I drew a self-portrait in today’s cartoon. All the news about Chinese hacking strikes close to home as we’ve had lots of trouble with hacker attacks on our servers, that our ISP has traced to China. I’m guessing that the Chinese junta doesn’t like American editorial cartoons much. I drew a Chinese dragon looking over my shoulder.

I did a State Department sponsored speaking tour in China some years ago, and I told the Chinese audiences that when I draw cartoons about China I represent China with a Panda, or a dragon, or the Great Wall, or that guy standing in front of a tank in Tienanmen Square.  The Chinese audience would always murmur and look at each other when I mentioned the tank in Tienanmen Square, which was quite provocative for them and always stirred up the crowd. At one college I said that line and one excited college kid stood up and asked in English, “Oh! Oh! What KIND of dragon?!” That still makes me laugh.

Here’s my very rough pencil sketch.

Next I do the finished line art, in dark, hard pencil on a 14″x17″ piece of Duralene drafting vellum. This is what most people will see in the newspapers since most of them still print in black and white.

Here is the color version. The color on this one was fun. I grabbed a bunch of Chinese dragons from Google Images for scrap on the dragon, and I pulled details from three or four different dragons that I thought were cute.

I don’t know what kind of dragon it is. Sorry.

I’m sad to report that one of my favorite cartoonists, Jimmy Margulies, is the latest editorial cartoonist to lose his job. This is a long term trend as less profitable newspapers cut back the ranks of political cartoonists. Jimmy wrote this for us:

After almost 22 and 1/2 years at The Record in northern New Jersey, I became the latest editorial cartoonist to lose a full time staff job at a daily newspaper. Despite having won a few national awards,  syndication and frequent appearances in some high profile places like USA Today, as well as being a popular local speaker and using social media to become one of the most popular features on the paper’s web site, it was not enough to save me from the paper’s decision to trim expenses.

I plan to continue my syndication with King Features as well as self syndicating  my New Jersey cartoons around the state. The Record and I have reached an agreement that I will do a Sunday cartoon for them, as well as possibly be asked to do additional work if a big story happens in the region.

Here are five of my favorite Margulies cartoons.  See Jimmy’s whole archive here.

Want to reprint Jimmy’s cartoons? All of his cartoons are searchable by keyword and available in high resolution instantly at Politicalcartoons.com.

Here are my latest cartoons. Today the Pope quit, and I drew this one as a riff on Rene Magritte’s famous “This is not a Pipe” painting (right) that we all studied in art history class. We had a recent discussion on Facebook about our brilliant, Mexican/Cuban cartoonist, Angel Boligan, who drew another Magritte allegory about the Pope, which got me thinking.

We get about two phone calls per day from high school students who ask, “what does the cartoon mean?” We tell them they have to do their own homework and we can’t help them. I thought the phone might be ringing off the hook with this one.

Metaphors with famous paintings are meat and potatoes for editorial cartoonists. Here’s one by Nate Beeler.

Magritte did lots of versions of this painting, some in English. I went with the classic French. I thought I would add this Bagley/Pope/Retirement cartoon here – I think it is the best of the bunch.

And I drew these two about the sequester.

Wedgies are a mainstay for editorial cartoonists. Bagley draws better wedgies too.

The stock market fell when we heard the result of Italy’s crazy election, which I drew as the Wall Street Bull tripping over Italy’s boot. It was only a one day drop, but Italy’s bonds are down the tube, so I think it still works.

Here are my most recent two – I think cardinals are great fun.  See more Pope Retirement cartoons here.

And Justice Scalia likened the Voting Rights Act to a racial “entitlement” … we have a great collection of Scalia cartoons, here’s mine …

The big cartoon news this week was the death of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez – and we’ve gotten lots of Chavez cartoon traffic. The death of a despot is always great fodder for cartoons.  The most popular Chavez cartoon, by far, is this gem by Hajo …

We have a great collection of Chavez Obituary cartoons here.  Come enjoy!

Le Monde’s editorial cartoonist, Jean Plantu, and his trademark mouse.

I’m a big supporter of French cartoonist Jean Plantu’s Cartooning for Peace organization. It sounds a little silly, because all of the cartoonists are in favor of peace, and the nature of cartoons seems to be frivolous, while peace is a serious topic.

That said, Cartooning for Peace does a lot of great stuff; they organize meetings of editorial cartoonists and hold impressive exhibitions all over the world. I’ve made a lot of worldly, cartoonist friends through Cartooning for Peace. Plantu is the star cartoonist of France – that’s him at the right, with his trademark mouse that appears in the corner of every Plantu cartoon.

One of Plantu’s recent projects is a weekly page in his newspaper, Le Monde, with cartoons from around the world about a topic in the news. Plantu does a great job with it, soliciting the newest cartoons from member cartoonists every week.  I have pasted some pages below.  They look great and show the power of editorial cartoons at their best.

We syndicate a bunch of international cartoonists to about 850 newspapers, and they tend to be less popular than our American cartoonists. Americans aren’t much interested in events outside of the United States, unless we’re at war or threaten to be at war with someone. Passionate cartoons about water issues or the European Union don’t generate much reader passion in the USA.

On the topics that penetrate our borders and generate interest here, collections of international cartoons are a wonderful way to show a variety of world opinions at a glance. My local newspaper, the Santa Barbara News-Press does an international week in review with world cartoonists regularly. I would urge more editors to consider doing it.

The page below is “Egypt: an explosive cocktail”. It includes the Adam and Eve cartoon by Doaa El Adl, that has led to her prosecution by Islamist authorities. I’d love to see newspapers all around the world reprint Doaa’s cartoon.

Gay marriage has recently been a hot topic in France.

Here is the most recent one, on International Womens Day.

Cartoon by Mohammad Saba’aneh.

Here is my letter to Israel’s Ambassador …

March 16, 2013

Daryl Cagle
Cagle Cartoons, Inc.

Ambassador  Michael Oren
Embassy of Israel to the United States
3514 International Dr. N.W.
Washington, DC 20008

Dear Ambassador Oren,

I am writing to urge Israeli authorities to release a Palestinian political cartoonist, Mohammad Saba’aneh, who was jailed by the Israeli Defense Forces, on February 16^th, at a border crossing between the West Bank and Jordan. He is being held without charge and is denied access to an attorney. Under Israeli law, Muhammad may be held indefinitely without charge. Only Israeli authorites know why he is imprisoned.

Muhammad is a cartoonist for Al-Hayat al-Jadida, the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, and he works at the Arab American University in Jenin on the West Bank. He is a respected cartoonist; he is not a terrorist or a criminal. Arab cartoonists often draw ugly, racist, offensive cartoons about Israel, but Muhammad’s cartoons are not among those; his work, although critical, is more balanced and artful.

I met Muhammad in 2010, when the U.S. State Department sent him to our Association of American Editorial Cartoonists convention in Florida, where he got to meet many of his American colleagues. Muhammad told me he was a fan of my work; he is a charming guy, eager to show his own cartoons to all of his new friends. Muhammad is active in the global cartooning community and cartoonists around the world are closely following the story of his plight in Israel.

I run a small business, Cagle Cartoons, Inc., that syndicates the work of cartoonists from around the world to over 850 subscribing newspapers, including half of the daily, paid-circulation newspapers in America. Among the cartoonists we distribute is Yaakov Kirschen, the cartoonist who draws Dry Bones for The Jerusalem Post; Yaakov’s cartoons run in Jewish newspapers throughout the USA. Our American editorial cartoonists are great supporters of Israel, in contrast to cartoonists from the rest of the world who harshly criticize Israel. The contrast is easy to see as editorial cartoons reflect world opinion. American cartoonists are Israel’s most visible suporters, and my own small business is the leader in distributing these views for America and the world to see.

It seems clear that Muhammad has been jailed to chill his cartoons that are critical of Israel. Instead, this ugly incident risks chilling Israel’s most visible supporters in America’s press, at a time when Israel needs our support more than ever.

American cartoonists like to see Israel as a champion of democracy and press freedom in a hostile Middle East – Muhammad’s case undermines that perception and seems to be a clumsy attempt to silence the press. This incident makes Israel appear to be no better than its repressive neighbors.

I’m writing to you in the hope that you will urge the authorities in Israel to release Muhammad, return him to his family and allow us to again see Israel as a democracy that respects a free press.

Truly,

Daryl Cagle
Editorial Cartoonist
President, Cagle Cartoons, Inc.

—————————————————————

Want to hear more about Mohammad Saba’aneh? An interesting audio report from The World, including an interview with my Israeli cartoonist buddy, Uri Fink, is posted below. Here is another recent report about Saba’aneh.  Here is a nice blog that follows the case at Cartoon Movement, including cartoons drawn in support of Saba’aneh.

Saturn/Bankers Eating Cyprus, by Goya and Daryl. Click on the image for a larger view.

It has been too long since I have posted my new cartoons in the blog; so here is a big batch, with some comments.

The Cyprus bank crisis is great fun, and a good excuse for another cartoon abusing an art masterpiece. This time it is Saturn Devouring his Children by Goya. Of-course, Saturn knew that his children would kill him, so eating them was the obvious thing to do. Saturn forgot to eat Zeus, who came back, cut open his stomach and let all the other kids out. I don’t think it matters much that the other kids had been chewed and digested, which makes this an apt metaphor for Cyprus, as the greedy bankers have eaten, chewed and digested the Cypriot economy, and the EU is getting ready to cut the belly open and let the economy out, good as new.

A clip from Goya’s Saturn Devouring his Children.

That’s a clip from Goya’s unaltered painting on the left. The problem I had was that I couldn’t just replace Saturn’s child/dinner with a map of Cyprus, because the child and Cyprus aren’t the same shape. And people want to see me draw in my cartoons, not just retouch masterpieces, so I decided to obviously draw over the painting.

What are public domain masterpieces good for, if not a lack of respect?

It is common for cartoonists to use famous paintings as metaphors in cartoons, and I notice that when I do it the cartoons are reprinted much more than any others.  Editors seem to love it – and it amuses me.  So there should be more to come.

My previous cartoon defaced a famous 1632 painting by Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. The cartoon mocks the GOP “autopsy” this week by GOP Chair Reince Priebus – it amused me that Priebus chose to use the word “autopsy,” acknowledging that the patient was already dead. It was actually a pretty good GOP autopsy, and the reaction from the GOP old-guard made me laugh.

The previous cartoon was about President Obama’s trip to Israel, and how I imagined his conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu would go. “Overstating the obvious” always works in cartoon.

Bellicose rhetoric from North Korea dominated the news the day I drew the cartoon below. I enjoy drawing the crazy, comicana cursing. This story doesn’t change much. I think North Koreans and Li’l Kim look for slow news days when they can make crazy threats and get some attention.

The cartoon below is a Euro-evergreen. When I draw “everyman” characters in cartoons, I try to make them look like real people, rather than big-nosed-nobodies. I thought the girl looked kind of like Penny from The Big Bang Theory. Some readers commented that she looked more like Chelsea Clinton, with a “There’s Something About Mary” hairdo, having lunch with young Nicolas Cage. Oh well …

Everyone drew something about Rand Paul’s filibuster. I thought John McCain’s strained reaction, calling Rand Paul a “Wacko Bird” was great fun, and I drew this … I think McCain is hard to draw. His face is like pudding, with no particular shape to it. And, whatever he has to say, he has a “GET OFF MY LAWN” expression on his face.

The cartoon below is about Obama’s recent “charm offensive” where he invited GOP leaders over for dinner or lunch. We saw lots of smiling faces.

This is another “charm offensive” cartoon about Obama’s dinner with Republicans. This was a quickie and I didn’t bother to color it. I got comments from conservatives who thought it was funny that I drew Obama in the role of Jesus at the last supper. hmmm.

Pope Francis as a gaucho.

One last one and I’m caught up! I drew this one (on the right) as fast as I could, when the new Pope was announced, and we learned he was from Argentina. I went to Google Images and looked up all I could find on gaucho costumes. So here is Pope Francis as a gaucho.

I won’t fall so far behind again!  I promise!

Here are my latest three cartoons – hot off the drawing board and Wacom tablet!

The Supreme Court heard two gay rights cases this week, California’s Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act. The pundits seem to agree that these cases will likely be decided by 5 to 4 votes, so I drew the four, ugly conservatives on the court angrily brandishing their gavels at the cowering gay couple on the cake. Fortunately, the ugly conservatives on the court are also the easiest justices to caricature!  Here is my rough sketch.

Drawing caricatures like this is so much easier now than it was years ago! All I have to do is type some public figure’s name into Google Images and I get a page full of great thumbnails. In the old days I had to cut photos out of newspapers and magazines and save them in a “morgue” in case I ever needed to draw a caricature. Technology is grand.

Here is the black and white version of the cartoon, which most people will see in newspapers that still print in black and white.

I draw everything at about 11″ x 17″ on vellum in pencil, and I scan at high contrast so it looks like ink. Then I color it in Photoshop with my Wacom tablet.  Here is the color version.

Next I drew a Republican elephant flogging himself as his intolerant views about gay rights do nothing but give him a sore back. Here is the rough sketch.

And here is the finished drawing, in pencil on 11″ x 17″ vellum, with the gray tones added in Photoshop.

It is better if a drawing holds up as just line art with no gray tones – but sometimes I have to resort to gray. This one needed a little tonal substance. Here is the color version.

The most recent cartoon is another riff on an art masterpiece – these seem to be the most popular cartoons I draw. This one is based on a famous 19th century print by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, titled the Great Wave off Kanagawa (pictured on the right).

This image made for a popular Yahtzee, in editorial cartoons, after the Japanese tsunami. One thing that is interesting about Japanese prints is that the Japanese read from right to left, so the boats in the Hokusai print are sailing from calmer seas into the big bad waves. Of-course, editorial cartoons must read from left to right, with the set-up on the left and the gag on the right.

I printed out the Hokusai image and sketched a little GOP elephant to the right for my rough sketch.

I drew it up like this, then I noticed that the elephant was too big – he needed to be smaller for the wave to look more threatening. Here is the finished line drawing with a smaller elephant.

And here is the color version.

That Hokusai wave is a wonderful wave!

This is what the Cagle Post/Mediapass ads look like on Facebook, in the column on the right.

This weekend, visitors to our site probably noticed that there are ads for Cagle Post appearing on web sites everywhere – even on Facebook.  What’s up with that?

We’ve been trying some new things since our partnership with msnbc.com was dissolved recently – trying some because we can now, and couldn’t before, and trying others things because we no longer have the income from our nice, former partners at msnbc.com so we’re forced to make some tough choices.

We’ve redesigned the site to optimize ad revenue and social networking; part of this change was putting many cartoons onto single pages so that we can have comments and permalinks with the cartoons. This change has resulted in better ad revenue and SEO, even though I, and many of our readers preferred multiple cartoons on the pages, multiple cartoons on a page is a lousy layout for SEO – and without our traffic-heavy partners at msnbc.com, we have to pay attention to SEO now.

Another thing we’re trying, which has bothered some of our readers, is a paywall. Everybody hates paywalls, and many of our readers tell me that all content on the web should be free – and until recently, our site has been totally free because msnbc.com wanted it that way.

I see this banner ad frequently as I browse other web sites. It shows up for users who have a cookie showing that they have visited Cagle.com in the past.

Here is the Cagle Post/Mediapass Donkey Skyscraper.

I’d like to see paywalls work. As a content creator and syndicator, the idea that readers should pay a little for content is how I make a living, and advertising on the internet doesn’t pay much. If paywalls could work, it would be great for newspapers, magazines and cartoonists. I’m trying it because I’d like for it to work, but the jury is still out on paywalls.  I remember the feedback from when I was with Slate.com, about when they tried a paywall – it worked, and they made more income, but their traffic fell to a tiny fraction of what it had been, and their underpaid writers were no longer interested in contributing for poor pay plus a poor audience.  Slate gave up the paywall.

Here’s another one I see often around the Web.

Most of our readers probably haven’t encountered our paywall, because most readers just look at the current cartoons, which don’t trigger the paywall.  Right now, if you look at ten pages of archives, you’ll hit the paywall.  We’re asking for a small payment as a “premium subscriber” to keep looking at our hundreds of thousands of cartoons in the database on cagle.com. We’ve chosen settings for the paywall that are very generous to the free content audience. The new way of looking at paywalls is to leave a generous amount of content available for free, and apply the paywall to only the most ardent fans who want to stay on the site for a long time.

We’re using Mediapass.com for our paywall.  So far, they have been nice to work with. They are prodigious advertisers and, as our paywall partners, they have started advertising on our behalf.  Their ads look for cookies in a user’s browser; if the user has visited Cagle.com in the past, it displays the ads for Cagle.com shown above, linking to our e-mail subscriptions page. We have one free daily e-mail newsletter and other newsletters for premium subscribers who can subscribe to individual cartoonist feeds as well as our special “premium” e-mail newsletter, and who, of-course, have unlimited access to the archives behind the paywall.

So, if you are reading this, you probably have cookies on your browser that bring up the Cagle post ads on lots of different sites, and Facebook. It may seen like we’re advertising everywhere – but we’re not, it just looks that way.

Hopefully we’ll stumble our way into finally finding a plan for making the Web work for us. Our little business still depends on print customers who have a tradition of paid content and of paying their bills, and the mortgages of cartoonists. That is a big difference between us and Slate; our cartoonists and columnists are with us because of our 850+ subscribing newspapers, and not because of our audience on the Web, so we can afford to lose some audience to the paywall, without losing our contributors, as Slate did.  That said, so far we haven’t lost audience with our new paywall and layout changes, so I’m hopeful.

And I enjoy seeing the Cagle Post ads everywhere I go on the Web, even if it is only a cookie-driven illusion and everybody isn’t really seeing them.

My last two cartoons have been about Kim Jong Un. The first was Li’l Kim making himself into a target.  Here’s the rough sketch.

Here he is as line art. Most newspaper readers will see the cartoon in black and white like this.

I thought I would be bold with the color on this one – to make it more powerful with only line art and red.  I’m sure some editors won’t print it because of my color choice. Editors like lots of “pretty” and “bright” colors. Editors generally avoid anything that can be called “bold.”

Since North Korea is still dominating the news I drew another one. This one with Li’l Kim as a doggie, with President Obama and the new Chinese president Xi Jinping.

I’ve done a whole lot of cartoons with leaders as doggies. In this case, i thought it would be interesting to have Obama reacting to Li’l Kim’s threatening barking, while Jinping reacts to Li’l Kim’s pee, with exactly the same body language. Here is the line art that most people see. Yes, I decided to move Obama closer, and I realized that I needed a label on Jinping, because he’s new and I didn’t know what he looked like until I looked him up.

Here is the color version – which is never as good as the simple black and white.

We have a wonderful collection of more than 250 North Korea cartoons here! I’ve drawn lots of leaders as doggies in the past.  Here’s is Li’l Kim’s dad, Il, biting Obama’s butt from 2010. Things don’t change much.

Here’s one where Obama is the doggie on Wall Street’s leash.

Here’s Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as the doggie.

I drew this one back in the 2008 primary season, with President Clinton as the doggie on Hillary’s leash. Ugh, I hate looking at my old, early Obama.

I drew a lot of doggie cartoons with President Bush. The military was W’s doggie.

Drawing Muslims as doggies is deeply insulting to them, which is why so many cartoonists do it, I suppose. Here are the Sunnis and Shiites fighting at the height of Bush’s Iraq Mess, with Iraq’s president Maliki.

I drew lots of W as a doggie.  Here he is marking his territory.

And here is W the doggie, during the run-up to war in Iraq.

I’ll bet my cartoons would be much more popular if I drew nothing but doggies. I’ve considered it.

Here are my last two cartoons, the first one is French President Francois Hollande shrinking. He is wildly unpopular in France after being elected recently, and our world cartoonists draw him all the time, so I thought I would give it a shot. That is “Liberty” from Eugene Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” who is in the Mom role, measuring Hollande’s growth on the door frame – and that’s a clip of the real Liberty at the right.

Jean Plantu, the cartoonist for Le Monde in Paris, likes to chide me about how I can’t draw bare breasts as an editorial cartoonist in America. Of-course, I am my own editor, and I can draw anything I want – the only problem is getting editors to print what I want.  This cartoon has a triple whammy: boobs, foreign subject matter and a character (Hollande) who American readers don’t know, and I drew it on a Saturday, the dead day for editorial cartoons.

Who cares?! I can draw what I want even if no one will print it.  Here is the messy rough sketch.

There were lots of corrections I made when I traced over this for the final line art, below.

Here is the color version.

Remember you saw it here first, and you may not see it anywhere else.

The previous cartoon is an evergreen for Tax Day, April 15th. It would be better as an evergreen if the IRS Form 1040 didn’t mention the tax year at the top – I’ll have to make that suggestion to them.

For some reason, cartoonists like to put the year into their cartoons, as part of a copyright notice with their signature, which makes their new cartoons look new but makes their old cartoons look old, devaluing them as evergreens for sale online. I’m always telling artists not to put the year into their cartoons – but do they listen? No. That’s the rough sketch at the right.

I downloaded the tax form from the IRS as the backdrop, and clipped some text in Photoshop. That’s how I feel this time of year. The tax form looks pretty gloomy, huh?

Here is the back story on my last three editorial cartoons!

With Obama’s “middle of the road” budget that was attacked by both sides last week, there have been lots of budget cartoons showing both the left and the right angry at Obama. This is much the same thing, but without picturing the budget, so it might last a little longer.

Notice that in my drawing, Obama is not exactly in the middle … from the reader’s perspective, Obama is a little to the left of the middle -although, from Obama’s perspective, he has moved a bit to his right.

Maybe I’m overthinking this. Here is the rough pencil sketch, on tab sized copier paper in pencil.

Next I drew the finished line art for the cartoon (below), also in pencil, on drafting vellum. This is what most people will see in the newspapers, that still usually print in black and white.

There is something lovely about a black and white editorial cartoon, particularly if it is only line art, without gray tone. I know that people will choose any color over black and white – but I think it is kind of like a classic sail boat vs. a speed/power boat – the sail boat is slow and classy, the power boat is fast, flashy, and people will choose it over the sail boat – still, the sail boat has more class and is nicer to look at.

Here’s a detail – isn’t the black and white nice? It is saved as 1000 dpi tiff and has a nice pencil line quality, up close.

Then I add the color, for the image most online visitors see.

The previous cartoon was another one about L’il Kim. Here’s the black and white – I thought I had to resort to gray to make the multi-panel format work. I like to avoid gray when I can.

Here’s the color …

The next cartoon was intended to be an evergreen. There was a big, Sunday section front in my local newspaper Health section about  “superbugs” – antibiotic resistant diseases that are a new plague in hospitals. The newspaper didn’t run one of our nice cartoons or illustrations with the feature article, they had some lousy clip art; and I noticed that we didn’t have good “superbug” art in the database – so this is an attempt to fill the “Superbug” void in the CagleCartoons.com/PoliticalCartoons.com databases. Here is the rough pencil sketch on 11″x17″ paper.

I know, I know, bacteria don’t look like this kind of bug. Here is the black and white line art.

And I thought it might need a bit of gray tone – I’m not sure on this one.

And here is the color, added behind the line art in layers in Photoshop.

This one was fun to draw. Here is a detail.

The two big news stories this week were the Boston Marathon bombing and the sinking of the gun bill by Republicans in the Senate.  Of-course, the gun bill got lost in the media focus on the Boston Bombing (we have a great collection of cartoons on the Boston Bombing here).

The problem with dominant news stories is that every cartoonist is drawing the same thing at the same time – why?  Editors all want the same thing at the same time.  Usually I like to steer a little different path then the cartoonist pack, because of supply and demand. There were just too many similar cartoons about the Boston Marathon Bombing this week, with bloody tennis shoes, bowed heads on statues, damaged Boston logos, symbolic metaphors breaking ribbons at finish lines – just what editors wanted, but too much of it for them to use.  I tried to take a bit of a different tack with memorial candles, and I wanted to avoid drawing something bloody, still, I’m sure my cartoon didn’t get reprinted much because of oversupply.  Here is the rough pencil sketch.

…and here is the black and white line art, that most people will see in the newspaper.

… and here is the color …

If I use colors in cartoons that are too dark, I get complaints from editors, so the color was a compromise. I’m not sure I’m happy with it. Oh well, it is a cartoon I was obligated to draw and the marketplace didn’t need – the story of my career.

The next cartoon was about the Republicans sinking the gun bill in the Senate. Republicans love their guns a bit too much – and that’s all that this cartoon says. Here is the rough sketch.

I found a photo of an assault rifle on Google and printed it out for my rough sketch.  For a moment, I thought about Photoshopping the actual photo into the cartoon – it would be a jarring contrast to have the drawing of an elephant with what looks like a real, nasty, assault rifle photo – then I thought about how Bill Day tried that and was pilloried by this colleagues, and my good judgement got the better of me. Gotta watch out for those gun photos, they can get you labeled as a “plagiarist” and make you the wallflower at AAEC cartoonist parties.

Here is the black and white art …

and the color …

Ah!  Love in the springtime!

This week I drew an unusual cartoon that garnered a crazy response from my outraged, cartoonist colleagues.

There was a short lived debate about whether a Miranda Warning should be given to Boston Bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who had been questioned without being given the warning. I drew this last Sunday:

I got no response from editors or other cartoonists to this cartoon, but I got such a strong reaction from readers against the cartoon, with many well reasoned arguments, that I changed my mind – something that doesn’t happen much in this profession. (The comments on my Facebook page are representative of the overall comments I received).  So I posted a revised version of the cartoon on Monday. I learned that Tsarnaev was given his Miranda rights shortly before I posted the revised cartoon, so I doubt that this second cartoon got reprinted much.

The second version is the same as the first, but instead of “none of them” deserving to be read their Miranda Warning, the revised cartoon says “all of them” should get the warning.  I’ve changed my mind before, not often, and usually over a longer period of time, but I won’t go back into the archive to delete the old cartoons. I posted them, I should live with my history. So both cartoons are still posted. (My old cartoons supporting the run up to war in Iraq are still posted too – I’m more embarrassed by those.)

I remember when the Miranda decision came down in the 1960′s, on a 5-4 vote. It was controversial for a long time; the only area of the law where “ignorance of the law is no excuse” didn’t hold true. Liberals like it, conservatives still don’t like it.  I decided to disagree with the talking heads at Fox News and I changed my mind to agree with my readers and conclude that the Miranda decision should no longer be controversial – it has become a part of our national fabric. Most of the responses conflate reading the Miranda warning to the suspect with the suspect’s overall civil rights; I have come to the conclusion that is a good thing. (I really do pay attention to the arguments that readers send to me.)

I got very little response to the second version of the cartoon from readers or editors, but there was an angry torrent of responses from my editorial cartoonist colleagues. Some cartoonists blogged that I had a new, insidious business plan to make more money by offering two versions of the same cartoon, for both liberal and conservative editors – to sell twice as many cartoons with only one drawing. Others agreed, adding that I was cheapening the profession with this crass commercialism.

One cartoonist blogged that this was no editorial cartoon at all (and by extension, that I am no editorial cartoonist) because editorial cartoons must, by definition, express only one opinion.  Another editorial cartoonist responded to the cartoon in his blog by calling me the “Osama Bin Laden” of editorial cartooning.

Some cartoonists wrote that I must surely be lying about my reason for changing the cartoon, because the idea that I would change my mind was simply not credible. Others called for me to be punished for my breach of the unwritten laws of cartoon ethics. Some demanded that I remove the old version of the cartoon from my archive, as I would do with a cartoon that was revised to correct a spelling error; the idea that an editor could purchase and print both versions of the cartoon, with two different opinions, was repugnant.  Bloggers and journalism sites reported on the cartoon controversy.

Yes, the cartoon police really do exist.

I know this all sounds unbelievable, but I’m not exaggerating.  It is fascinating that editorial cartoonists have such a different perspective on their own work than editors and readers do. The cartoonists take themselves far more seriously than anyone else takes them.

Perhaps I should change my mind more often – it makes for a wild ride.

My next cartoon, about Fox News and the gold crash, got little attention as the controversy over my previous cartoon raged. Just as well, I draw too many old couples on the couch in front of the TV.

Next came this cartoon about the immigration bill in the Senate. I should note that when I draw cartoons about Mexicans, and draw them with sombreros, I always get some angry mail. I syndicate cartoonists from Mexico, who draw their fellow Mexicans with sombreros just like this, so I take my cue from them.  Don’t get mad.

My most recent cartoon is this “Red Line” cartoon about Syria and Bashar Assad. I drew an actual squiggle with a crayon so that I would get nice, crayon texture, and I squished the squiggle in Photoshop so that it would appear to have perspective on the ground. I thought for a bit about the blood on Bashar’s hands, because bloody hands weren’t integral to the gag – but I decided the bloody hands were a necessary part of Bashar’s personality, even if his hands are a bit of a distraction.

Click to see a larger view of the Guantanamo force-feeding kit. Dinner. Mmm.

Here’s my weekly update on my new cartoons.

The most recent one is this riff on the famous Norman Rockwell painting, “Freedom from Want.” I thought it would be interesting to juxtapose American values at the dinner table with the dinner table at Guantanamo.

(Added 5/5: OK, from my e-mail box I see that I need to explain this cartoon a bit further as, apparently, it has gone over some readers’ heads. The idea of the cartoon is to show that juxtaposing traditional American values at the dinner table with the “dinner table” at Guantanamo is obviously ridiculous, making the visual point that force feeding the Gitmo prisoners, who are hunger striking and holding the prisoners indefinitely without charge is inconsistent with American values. I can have some fun with injustice, that’s what cartoonists do. Lighten up, people.)

I was intrigued to find that force-feeding the hunger-striking Guantanamo inmates has its own Wikipedia page.  That is a picture of the force feeding kit on the right.

I think Ensure is funny too. It is all the food anyone needs to eat; elderly people, who don’t eat enough, drink yummy Ensure – so, like adult diapers and funeral expense insurance, Ensure is advertised extensively to the geriatric audience on Fox News and CNN. The elderly are the only ones left buying newspapers, and reading editorial cartoons too. Maybe my audience doesn’t think Ensure is so funny.

The previous cartoon, below, was this one about Texas Governor Perry and that big fertilizer plant explosion. Perry is a vocal champion for cutting regulations – and it turns out that more regulations were sorely needed in the case of the exploding plant.

Cartoonists have been clucking about this issue because Perry complained about one Perry bashing cartoon, demanding that the cartoonist be fired for being insensitive to the people killed in the explosion.  In fact, many cartoonists jumped on this bandwagon drawing similar cartoons that Perry would have objected to if he had read more newspapers – like the two below by our own Pat Bagley and John Cole.

…  but I digress! My previous cartoon this week was another Syria red line cartoon.  There have been a heck of a lot of red line cartoons this week, but they are getting lots of ink so I thought it was time for another one. I used a real crayon to draw the red lines.

I also noticed, after I drew this, that I put John McCain’s big eye on the wrong side – his big eye is really on our left, his right.  This got me to thinking, I drew the face that McCain sees when he looks in the mirror, and he’s the only person who sees that face – so he might think this is the only caricature ever drawn that actually looks like him.  That thought makes me smile.

One of the most common editorial cartoon metaphors is the “Are we there yet?” cartoon, with “kids” in the back seat bugging a driver. It has been drawn hundreds of times, addressing all kinds of issues. I do one every couple of years.  There was a big Yahtzee of more than a dozen “Are we there yet?” cartoons during the run up to intervention in Libya, but I don’t recall seeing one on the current run up to intervention in Syria, so I thought it was time for me to do another one.

I thought I would look through the archives for some other “Are we there yet?” cartoons. Here’s a couple of nice ones from RJ Matson of Roll Call.

Here’s an oldie from Joe Heller from back in 2008.

I drew this one about the Gulf Oil Spill, as Obama was being criticized by Fox News for being slow to react – “just like President Bush with Hurricane Katrina.”

This one by New Zealand cartoonist, Chris Slane, amused me.

Richard Nixon is great fun to draw.  It would have been wonderful to work as an editorial cartoonist during the Watergate days.  It was an editorial cartooning renaissance.

This week, the pack of cartoonists all ran in the direction of comparing Barack Obama with Richard Nixon because of Obama’s worsening three scandals: the AP records seizure, Benghazi and the IRS.  I draw metamorphosis cartoons every so often, when the news seems to be calling out for them.  Here is the line art for Obama turning into Nixon, which most readers will see in newspapers that print in black and white.

Here’s the color version.

Just after the presidential election, the folks at Fox News were apoplectic about their loss, and ranted that Obama would be free to be the wild, radical leftist they knew he was all along, now that he was freed from the constraints of needing to be re-elected.  So I drew this metamorphosis cartoon.

Back when Apple was rejecting my iPhone app applications, I drew this Apple metamorphosis cartoon …

And I drew this one when Disney bought Marvel Comics.

Cartoonists draw evolution themed cartoons all the time – which are pretty similar to metamorphosis, I guess.  Here is Mitt Romney, and his evolving views about evolution, from back in 2007.

Here’s an evolving Donald Trump from 2011.

And a general evolution of man cartoon …

Cartooning, evolution and metamorphosis! It’s a tradition!  I’m working on another one today.

Here are my last four cartoons.  The most recent is below, on the press growing less cute and adorable for Obama.  I think if I drew puppies in all of my editorial cartoons, my work would be much more popular.  I didn’t quite know how I would handle this one when I started drawing, so the rough sketch is a bit of a mess.

I was thinking of making this a four panel cartoon at first, with the doggie growing progressively bigger and a caption, but the simple two panel format won out.  here is the line art that most people will see in their newspapers that print in black and white.

And here is the color.  Readers love the doggies.

I drew the cartoon below when Obama made his first statement about the IRS scandal.  here’s the black and white most people see.

And here’s the color.

Before that I did this one on the ongoing, outrageous, sexual assault scandals in the military.

And I drew this “Energizer Bunny” cartoon about the Benghazi Scandal that the Republicans can’t bear to see fade away.

There was a time when I would see an Energizer Bunny cliche editorial cartoon every week. Alas, those were the good old days.

I’m at the National Cartoonists Society Reuben Awards banquet tonight, and I just ran up to my hotel room after the dinner to post and tweet the winners of the Cartoonist of the Year Award and all the Division Award Winners.

Reuben Award
The Reuben Award winners are – a tie, for the first time I can remember: Brian Crane (Pickles) and Rick Kirkman (Baby Blues) both won and both took home two big Rube Goldberg statues. I don’t recall that there has ever been a tie before.  The third nominee was Stephan Pastis of Pearls Before Swine.

The nominees in the newspaper illustration division were Mark Brewer, Bob Rich and Dave Whamond. The winner is Dave Whammond – a great guy and my new friend who does great work for the Wall Street Journal.

The nominees in the Greeting Card Division were Bill Brewer, George Schill and Jem Sullivan.  The winner in the greeting card division is Jem Sullivan..

The nominees in the TV Animation Division were Todd Kauffman, for Sidekick, Alberto Mielgo for Tron: Uprising, and Rich Weber for DC Nation.  The winner in the TV Animation Division is Rich Weber for DC Nation.

The nominees in the Feature Animation Division were Rich Moore for Wreck-It Ralph, Joann Sear for The Rabbi’s Cat and Hiromasa Yonebayashi for The Secret World of Arriety.  The winner is Joann Sear for The Rabbi’s Cat.

The nominees in the Advertising/Product Illustration Division were Luke McGarry, Ed Steckley and Wayno.  The winner is Ed Steckley.

The nominees in the Graphic Novel Division (that I had the pleasure to announce), were Derf, for My Friend Daumer, Joseph Lambert for Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller, and Chris Ware for Building Stories.  The winner in the Graphic novel Division is Chris Ware for Building Stories.

The nominees in the Comic Book Division were Amdanda Connor, Evan Dorkin and Bernie Wrightson.  The winner is Evan Dorkin.

The nominees in the online Comics – Short For Division were Graham Harrop for Ten Cats, Honathan Lemon for Rabbits Against Magic and Michael McParlane for Mac. The Winner is Graham Harrop for Ten Cats.

The Nominees in the Online Comics Long Form Division were Vince Dorse for Untold tales of Bigfoot, Meredith Gran for Octopus Pie and Pan N. Lewis for Muscles Diablo in Where Terror Lurks.  The winner is Vince Dorse.

In the Gag Cartoon Division the nominees were Roz Chast, Sam Gross, Mick Stevens and Jack Ziegler, the winner is Roz Chast.

In the Newspaper Panel Division, Tony Carillo,  F-Minus, Dave Coverly, Speed Bump, and Hilary Price Rhymes With Orange.  The winner in the Newspaper Panel Cartoon Division is Hilary Price, Rhymes With Orange.

In the Editorial Cartoon Division the Nominees were Clay Bennett, Michael de Adder and Jen Sorensen, the winner is Jen Sorensen.

In the Newspaper Comic Strip Division, noinees were Brian Basset, Red & Rover, Jeff Parker and Steve Kelley, Dustin, and Jerry Scott & Jim Borgman, Zits .  Winner is Brian Bassett, Red & Rover.

Here is my newest cartoon, with the media as an abused spouse of our petulant president. I did two versions of this one, with Obama saying “Bitch” for brave editors, and one with Obama saying “Jerk” for timid editors. I hope they will print “Bitch” but I expect that they will choose to print “Jerk.”  Here is the rough sketch.

Here it is in black and white, as most newspapers readers will see it – “Bitch” version.

And color, “Bitch” version …

Here’s the color “Jerk” version …

Editors can be pretty darn timid, and I suspect that both versions of this cartoon might scare them off.

My grouchy editorial cartoonist colleagues, who lambasted me for my two-version Miranda cartoon, will be debating banning two versions of editorial cartoons as “unethical” at our upcoming convention. I must admit that, if some kinds of cartoons are banned, I’ll be motivated to draw them anyway, just to break the rules.

Another thing my colleagues will discuss banning are cartoons that are similar to other cartoons a cartoonist has drawn in the past. This abused press cartoon is similar to an oldie I drew about high gas prices.

It will be interesting to see how the cartoonists plan to enforce their new ethical rules.

The abused spouse gas cartoon generated some angry mail from actual abused spouses who were upset with me for not taking them seriously, in some strong and emotional language.  I actually apologized for this one, since people were so upset.  For any readers I offend with my new cartoon, you again have my apology – it is not my intent to criticize abused spouses – the cartoon is only about Obama and the press!