DarylCagle.comThis Trump/Cruz cartoon shows the poor Statue of Liberty reacting to the rhetoric. I hesitate every time I draw Liberty now. The Onion has made Lady Liberty into a symbol of third-rate editorial cartooning, always appearing with a tear in her eye. There’s some truth in that.
This cartoon is an update of the oldie below, where I had a Republican elephant at the left. This one needed an update!
Watch me draw this one in real time in the video below!
Editorial page editors typically reject anything new and different from editorial cartoonists. Unusual styles and formats are just not what editors want to see. Editors like cartoons that look like what they think editorial cartoons should look like – which leads to lots of cartoons that look much the same.
I’ve been a big fan of Andy Singer’s self-syndicated, altie “No Exit” panel for years, and I’ve been encouraging Andy to try his hand at more traditional editorial cartooning. Andy’s panel has content that is socially conscious, like an editorial cartoon, but it is not the right shape, and it is wordy, and it doesn’t have caricatures of politicians and the panel format with a title is simply not something editorial page editors will consider putting in their daily editorial cartoon hole.
What to do? Andy wanted to be on the editorial pages but was committed to continuing the “No Exit” panel. Then he gave me a new pitch, saying, “Daryl, you know, when I put two of my panels next to each other it becomes the shape of an editorial cartoon, and if I do two panels that are on the same topic, and color them, it looks like one big editorial cartoon.” The idea looked interesting to me. The result is rather stylistically different than what editors are used to but Andy’s new editorial cartoon format looks like wordy, multi panel editorial cartoons, and editors seem to be accepting them. The connection between the two panels might be a stretch, but no one seems to notice. So far, so good.
A number of comic strip cartoonists, Like Dan Piraro and Wiley Miller, have been doing their cartoons in both strip and panel format for years. Andy’s work has some format advantages over most magazine gag cartoonists’ work; Andy’s panels are topically editorial cartoons to start with, and he doesn’t have a classic gag cartoon style with a caption at the bottom, which would be more difficult to reformat. Still, it may be that some other socially conscious panel or gag cartoonists could develop a new market by finding a procedure to reformat their ongoing work as editorial cartoons. Andy Singer is the trailblazer.
Here are a couple more new editorial cartoons from Andy. Follow Andy’s work on Cagle.com here.
President Obama took another military step in Syria, authorizing American special forces to conduct combat operations, despite his promise to have “no boots on the ground” in Syria. I suppose my now we shouldn’t take these promises too seriously.
There have been a whole lot of quagmire cartoons about Syria. I noticed this similar, recent one by my buddy Steve Sack after I sent mine out – Steve’s is better.
Here’s an Afghanistan quagmire from Chinese cartoonist, Loujie.
Here’s a nice quagmire from Australian cartoonist, Paul Zanetti.
Here’s an Iraq quagmire from Dave Granlund …
… and an Obamacare quagmire from my buddy, conservative cartoonist Eric Allie …
Quagmires are a cartoon standard.
Here’s my quagmire cartoon in USA Today today. It has been a long time since I worked for MSNBC.com, but it is a never ending quest to get people to change my attribution. (Does it help that they call it “Toon Talk”?)
Happy cartoon New Year! I was busily drawing my New Years Day cartoon, with Obama going out and coming in for the year, and with little biting GOP elephants, when the news started blaring about North Korea calling Obama a “monkey.” I am a slave to the news, so I had to do a second version with L’il Kim. Here’s the GOP …
And here is the L’il Kim version …
L’il Kim may be a plague to the world, but he is a gift to cartoonists.
The “Father Time and Baby New Year” thing is standard cartooning fodder. Here’s my New Year cartoon from last year …
Back in December, 2012, all the talk was about the “Fiscal Cliff” budget fight in Congress; it looked like doomsday. I drew this one …
At the end of 2010 the house had fallen under Republican control, and it looked like the GOP was eager to jump into more war – instead, Congress didn’t do much of anything, and Obama got us into more war. Oh well …
At the end of 2008: Obama won the presidency, George W. Bush was out of a job, and my drawings of Obama needed some more time to mature.
As 2005 turned into 2006 George W. Bush’s Republicans had lost the mid-term elections, but Bush was doubling down on the Iraq War anyway. There was lots more war to come.
Back in 2001 all the news was the 9/11 attacks as our troops poured into Afghanistan. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Here is my weekly post on my new cartoons. My most recent cartoon, on George Zimmerman’s acquittal, was a quickie. Here is my rough sketch – I took a scan of the Community Chest Get Out of Jail Free card, made it light in a print out, and did a rough sketch on top.
Then I dropped in the color. I had it all done in ten minutes, a new record for me. If only all of the cartoons were so quick and easy. Usually I muddle and fiddle for a long time with each cartoon. This one got a lot of attention in social media because it was fast.
The previous cartoon was Obama in the Arab Spring bathtub, with lots of dangerous appliances. Don’t stick a fork in the toaster! Here is the rough sketch – this one took some muddle and fiddle time to get the position and appliances to be the way I wanted them.
Then I did the finished line art, and added a bit of gray to make it read a bit more clearly. The black and white image is what more readers see in the newspapers.
And here is the color that you see on our site, and the newspapers that print in color. I had fun with this cartoon.
The previous cartoon was about the one year postponement in the employer mandate on Obamacare. Republicans “jumped on this” as evidence of Obamacare’s “failure” and “chaos.” Here is the rough sketch.
… And here is the line art, that most people will see in the newspapers that print black and white. I always like to black and white version better. There is something more elegant about black and white. Readers always tell me that color is better.
And here is the color. I did this one a little differently, with quick, transparent colors. I think I’ll probably do messier color like this going forward. I really like Pat Bagley’s sponge texture – that’s the next thing I’ll try.
POSTSCRIPT: Well, after writing that, I couldn’t get the sponge thing out of my head and I added a subtle bit of Bagley texture to the background. I should do more of that. And more boldly. I’m timid starting out. Here’s the revised version, not too different, but nicely textural.
Here’s a detail from the revised version.
The image at right is Army Staff Sargeant Robert Bales, who is alleged to have massacred 16 civilians in Afghanistan.
It struck me that he looks exactly like the soldier I drew in my cartoon about winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan in light of the killings (below), before Bales’ identity was released.
Psychic caricature. Creepy.
Every Friday, we collect the best political cartoons of the week and stuff them into one big, glorious slideshow.
So just relax and catch up on a week’s worth of news with our Best Cartoons of the Week slideshow.
