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Top Ten Cartoons of the Week – December 5, 2020

Here are our most reprinted cartoons of last week (November 28th through December 5th 2020). The Top Ten cartoons were tightly bunched, and all were big hits with editors.

Five of the cartoons had Christmas themes. Seven of the cartoons are about the pandemic. As usual, no drawings of Trump were popular with newspaper editors. No cartoons about foreign issues were popular. 20% of the cartoons get 80% of the reprints – that means the Top Ten cartoons are what readers see.

Dave Whamond had a great week again this week, with strong #1 and #4 cartoons. RJ Matson had a very impressive week, with the #2 and #6 cartoons. Dave Granlund is also second to no one with two cartoons in the Top Ten.

Congratulations to the other cartoonists with the most reprinted cartoons of the week, John Darkow, Rick McKee, Adam Zyglis and Jeff Koterba who continues his long streak in the Top Ten.

Our Top Ten is a measure of how many editors choose to reprint each of our cartoons, from the 62 cartoonists in our CagleCartoons.com syndication package. Just about half of America’s daily, paid circulation newspapers (around 700 papers) subscribe to CagleCartoons.com


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#1

Dave Whamond wins the week with this very popular Christmas/pandemic cartoon.

 

#2

RJ Matson takes second place with his first of two cartoons in the Top Ten.

 

#3

John Darkow snags third place with this about the female football player at Vanderbilt – a topic that editors clearly wanted to see in cartoons.

 

#4

Dave Granlund is tied for 4th place again with the first of his three cartoons in the Top Ten.

 

#4

Dave Whamond is also tied for 4th place with his second cartoon on the most reprinted list. Editors love cartoons that complain about how terrible this year has been.

 

#6

RJ Matson  takes 6th place with this beautiful rendering. Waterfalls are hard to draw, the Capitol building is hard to draw, and it is hard to make this dramatic perspective work.  This one is an eye-popper.

 

#7

Jeff Koterba claims 7th place with another Christmas/pandemic cartoon. Jeff seems to have carved out a permanent home on the weekly Top Ten.

 

#8

Dave Granlund is tied for 8th place with his second cartoon in the Top Ten.

 

#8

Rick McKee shares the tie for 8th place. Editors don’t seem to shy away from Biden cartoons, as they do with Trump cartoons, but cartoonists don’t draw Biden often.

 

#10

Adam Zyglis avoids drawing a self-portrait in this auto-biographical cartoon.


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Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso

Here is my latest cartoon, about the Republican infighting while Obama just sits back and waits for a deal.

BattlingGOP 600wideCOLOR Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoons

 

This Fiscal Cliff mess came about because of the failure of the “Super-Committee.” I remembered a drawing a did of the Super-Committee some time ago, with a nice fight scene between super donkeys and elephants …

98752 600 Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoons

I liked that Super-Committee cartoon. Super political stuff is always great for cartoonists, especially when super-politicians fail. It occurred to me that I could use the fight scene again, if the donkeys were elephants, so I printed it out lightly and sketched in some rough changes, adding Obama and making the donkeys into elephants in the same, fighting positions …

Sketch600wide Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoons

… and then I drew over it for finished line on vellum.  This black and white line drawing is what most people see in the newspaper …

BattlingGOPlineart600wide Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoons
… and then I colored it in layers on Photoshop. The line drawing is always better than the color, but readers and editors never seem to think so.

The previous cartoon was also about GOP angst, this time in the form of Picasso’s Guernica (below).

guernica600wideforweb Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoons

Oh the GOP suffering; oh the humanity!  I did pretty much the same thing with this one. I printed out the Guernica painting and traced a nice line drawing on vellum.

124469 600 Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoonsI wanted it to look like it came from my hand, which is why I did all the cross hatching and un-Picasso like line quality.  Then I added the gray tone …

124470 600 Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoons

Oh!  Those poor Republicans! My most recent one was the New Years Fiscal Cliff cartoon below. This one probably works better on the Web because you have to scroll down to get to the gag.

124677 600 Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoons

My wife thought this one was too cruel to babies. She told me I shouldn’t draw it. My Australian cartoonist buddy, Peter Broelman did a similar one today, without being cruel to the baby – and his will get reprinted more because it isn’t in a vertical format.  My wife likes Peter’s better too.  Oh well.

124642 600 Cliffs, Fighting Elephants and Picasso cartoons