I was saddened to learn that my friend, and long time CagleCartoonist, Sandy Huffaker, has passed away.
Sandy was my hero in the 1970’s when I was in high school, and he was a big influence on me. The 1970’s were the glory days for cartoon illustrators and I rushed off to Manhattan in 1977, hoping to have a career drawing cartoons for the big magazines like my idol, Sandy. I loved reading Time magazine as a teenager because Sandy was in almost every issue, with delightful, colorful illustrations; in fact, Sandy was in all the major magazines in the 1970’s. Sandy’s work was everywhere!
When I first met Sandy, at the National Cartoonists Society, he had retired from illustration and had left New York to live in the woods of Virginia. He was doing beautiful, bucolic paintings and he missed the excitement of his cartooning glory days. My little syndicate was brand new and we talked about our love for political cartoons. I learned that Sandy had been a newspaper editorial cartoonist for a short time early in his career. He enjoyed his days drawing political cartoons and missed having a voice in the media. I said to my idol, “Come draw for me! I just started a little syndicate!” and to my surprize, with his distinctive Southern charm, Sandy said, “OK.”
From there Sandy drew 1,520 cartoons for Cagle Cartoons, regularly from 2002 to 2015 and his brilliant work was an important part of making our young syndicate a success – I don’t know how we would have made it without Sandy giving us a big lift at the beginning.
Sandy’s cartoons pulled no punches. We often got flooded with angry emails from readers and editors who Sandy offended. In 2003, one of Sandy’s cartoons depicted an Iraqi holding a book titled “The Koran for Dummies” that generated nearly ten thousand angry emails and death threats (more than any other cartoon we’ve distributed). More often Sandy elicited tyrades from conservatives. Sandy was our most controversial cartoonist, and our most liberal cartoonist.
I’ve been flipping through his archive and I selected a few of my favorites. I miss our many conversations, every time one of Sandy’s cartoons stirred up new outrage. Sandy loved stirring up outrage and I loved Sandy. I miss him.
When most cartoonists were jumping onto the bandwagon to war in Iraq, Sandy was accurately predicting what would happen.
Sandy hated president Bush.Sandy drew this one about the 2004 GOP convention in New York City.
When Sandy retired to Virginia he turned to fine art and painted lots of bucolic nature scenes with horses, like this one.Sandy Huffaker
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While the world is absorbed by the coronavirus, China’s nominal legislature decided take away any doubts about Hong Kong independent “special status.” Protestors are now facing the full brunt of China’s heavy hand. I drew this as the Chinese panda digesting Hong Kong, and burping.
I debated whether I should make the burpy umbrellas yellow; yellow umbrellas were the symbol of Hong Kong’s protestors in 2014, and more recent protests have embraced black umbrellas as protection against projectiles and water cannons from police, so I went with black
There aren’t many cartoons about Hong Kong now and my cartoon probably won’t get much ink – still, this should be a time for Hong Kong cartoons. I have selected some of my favorite Hong Kong protest cartoons from the past few years. At the end there are three Hong Kong cartoons from Luojie, our CagleCartoonist who draws for the China Daily, China’s official English language newspaper and voice of the communist government.
Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you! Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.
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Here’s my new “back to school” cartoon. This isn’t the “back to school” time of year, but there is a lot of news now about when and how schools will reopen with the coronavirus still raging.
Everyone tells me that I should post my messy rough sketches online. I’m told that this shows I’m a real person, and that readers love a “window into my process.” The temptation is to draw nicer looking roughs since I know people will see them, but that would take me down a slippery slope into cartoon madness.
Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you! Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.
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Every state is starting to open up from their shelter-in-place orders. President Trump is insisting that states open faster, threatening to override the decisions of governors. The quarantining at home has taken a heavy toll on regular folks, which is the topic of my cartoon.
People tell me that they want to see my rough sketches, so here you go. I only drew the family in the bottle once, but I moved their eyeballs for the second panel.
Every so often I make an error and I draw a right hand where there should be a left hand, or a left foot where there should be a right foot, and I get letters from readers pointing out the error with glee, as if they had solved a puzzle and deserve a prize for informing me about an important issue that demands my attention.
When I was a kid and a fan of Marvel Comics, I remember how Stan Lee handled these letters by giving readers, who found similar errors, a “no-prize.” My friends used to argue about what a “no-prize” consisted of, without it ever occurring to them that a “no-prize” could actually be no prize.
I’ve decided to embrace this phenomenon. In this cartoon I have a family of four stuffed in the bottle, and they have five left hands. That makes me laugh. I’m watching my email box.
Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you! Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.
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Here are the ten most popular cartoons of the week (May 16 -May 23).
Congratulations to Steve Sack who has the most popular cartoon of the week and two cartoons in the Top Ten! Bob Englehart also impresses with two of the most popular cartoons. Kudos go to the other cartoonists on the list, Dave Granlund, Dave Fitzsimmons, Bruce Plante, Jeff Koterba, Bill Day and RJ Matson. Eight of the Top Ten cartoons were about the pandemic – that is the fewest coronavirus cartoons on the list in weeks! We’ve flattened the curve!
Our top ten is a measure of how many of our subscribing newspaper editors choose to reprint each of our cartoons, from the 63 cartoonists in our syndication package. 20% of the cartoonists get 80% of the sales and reprints, and most of the cartoonists never make it into the Top Ten. If you don’t like the top ten, take it up with your local newspaper editor. Just about half of America’s daily, paid circulation newspapers subscribe to CagleCartoons.com.
Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you! Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.
The most popular cartoon of the week is by Steve Sack, who has TWO CARTOONS in the Top Ten this week.
#2
The second most popular cartoon of the week is by Dave Granlund.
#3
We have a tie for third place. This third most popular cartoon is by Dave Fitzsimmons.
#3
Tied for third place is this cartoon by Bruce Plante.
#5
We have another tie with both fifth place cartoons by Bob Englehart.
#5
Here’s the other cartoon that tied for fifth place, also by Bob Englehart.
#7
Here’s Steve Sack’s second cartoon in the Top Ten.
#8
The eighth most popular cartoon is from Jeff Koterba.
#9
One of only two non-coronavirus cartoons in the Top Ten is by Bill Day.
#10
The other non-coronavirus cartoon in the Top Ten is from RJ Matson.
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5/22/20 Note from Daryl: If you came to the blog this morning you saw a database error message, right when our email newsletter came out linking to this post. We’ve been suffering from an unusual denial of service attack directed at a particular component in the backend of our system, bringing down the blog. Our other sites displayed as cached versions this morning but are live again now, so all pages and functions are available again. We’re still working on defending against this ongoing DDoS attack, but all is well for now. Thanks for your patience.
Here’s my Trump taking hydroxychloroquine cartoon, a couple of days late but this topic seems to have legs.
And here’s the rough sketch because people seem to want to see that. The big curved arrow is a note to myself to switch the positions of the Democrat donkeys, because it is usually best to have characters face into a cartoon, but then I decided that I liked them facing out.
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Here are four of my recent hydroxychloroquine favorites from our CagleCartoonists. This one by Kevin Siers made me laugh.
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For today’s BLAME CHINA installment we have four cartoons from Luojie, our CagleCartoonist from Beijing who draws for The China Daily, China’s state owned, national English language newspaper – and four cartoons not by Luojie.
Our newspaper clients are crashing now as Coronavirus is crushing their advertisers. We need your support for Cagle.com (and DarylCagle.com) now more than ever! Notice that we run no advertising! We depend entirely upon the generosity of our readers to sustain Cagle.com. Please visit Cagle.com/heroes and make a contribution. You are much appreciated!
Sean Delonas (yes, that Murder Hornet came from Japan.)
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This is part three of a collection of my favorite coronavirus Grim Reaper cartoons. The Reaper (or “Death” for short) is a standard cliché for editorial cartoonists; he is a character that belongs to every cartoonist, like, Uncle Sam, Lady Liberty and the donkey and elephant …
We still need your support for Cagle.com! We have a long way to go to meet our goal of making Cagle.com entirely reader supported. If you enjoy the cartoons, please consider making a contribution! The pandemic is hitting us our business hard and we can only continue running Cagle.com with your support.
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Here are the ten most popular cartoons of the week (May 9 -May 16).
The big winner this week is Jeff Koterba of The Omaha World Herald, who has the most popular cartoon of the week and dominates with four cartoons in the top ten – an impressive performance that has never been matched. With the #2 cartoon, and two cartoons in the top ten, is Dave Granlund. Special congratulations to Bill Day who is making his first appearance in the Top Ten this week.
Our top ten is a measure of how many of our subscribing newspaper editors choose to reprint each of our cartoons, from the approximately 60 cartoonists in our syndication package. 20% of the cartoonists get 80% of the sales and reprints, and most of the cartoonists never make it into the Top Ten. If you don’t like the top ten, take it up with your local newspaper editor. Just about half of America’s daily, paid circulation newspapers subscribe to CagleCartoons.com.
Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you! Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.
The 6th most popular cartoon of the week is this one by Jeff Koterba, who has a whopping FOUR cartoons in the top ten this week.
#7
The seventh most popular cartoon is the unprecedented fourth cartoon from Jeff Koterba.
#8
The eighth most popular cartoon this week is the second cartoon in the Top Ten from Dave Granlund. This is also the only Top Ten cartoon that is not about the pandemic.
#9
This cartoon marks Bill Day‘s first appearance in the Top Ten.
#10
This cartoon is from Adam Zyglis of The Buffalo News.
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Here’s a special advance look at my new cartoon that goes out to newspapers tomorrow. Cartoons about about kids sheltering at home, while schools are closed for the pandemic, are among the most popular cartoons with editors. I have included a batch of my favorite pandemic/school cartoons below.
Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you! Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.
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I get a cable TV channel that lets me see a view of four news networks at once and I regularly switch back and forth between CNN, BBC, MSNBC and Fox News – and Fox News is a completely different world, especially the past couple of days as they have obsessed over the Michael Flynn story while other news focuses almost exclusively on the pandemic.
One thing I wanted to do in the cartoon was to draw the screaming Democrat donkey with a mask, and the daydreaming, pandemic-disinterested Republican with no mask. It occurred to me – what if I wanted to draw the elephant with a mask; how would I do that? A mask is supposed to cover your nose. Would the elephant have a mask the size of a bed sheet? Would his mask have a hose-like extension for his trunk? If I drew anything like that, would it even look like a mask?
These are important questions for Republicans, but only if they are going to wear masks. Wearing a mask is effective in protecting others, not yourself, so it makes ideological sense why Republicans would not want to wear them … still, if MAGA Republicans did want to wear them, I’d be in cartoon trouble.
Here is the rough sketch for this one, that I drew on a piece of Cagle Cartoons letterhead.
Notice that I thought about drawing the elephant in a Fox News t-shirt, but I decided against it. FoxNews.com used to be a great subscriber to CagleCartoons, but they recently cancelled their subscription. That’s very disappointing and a giant step in their descent into hell.
This post got me to thinking, so I drew this …
Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you! Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.
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Cartoon by CagleCartoonist, Dave Whamond from Canada
May 12, 2020
Congressman Salud Carbajal
District Office
Santa Barbara, CA
Dear Congressman Carbajal,
… I run a constituent small business in Montecito, Cagle Cartoons, Inc., that syndicates editorial cartoons and columnists. About half of America’s daily, paid-circulation newspapers subscribe to our service that you can see at CagleCartoons.com.
Journalism has been in decline for years, but the newspaper industry now faces sudden extinction with the pandemic as newspaper advertising revenue has crashed. A large percentage of our subscribing newspapers have simply stopped paying their bills; a good example is our local Santa Barbara News-Press that has run our cartoons and columns on their editorial page on most days for over 14 years – they are now seven months behind in their payments.
Industry experts predict that as many as two thirds of newspapers may not survive the pandemic. We saw the stock price of Gannett, the largest newspaper chain, drop from over $10/share to under a dollar in a matter of months (USA Today runs our cartoons). The loss of newspapers would also sink the editorial cartooning profession and our small business along with it.
Cartoon by CagleCartoonist, Bill Day
Our Web site, Cagle.com, is the face of the editorial cartooning profession to the world and we suffer for that as press freedoms around the world are in decline. Humorless despots hate seeing themselves in our cartoons and our sites are targets of sophisticated hacker attacks that clearly come from state actors. Although America benefits by demonstrating our values around the world through journalism and editorial cartoons, the US government does little or nothing to support editorial cartoonists and other journalists who suffer from foreign attacks.
We received an SBA PPP loan in the amount of $10,600.00; we applied for a very much larger loan based on our expenses which mainly consist of royalties to our artists and our tech expenses that are bloated by defenses against foreign hacker attacks. Our small business is unusual in that we have only two employees, our income from newspapers is broadly distributed to our contributors and the loan amount was not based on our actual expenses, it was based only on the salaries of our two employees, me and my bookkeeper. We have over 75 great cartoonists and columnists, who depend on us, who were ignored in the process because their income is reported on 1099s. The PPP program was not designed for us.
By CagleCartoonist Michael Kountouris from Greece
For many years I traveled around the world giving lectures through the US State Department Speaker Program. In nations without press freedoms, audiences were shocked to see how American cartoonists were free to criticize their government. Well more than half of the world’s population lives in countries where cartoonists are not allowed to draw their nation’s leader. The Speaker Program was effective in spreading our values and promoting press freedom. American editorial cartoonists are seen as stars around the world where we are well respected, like American astronauts, basketball players and jazz musicians. These effective State Department lecture programs have stopped featuring American editorial cartoonists during the Trump administration.
The impending collapse of journalism is a national tragedy that threatens our democracy. The newspaper industry has been lobbying in Washington seeking government support that is unlikely to happen during the Trump administration which has shown hostility to press criticism – criticism that is strongest and most visible among editorial cartoonists. If Democrats win the White House, I fear that any support for journalism may not include small syndicates and press services because our businesses are unusual. We are likely to be overlooked, as we were with the PPP program.
When legislators think of journalists they don’t think of editorial cartoonists. Editorial cartoonists are journalists. We are important. Don’t forget us.
Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you! Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.
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Sandy was my hero in the 1970’s when I was in high school, and he was a big influence on me. The 1970’s were the glory days for cartoon illustrators and I rushed off to Manhattan in 1977, hoping to have a career drawing cartoons for the big magazines like my idol, Sandy. I loved reading Time magazine as a teenager because Sandy was in almost every issue, with delightful, colorful illustrations; in fact, Sandy was in all the major magazines in the 1970’s. Sandy’s work was everywhere!
My little syndicate was brand new and we talked about our love for political cartoons. I learned that Sandy had been a newspaper editorial cartoonist for a short time early in his career. He enjoyed his days drawing political cartoons and missed having a voice in the media. I said to my idol, “Come draw for me! I just started a little syndicate!” and to my surprize, with his distinctive Southern charm, Sandy said, “OK.”
Sandy’s cartoons pulled no punches. We often got flooded with angry emails from readers and editors who Sandy offended. In 2003, one of Sandy’s cartoons depicted an Iraqi holding a book titled “The Koran for Dummies” that generated nearly ten thousand angry emails and death threats (more than any other cartoon we’ve distributed). More often Sandy elicited tyrades from conservatives. Sandy was our most controversial cartoonist, and our most liberal cartoonist.
#4
