DarylCagle.comThanks 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.
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).
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.
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.
Cartoons about the Israel vs the Palestinians conflict fall into some general categories; the big one being pro-Israel, which constitutes most of the American cartoons, and pro-Palestinians, which are most of the international cartoons. There are the “to hell with both of them” cartoons, which are a larger and larger proportion of the cartoons. And there are the infinity cartoons, that show the conflict going on forever with cartoon symbols like the Energizer Bunny, Mobius strips, M.C. Escher endless staircases and visions of the future with spacey Israelis and Palestinians continuing to fight in a post-apocalypitic far future. My cartoon today is something of an infinity cartoon.
Iraq’s president Nouri Al Maliki is a thug; I’m not too troubled to see Maliki’s Shiite Iraq taking a tumble. I almost had Obama saying, “I told you so …” but that wasn’t very funny. “It sucks to be you,” strikes me as funny, and the gist of what Obama seems to be saying to Maliki.
I voted for Obama to get us out of foreign wars, supporting one bad guy vs. another, only to see Obama jump into Libya and urge military action in Syria. I’m afraid Obama will jump into Iraq again, and he’ll surely be delighted to leave troops in Afghanistan forever. At least he hasn’t done jumped back into Iraq yet.
My internet cartoonist buddy, John Curtis, put out a Facebook survey asking cartoonists to comment on why newspapers are cutting the comics. I decided to give John a big answer, below.
Reasons why newspapers are dropping comic strips:
1. Many papers have old contracts with syndicates, with automatic price increases each year. Comics can be expensive with these old deals. Syndicates can be reluctant to renegotiate these cash cows. Syndicates also continue to charge for delivery of comic strips, editorial cartoons and columns, even though everything is delivered electronically now. Negotiating with a syndicate can be an unpleasant hassle. Some editors complain that they have a hard time getting syndicates to respond to a phone call. Some complain that syndicate salesmen are like used car salesmen.
2. Comics can’t be edited. The comics page is a part of the newspaper that is not under local editorial direction. Editors hate that. Many editors brag about never reading the comics themselves.
3. Daily comics are sometimes seen as a burden to newspapers because they are not directly related to revenue as other sections of the papers are. Some editors complain that they can’t run ads on the comics page. Editors sometimes have more respect for “income producing” content.
Cartoon by Dave Granlund
4. For years editors have complained that they have paid to popularize the comics and don’t share in the rewards. Some editors have argued that syndicates should pay the newspapers to run the cartoons, because syndicates use newspapers to popularize characters, then make’ “big bucks” in licensing. Editors don’t have a lot of sympathy for syndicates.
5. Newspapers are reluctant to change the comics on their pages because they know they will receive passionate reader complaints, from readers who are loyal to their old favorite comics. The demographics of newspaper comics readers gets older and older, as timid editors refuse the short term pain of replacing tired, comfortable old strips with new, edgy strips that might appeal to younger readers. It is a vicious circle, with timid, short-term decisions leading to poor performance over the long term.
6. As newspapers turn their focus to their futures on the internet, comics are a problem. Some syndicates charge extra for their print clients to run comics on their web sites. Online syndication is broadly discouraged by Google, which lowers the SEO rankings of sites that run syndicated content and are not the “canonical source” for the content. There are syndicate provided modules or remote hosted pages with comics for newspaper sites, and some look nice, but the traffic to these goes to the syndicates. Many newspaper chains have corporate-wide policies of not running any syndicated content on their web sites, because of the extra charges from syndicates and because syndicated content is not their content. Although comic strips are popular online, it isn’t clear that online comics are a benefit to newspaper Web sites.
Of-course, newspapers should realize that the comics are an important part of the paper and perhaps the most beloved and appreciated part of the newspaper. Surely editors should see that cutting such popular content hastens the demise of newspapers – but for an editor, who is a “word-person,” who is annoyed by expenses, the lack of editorial control, and the unpleasant responses from readers who complain about the comics more than other parts of the newspaper, at a time when newspapers are suffering – it isn’t hard to see why comics are on the chopping block.
Most readers of Cagle.com will instantly recognize the cartoons of Bob Englehart, the award-winning cartoonist of the Hartford Courant. What you many not know is Bob is also a talented writer, and just released a new book about his life and how he became the bomb-launching cartoonist we all have come to love.
Three words- Short track racing.
Bob has been a fan of a particular brand of racing some call the “real NASCAR” all his life. But his relationship with the sport changed after witnessing a tragic accident at the track.
“In all my life, I’d never seen anyone killed on the track,” Englehart told me. “So when I saw 27 year-old Shane Hammond die in a wreck at Thompson International Speedway in 2008, it was so traumatic I had to make sense of it or give up watching the sport.”
Bob set out on a investigation that lasted three seasons, trying to find out what compels young people to throw heaps of money and risk life and limb to drive a race car 150 miles an hour around a local track for friends and total strangers. During that time, Bob’s wife, Pat, suggested it might be a good idea to write a memoir about his unique childhood and how it led him to his love of the working class heroes that made it to the track every weekend.
“I didn’t have the “All American” childhood,” Bob said. “When I was 6, I spent a year in bed with rheumatic fever drawing and painting racecars, circuses and cowboys and Indians. Later, my parents divorced at a time when divorce was rare. My brother and I came from a “broken home.” We had a stigma in the neighborhood with no dad in the house.”
Bob’s parents eventually re-married and had more children. But through it all, Bob turned to art and his sense of humor to get by. That combination of skills eventually landing Bob into a prolific career as an editorial cartoonist, garnering him tons of awards (including being names a Pulitzer Prize finalist) and the allocates of fans across the country, including myself. But for Bob, it’s all about love of family, in spite of the complexity and confusion if may involve.
He also has a suggestion for all the mom and dads our there with an artistically-inclined kid.
“Parents with children who like to draw might relax a little bit when they see the journey I took.”
“Trackrat: Memoir of a fan” is on sale now
Sad news to report. Talented cartoonist Mike Ritter, the art director for GA Voice in Atlanta and a former Cagle.com contributor, died suddenly on Sunday after emergency open heart surgery. He was just 48.
After attending college at Arizona State, Mike was hired as the editorial cartoonist for the Arizona Tribune in 1992, where he stayed for 13 years before leaving in 2005. His cartoons were syndicated by King Features, and he won a slew of awards, including the Thomson newspaper chain’s highest award for illustration and a Freedom of Information Award from the Arizona Newspaper Association.
Here’s Mike (right) at the 2004 AAEC Convention. To the left is a smiling Gary Trudeau, the creator of Doonesbury. (Photo courtesy Brian Fairrington)
Most notably was that Mike was an openly gay staff cartoonist at a mainstream daily newspaper in a harshly conservative state. According to former Editor & Publisher reporter Dave Astor, Mike was a former registered Republican, but as time went on his views became more and more libertarian.
Clay Jones, who draws cartoons for the Free Lace-Star, was the first cartoonist Mike told he was gay. Mike wanted Clay to help out him, but Clay refused, only to go on to accidentally out him later in a funny anecdote which includes Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez:
“I was visiting Los Angeles and I was in the offices of The Los Angeles Times visiting Michael Ramirez. We were in the midst of a conversation when Mike Ritter’s name came up and somewhere in there I related how Ritter wanted me to out him (I assumed by this point everyone knew). This was several months after Mike had confided in me (don’t know if “confided” is the right word since he wanted to be out, but didn’t want to do it himself). Ramirez was in shock and immediately picked up his phone and called Ritter. I’m screaming no but Ramirez gets on the phone and asks Ritter, “are you gay? Clay just told me this.” Ritter laughed and said yes and then the three of us, on a speaker phone had a 20 minute conversation.”
After Mike left the Tribune he fell off the radar, stopped coming to AAEC events and relocated to Georgia, where he would eventually become the art director for the LGBT newspaper GA Voice. He didn’t stop drawing cartoons – here are some of his best from his time at the GAVoice:
“Mike was a dear friend, a great person. He made me laugh. He made me think. He made me a better person and a better editor. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of old music and old movies. A true Renaissance man,” said Dyana Bagby, GA Voice editor. “He kept his great sense of humor until the very end even though he was in pain and uncomfortable. We at the GA Voice are heartbroken.”
Many friends and former colleagues have taken to Facebook and other channels to talk about the impact of Mike’s work:
“He was such an inspiration for me when I started out. And he was extraordinarily kind to me at my very first convention in Lexington. He will be missed.” – Adam Zyglis, Buffalo News
“I don’t think I’ve laughed harder than the year we were in Lexington, when Mike was president of the AAEC. Marshall Ramsey also put in an ultra-rare appearance that convention, and between the two of them in the hospitality suite on the last night, I had trouble breathing.” – JP Trostle, Indy Week
“What a horrible loss. I only really knew him through his work, which was awe-inspiring.” – Rick McKee, Augusta Chronicle
“I’ll forever remember helping a very happily soused Mike (singing show toons) make our way back to the hotel in Chattanooga. The guy was always in perpetual party mode and a super talent.” – Jeff Parker, Dustin
Doug Patton, a beloved columnist who Cagle Cartoons has been proud to syndicate since 2012, passed away on February 27, 2014 in his home in Bellevue, Neb. What follows is an obituary for a voice that will surely be missed by readers nationwide:
Doug Patton
Douglas K. Patton was born on January 18, 1948 in Red Oak, Iowa, the oldest of four children born to Donald and Donna Patton. During childhood, his father worked for several small town newspapers, so Doug spent his formative years living in various Iowa locales. In 1966, he graduated from Abraham Lincoln (AL) High School in Council Bluffs. Doug’s college studies were interrupted by a four year stint in the Air Force. Ultimately, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bellevue University.
On July 2, 1969, Doug married Pamela Sharples, and their family expanded to include two sons. The Patton’s have lived in the Omaha/Bellevue area their entire married life. Doug passed away on February 27 in the Bellevue home where he and Pam have resided since 1981.
Doug is preceded in death by his parents. He is survived by his wife of almost forty-five years; his two sons—Chris and Gabe (Angie) all of Bellevue; five grandchildren—Reagan, Tyson, Syres, Ashiyaan, and Aaryan; two sisters, Debbie (Larry) Snyder of Audubon, IA , and Diane (Scott) Frick of Sioux City, IA; and a brother David (Linda) Patton of Jefferson City, MO; and a host of extended family members and friends.
For those of us who were fortunate to share his life, memories of Doug’s humorous pontificating on a variety of subjects will long be treasured, but his passion, and zest for life will be richly missed. Doug was a sentimentalist at heart, and he loved deeply. He routinely referred to his beloved Pam as the bride of his youth and his baby doll. And he delighted in his sons—often recounting to friends how proud he was of their accomplishments and abilities. Doug considered his five grandchildren a great blessing bestowed upon him and Pam by God. He cherished his siblings and extended family; often remarking of Pam’s inseparable relationship with her twin, Penny, that “I didn’t realize when I said I do, I was saying I do, I do.”
His resounding voice, and distinctive chuckle will forever resonate with those he leaves behind. Doug had a commanding presence and a great intellect. A prolific writer, Doug touched countless lives through his syndicated column. However, the right-of-center political observer was not a born conservative. Doug’s political transition was the result of his spiritual conversion to faith in Jesus Christ in 1975.
In an era of ad nauseam political correctness, Doug boldly proclaimed truth without apology. He wasn’t a perfect man, but he served a perfect Savior. Doug was not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As a writer, he knew that it’s man’s words, not God’s that need editing. Doug articulated his beliefs and insights succinctly and with great precision.
As a career, he worked in several political capacities, including serving as the Communications Director of Jon Christensen’s congressional campaign, campaign manager for Brad Kuiper’s congressional race, and serving as district liaison for Iowa Representative Stephen King’s first term. He was also the founding executive director for the Nebraska Christian Coalition during the mid 90s. Although he was retired at the time of his death, he wrote a weekly syndicated column which appeared in both the Cagle Post and GOPUSA. His column was carried by many online websites and newspapers around the country. He was a regular contributor to the Messianic Times which allowed him to interview people about their faith from around the world. Several years ago, Doug wrote and published a series of Christian children’s books, complete with over forty original songs.
Doug enjoyed reading the scriptures aloud to Pam every morning and then discussing the verses. His favorite passage was Matthew 11:28-30. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Doug lived his life as he knew the Lord required: not perfectly, but humbly and without malice. He forgave those who wronged him and loved unconditionally. He knew what was right and what was wrong and in these things he would not be moved.
He lived like a warrior poet, and now he is free.
A month ago I posted my sketch for the 2014 editorial cartoon festival in St Just France – and I forgot to post the finished poster! here it is …
… and in case you forgot, here is the rough sketch.
This is based on an old painting of Marie Antoinette, that had such a huge derriere, that I thought it could, ambiguously, hide the body of a cow. In recent years the St Just festival poster has always featured a cow. They have cow statues on the roof of the cartoon museum there, in the middle of French cow country. And they have a recent tradition of dressing a cow statue at the entrance to the museum, to match the dress of the cow in the poster.
Last year, the cow was a ballerina – an easy costume. I thought I would put the volunteer seamstresses in St Just to the test this year, with a much more ambitious project. That’s their poster from last year at the right. Visit the St Just Festival web site here.
