon which featured a desert island on a day where that space was a blank there would be an implication that although there was nothing to look at, a desert island did in fact exist - I finally came up with a caption for this space which was "I've been on this island so long I am beginning to question whether I exist and is there an island?" 

I called my one panel cartoon "Ja,well,no man is an island" and it became quite a hit!

As a little bit of personal history and probably the best story of my career is that I was told that years on a leturer at Wits University asked his student "Who said "No Man is an Island?"".  Once student answered in all seriousness - "Dov Fedler"!  I will be posting these old cartoons as I scan them, clean them up and add some colour - enjoy"   27 September 2011