Pollsters were on the minds of cartoonists this week, as we inch closer and closer to the 2022 midterm elections. Unfortunately, American’s won’t have a say in the makeup of the Supreme Court, despite the institution’s plunging approval ratings.
Editors also went with cartoons about Vladimir Putin and his continued invasion of Ukraine, especially after his suggestion about the use of nuclear weapons last week.
Here are our top ten most reprinted cartoons of the week:
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Here’s my new COVID cartoon, about all of the states that are dropping their mask mandates just as COVID cases are spiking. That includes: Texas, Alaska, Arizona,Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
I gave the maskless idiot the same basic face as the Coronaviruses – it’s only fair.
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.
President Trump seemed to be sure that Hurricane Dorian was headed to Alabama –so sure that he reportedly altered a weather map with a Sharpie pen to change the projected path of the storm, causing a media storm. Here’s my cartoon.
I was thinking of doing a graduated tonal background. I thought about making the line look like it was on the plane of the ground by messing around in Photoshop, and finally I thought –the messy, hand-drawn line with no background is funnier.
Cartoonists have a special relationship with Sharpie markers, and we have a flood of Trump/Sharpie cartoons blowing in! Here are my favorites! This one is by Taylor Jones …
This one by John Cole may have a little sexual innuendo going on.
One could argue that Pinocchio gives full employment to editorial cartoonists – if editorial cartoonists had full employment. This one is by Kevin Siers.
Here is part three of my story about my time as NCS president. Read part ONE and part TWO of the story. –Daryl Cagle
Arnold Roth did the theme art for my second convention, in Boca Raton, Florida, to support the International Museum of Cartoon Art.
I continued my “wedding planner” role as NCS president in my second year, and started work on planning my second convention.
At the time, Mort Walker was running a cartoon museum in Boca Raton, Florida. The museum was lovely, but struggling. The collection had originally been housed in a charming, concrete castle in Portchester, New York and I visited there frequently when I lived in NYC and Connecticut. The move to Florida was tough on the museum which was having trouble paying the mortgage on their new building, and having trouble drawing a crowd in their new location.
My first NCS convention at New York’s World Trade Center turned a profit of something more than $30,000.00. In those days the NCS kept a “prudent reserve” of about $250,000.00 on hand –enough to cover a convention that goes wrong, and now the reserve was pushing $300,000.00. With some new money burning a hole in our pockets, I asked the board to give a $30,000.00 donation to Mort’s struggling, Florida museum. Some people objected to the NCS’s donation. The loudest critic was Wiley Miller, who draws the comic “Non-Sequitur.” Wiley publicly and loudly resigned from the NCS, on the pages of Editor & Publisher magazine, because of the donation, which he described as a “misappropriation of funds,” and he later went on to draw a series of comics depicting me as a rotund, evil character, doing various dastardly things, in the newspaper comics pages. (Wiley spent a few years in the wilderness, then rejoined the NCS, and later went on to win the Reuben Award.)
Mort’s Museum of Cartoon Art as it used to be when I visited often, in Portchester, NY.
Cartoonists can be a grouchy bunch. Over time, volunteer organizations gather people who carve out niches for themselves and most of the rancor I faced as president was related to people defending a patchwork of old turf they had claimed, or thought they deserved. Some of the acrimony spilled into chat boards and social media. I didn’t win all of the battles. A big turf battle I lost was about the NCS’s longtime attorney who I wanted to fire. NCS old-timers threatened to give me major trouble if I canned their lawyer buddy, and I backed down. I ended the relationship with the NCS’s beloved travel agent, and the hefty travel agency fees on our hotel room blocks were redirected into paying our new management company’s fees. Our board was rowdy and we voted to kick one board member off of the board. I had a growing list of vocal detractors who complained loudly when I stepped on their toes. I have a pretty thick skin though, and I stirred the steamy cartoonist pot when I thought it needed stirring.
The International Museum of Cartoon Art, as it used to be in Boca Raton, Florida.
THE SECOND CONVENTION
Cartoonists in Ohio made a strong case for the next convention to be held in Cleveland, and my wife, Peg, and I did a site visit there. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer newspaper made a generous donation to the NCS to woo us. The Ohio cartoonists had proposed a hotel and made preliminary arrangements for a party at the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame. Then I got calls from Mort Walker and King Features, who were proposing that the next convention be held at Mort’s International Museum of Cartoon Art in Boca Raton, Florida.
Mort’s cartoon museum was near death. King Features proposed generous support for both the NCS and the museum by offering to throw a big party at the museum, if we brought the convention to Boca Raton. Mort and King Features thought the museum needed the publicity and a show of support from the cartoonists. Losing the museum would be a blow to our profession, and I had to agree. The NCS had held the Reubens convention in Boca Raton a few years earlier, when the museum building was under construction, but this looked like it might be the last opportunity to do what we could do to save the museum.
We had a lovely party in 2001 at the International Museum of Cartoon Art, but the museum later failed, just as we had feared. At one point, they even considered using only half of the space, and renting out the other half to a “Museum of the Holocaust” that was looking for a home in Boca Raton. I suggested that they make a revolving sign, Mickey Mouse on one side, inviting everyone to the Cartoon Museum, rotating with the Holocaust on the other side – but alas, someone must have thought the two museums weren’t a good fit.
We did a roast of cartoonist Mike Peters at my second convention.
The convention went well. Steve McGarry directed both the show at the Saturday night Reuben Awards, and a Sunday roast of cartoonist Mike Peters. I learned that many NCSers do an excellent impression of Mike Peters, including Jeff Keane who dislocated his shoulder while running up the steps to the stage, and hid the pain so the audience never knew that he was suffering. When Jeff left the stage, he was rushed off to a hospital. What a pro! Mike Luckovich took over the emcee roll for Reubens night, living up to the high standard established by Bil Keane over the course of many years. Mike did a great job, saving the day again.
I think this is a self-portrait of Arnie.
I had a huge presidential suite at the Boca Raton Resort & Club, something hotels throw in as part of a big room block. These crazy suites seem like a fun perk, but they are a burden. Though they are given to the president, they are really being given to the NCS which means there should be a party in the big room all the time, even when I want to sleep. I got a separate, regular hotel room where I actually slept, and where I could make a mess without worrying that someone might walk in.
I asked Arnie Roth to do the theme art for the convention, and I enjoyed working with Arnie as I did with Jack Davis the year before. This is the best part of the NCS president’s job. I also wrote a column in each of our newsletters and a different artist drew my portrait for each column, so I collected a bunch of great portraits. And the board gave me a lovely Jeff MacNelly original as a parting gift; it hangs in my living room.
THE CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL
The Congressional Gold Medal for Charles M. Schulz was an important award for the whole cartooning profession to show that cartoons are not “frivilous.”
Near the end of my tenure, my attention turned back to Sparky. I got a call from Senator Dianne Feistein’s office asking for help. The Senator had authored legislation that would give the Congressional Gold Medal to Sparky posthumously; this was America’s highest civilian honor and Sparky would be the only cartoonist in history to receive it. The bill should have sailed through the Senate, but it was being blocked by one senator, conservative, Republican Jesse Helms from North Carolina. Senator Feinstein had tried everything she could and was looking for help. Helms objected because he thought the award was “frivilous.” This was an important award for the whole cartooning profession to show that cartoons are not “frivilous.” Helms wouldn’t budge and it looked like the Gold Medal was going nowhere.
I reached out to a bunch of cartoonists asking if they had any contacts or ideas on how to twist Helms’ arm and I found Marie Woolf, a talented cartoonist whose work I syndicated back when my CagleCartoons.com syndicate was young. Marie had previously worked for Republican Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah; she called Hatch and made an impassioned plea for help. Marie asked me to have the NCS send a huge, red white and blue “patriotic” bouquet of flowers to Hatch’s office, which I did. That patriotic bouquet was a whopper.
Senator Hatch turned out to be a nice guy and a cartoon fan. He later wrote a forward for my Best Political Cartoons of the Year 2006 book. Tucker Carlson wrote a forward too, and he’s also a cartoon fan and a nice guy. (That’s crazy talk from a liberal cartoonist like me.)
It turned out that Hatch was a cartoon fan; he twisted Helm’s arm and Helms backed down, clearing the way for the Gold Medal –so the credit for the Gold Medal really belongs to Marie Woolf and Orrin Hatch. The House and Senate approved the award with only one dissenting vote, from Congressman Ron Paul of Texas. Hatch turned out to be a nice guy, and he later wrote a forward for my Best Political Cartoons of the Year 2006 book. There was a lovely Congressional Gold Medal celebration in Washington, but alas, by the time the Gold Medal party happened, I was no longer NCS president, and I missed out on the celebration.
By the time my presidential term came to an end, each of my Reuben conventions had turned a good profit; I inherited the NCS in good financial shape and left it in better shape. The new management company was collecting the membership dues properly, had cleaned up the records, and acclimated to the idiosyncrasies of our quirky needs; they were well-positioned to take on much of the work of future NCS events. I had cleared out much of the patchwork of claimed turf. We had raised expectations for more ambitious Reubens weekends. And, frankly, my wife Peg did most of my work.
Even though this all happened twenty years ago, it still makes me feel tired when I think about it; but I have lots of nice trophies and memories from the experience and I continue to enjoy the NCS as a civilian.
Some cartoonists complain that they don’t “get anything” from the NCS –what they get is the opportunity to hang with their colleagues and meet their cartoon heroes. I wholeheartedly recommend that all professional cartoonists join the NCS, visit the NCS site for more information about joining.
Read more old stuff about my career as a cartoonist on DarylCagle.com:
The politicians who oppose restrictions on gun sales, and who support sales of America’s most popular rifle, the AR-15, the assault rifles that is used in so many of these mass shootings, like to say that their “thoughts and prayers” are with the victims. I’m sick of “thoughts and prayers” from these murder enablers.
Today’s cartoon comes from a thoughtful fan on Facebook, commenting on my last cartoon, which was also about the Parkland, Florida school shooting. Many thanks to Jerry Moore!
It looks like cell phone videos of bad cops is making police all over America shy away from their jobs enough to make the crime rate soar. I’ve had this cartoon in mind for a long time, but for some reason I wasn’t happy with the layout and it took me a long time to draw – too long. I’m still not quite sure about the colors of the thought balloons. Oh well, time to move on, for me and for the police.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio announced that he is in the presidential race a couple of days ago. He’ll be running against his old mentor, Jeb Bush, so, here is Marco as a doggie, biting Bush in the butt.
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that almost everyone running for president this time around is really easy to draw. A couple are duds, Scott Walker and Martin O’Malley have lousy faces, but hopefully I won’t need to draw them.
I like the line art better, and I send it out to newspapers as the black and white version, but I’ve notices that papers are more often printing a grayscale version of the color cartoon. Frustrating. Editors like the tone and color, even though simple lines are more elegant.
