Too Much News: Top Ten Cartoons of the Week
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Ferguson Wave
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Gotta Love Those Policemen
Here’s my new cartoon, about the militarized police, reaching out to the community in Ferguson, Missouri.
The situation struck me as similar to the military trying to “win the hearts and minds” of people in Afghanistan. A couple of years ago, I drew the cartoon below …
Militaries break things well, they don’t build things well – including good relationships with the communities they occupy. I don’t like seeing police departments act like the military.
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Love the Police
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Hacker Attacks!
Our Cagle.com site was down yesterday afternoon with a massive “DDoS Zombie” hacker attack. I’m not sure where they came from this time, but in the past we’ve traced them to China. I drew this cartoon with China looking over my shoulder, at the time of an earlier attack. A “zombie” attack, like the one we suffered yesterday, is one that uses multiple automated scripts; a DDoS is a “distributed denial of service” attack which attempts to flood the server with requests in order to deny it’s ability to serve content or interrupt service. Yesterday we suffered a huge flood of automated zombie requests.
Cagle.com is blocked by the government of Iran, and I’m sure we have some enemies around the world, but I think the attacks we continue to suffer come from criminals. We’ve had hackers insert malware/viruses onto Cagle.com, and we’ve been pretty good about getting that down as soon as it goes up – still, it is jarring. Most often I think the attacks are fishing for ways in to our server, to search for any information, like credit card numbers, that have some value to the worldly crooks.
Just so that all of you hackers out there know, we don’t keep credit card information online. When we have repeating charges for syndicate subscribers, we write the credit card information on a piece of paper, with a pen, and enter it manually into Paypal each month. We don’t store the credit information anywhere digitally. When hackers attack us, all they will find are our cartoons, that are already on display on the Web.
So, please, go attack someone else.
Here’s my non-fiction, autobiographical cartoon about my recently getting my California Marijuana license!
My local altie newspaper, the Santa Barbara Independent, printed this on the back page of their current issue – there it is below. I thought it looked pretty good. The colors always darken up in print, so I try to use light, fruity colors in my cartoons; they hold up better.
And look how cool my autobiographical marijuana license cartoon is in Spanish!
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Robin Williams Memorial Cartoons
Robin Williams was fun, I’m sorry to see him go. Here’s my quick Robin Williams cartoon that I knocked out this afternoon. We have a growing collection of obit cartoons on Cagle.com.
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Robin Williams Memorial
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This Land Is Mine
Thanks to Jonatan Krovitsky for posting this animation as a comment on my Facebook page. The clever, editorial cartoon video is by longtime animation stalwart, Nina Paley, and since, in the credits, it urges people to copy and post, I’ll do just that.
This Land Is Mine from Nina Paley on Vimeo.
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Israel Cartoons That Gave Me Some Trouble
I’ve been occasionally accused of anti-Semitism in my cartoons criticizing Israel, here are a couple of examples. I drew this cartoon below during the last Israel/Hamas battle a few years ago.
My critics claimed that the helmet on the soldier resembled a Nazi soldier’s helmet, because of the jag at the base that covers the top of the soldier’s ear. I did a Google search at the time, to see what Israeli helmets look like, and they had the ear jag – still, Nazi helmets have a strong visual image. I also got complaints about the nose on the soldier being too big.
The second complaint was that I put the Star of David on the Israeli soldier’s helmet, rather than the Israeli flag, which is a rectangle with the Star of David with a blue stripe above and below. Putting the Star on the helmet implied that he was any Jew, rather than an Israeli soldier. I guess I would have done the whole flag on his helmet, if I had it to do over again.
Later, when a bunch of ships tried to break the blockade of Gaza and were attacked by Israel, I drew this related cartoon and didn’t get so much criticism – maybe because I softened the shape of the helmet over the ear (his nose is a little smaller, too).
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Gaza Missile Defense System
I recently drew this cartoon about the “Gaza Missile Defense System” which got 3,044 shares on my Facebook page – that’s a lot of shares for one of my cartoons. I guess it struck a nerve.
In general, American cartoons are supportive of the Israeli side and international cartoons are supportive of the Palestinian side in the conflict, with some of the foreign cartoons getting pretty anti-Semitic. The theme of Hamas hiding behind babies has been popular among the American cartoonists, with a grand Yahtzee of babies tied to missiles and babies as suicide belts. Here’s one by Randy Bish.
Here’s one I drew years ago when Israel was fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon …
(My color was pretty lousy in those days, I know.) The baby-belt theme has been big.
I thought this anti-Israel cartoon (right) by Malcolm Evans in New Zealand was powerful – it brings up the “Jews Killing Babies” anti-Semitic theme in cartoons that has a rich history so it is something that I would have stayed away from, that said, the current circumstances are bringing out a lot of classic, anti-semetic cartoon themes with the international cartoonists.
Among the anti-Israel international cartoons, I thought this David and Goliath cartoon by Mexican cartoonist Dario Castillejos, was a nice, fresh take.
The theme of a ruined Gaza declaring victory over Israel is another Yahtzee. Here’s one by my buddy Bruce Plante …
And here’s a stylish match from Arend Van Dam …
I like how the debris is arranged to have little, equi-distant margins around each little piece.
I can see the reader fatigue about Israel vs the Palestinians. Most readers prefer celebrity cartoons. When the news turns to international events, most of the cartoon fans turn off – frustrating for the cartoonists who want to draw about “important issues.” I can tell our traffic will be up with the news is about entertainment or sports. The more turmoil we have in the Middle East, the worse our traffic gets. Oy. But don’t miss our great, and little seen, collection of cartoons about the latest Israel/Palestinian flare-up.
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Republicans Argue Immigration
I’m going to the big, euro-editorial-cartoonists convention in St. Just France again this year, along with four Cagle Cartoons star cartoonists, Nate Beeler, Adam Zyglis, Rick McKee and Steve Sack.
We’re putting together a show at the St. Just cartoon museum on American Views of Vladimir Putin and I’ve been scouring my own archives for my favorite, recent Putin cartoons, some are posted below, there will be a lot more in the show.
Putin is a wonderful cartoon character. I like how Putin looks bored in every meeting. Putin is funny for being macho and taking off his shirt. Like Bill Clinton, who had his pants down, showing his underwear enblazoned with little hearts almost all of the new Putin cartoons have him shirtless. Putin has been a big cartoon character recently, with his annexation of Crimea, the downing of the Malaysian Airlines jet, economic sanctions, the Winter Olympics, and Putin’s support for Syria’s Assad regime. Putin pokes his spooky nose into lots of current events.
I researched traditional Ukrainian dress for the cartoon below, with a standard, shirtless, caveman Putin.
I like this Ukrainian chick as my symbol for Ukraine. I used her again in the cartoon below, with shirtless Putin robbing her of her Crimea purse, with hapless Obama standing by.
I draw digestion/cross-section cartoons every so often. Here’s shirtless Putin below, digesting little countries and pooping out a stinky, new Soviet Union!
Maybe I should draw Putin with no pants too. I drew this cartoon when Miley Cyrus did her TV “twerking,” which was much bigger news than the antics Putin was pulling at the time. Twerking amuses me. I wonder if the media covers all the twerking news in Russia, as they do here.
Obama was eager to invade Syria, to help out those ISIS rebels, before Putin pulled the rug out from under Obama, with a plan for Syria to destroy their chemical weapons. This is one of there rare occasions where I like what Putin does. The news was all about Putin “putting Obama in a box.”
Here’s Putin pulling the old-Syria-switcheroo on Obama like the Alien movies.
Here’s my most recent Putin cartoon, featuring Putin with his Ukrainian rebel puppet.
My cartoonist daughter, Susie, just sent me some new Photoshop brushes that she’s urging me to use. I may be getting away from these sponge/stamp textures soon. I really need to improve my color. I know. I’m on the case.