DarylCagle.comHere are our best, newest cartoons about EVIL ICE AGENTS!
#1. Rick McKee
#2. Ed Wexler
#3. Pat Bagley
#4. Steve Sack
#5. Pat Bagley
#6. John Darkow
Lately I’ve been haunting my own past, rummaging through drawers stuffed with self-portraits that stretch back 50 years—from a wide-eyed 19-year-old college kid in 1976 to the bearded, battle-scarred cartoonist I became, dodging hackers, raising a family, and even fielding endless questions about my long-gone Trump-era beard. I’ve got way too many of these staring back at me! This one is from 1976, when I was a student at Santa Barbara City College—pencil on beloved Graphix Duoshade paper (which I still miss). Yep, that’s exactly what I looked like. And yes, that’s how we all dressed in the ’70s.
France Cartoons is collecting self portraits of cartoonists, which has me rummaging through my drawers. This is me from Trump’s first term when I had a white beard. People are still asking me “What happened to the beard?” Trump hasn’t changed, though.
This self-portrait is me with my daughter, Susie, 28 years ago, in a comic I did that ran for about a year in the weekly “TV Times” magazine in the UK and a similar national TV guide type magazine in Australia. Notice the old TV, and old land-line phone, and young Susie. (This was years before the beard.)
I drew this self portrait after we had a big hacker attack that erased our servers, and we could identify that the attack came from China. I can still feel their breath on my neck.
Here’s another old self-portrait. This one is from back when I had a beard and I got my marijuana license. Now marijuana is everywhere and you don’t need a license (in California). That’s progress, I suppose. This ran as a full page in our local Santa Barbara Independent and it features my wife, Peg and son, Buster.
And don’t miss our MOST POPULAR CARTOONS OF THE 2025! IT’S GREAT! WATCH IT!
What do people want to read about in the waining days of summer? Gerrymandering.
In Texas, at the behest of Donald Trump, Republicans pushed through a controversial new election map expected to cost five Democrats in Congress their seats during next year’s midterm elections. Democrats in California responded by creating their own map that would flip five Republican congressional seats, a move which will be decided by voters during a special election in November.
This race to the bottom was the target of Monte Wolverton’s cartoon, our most-reprinted this week. I also liked Dave Whamond’s popular cartoon comparing new congressional maps to a Jackson Pollock painting.
With everything else going on, how much do American’s care? Are they even checked in? As Chris Weyant summed up well in his new back-to-school cartoon, the kids are happy “just to get a break from the news cycle.”
Here are our top ten most reprinted cartoons of the week:
#1. Monte Wolverton
#2. John Darkow
#3. Dave Whamond
#4. Dave Granlund
#5. Dave Granlund
#6. Chris Weyant
#7. Taylor Jones
#8. John Cole
#9. Dave Whamond
#10. Dave Granlund
Join host Daryl Cagle for a compelling episode of Caglecast, exploring the high stakes of political cartooning with guests Zehra Ömeroğlu and Terry Anderson. Zehra, a Turkish cartoonist, recounts her grueling five-year trial in Turkey over a satirical cartoon in LeMan magazine, facing potential imprisonment despite a recent acquittal now under appeal. Terry Anderson, Executive Director of Cartoonists Rights Network International, sheds light on global threats to cartoonists, from the shutdown of LeMan to arrests in Iran and Egypt. This episode uncovers the courage and risks behind political satire in an era of censorship and authoritarianism.
YouTube has rated our new podcast for adults only, which makes it difficult to find and view. Users must be registered with YouTube and must log in, and prove that they are over 18 years old to view the video. This has effectively blocked this important Caglecast from getting an audience on YouTube.
Guest Bios:
Episode Highlights:
I just posted a new Caglecast with 135 great cartoons depicting Trump as an animal. You can probably watch this without noticed that there’s something funny about our eyes. I tried using A.I. for the first time –oops!
One problem I have with these videos is that I’m a one-man-band video crew, looking at the monitors to switch views, select cartoons and make adjustments as we go along, so I turn my head left and right, and I look down, and I rarely stare blankly into the camera as I should do. I look distracted. So I tried a new A.I. gizmo that adjusts my gaze to look into the camera. I watched the beginning of the video as I turned my head from side to side, but my stare remained on the camera, and I thought it looked good. This is a feature of an editing program I use, called “Descript,” and they call their A.I. “Overlord.”
Then, after I posted the video on YouTube, and I looked a little more closely, I noticed my eyes would sometime dart around, at one point rolling up into my head; poor Adam Zyglis had a twitchy right eye, and at one point is cross eyed. And some cartoons are googley eyed too.
This cartoon by Bart van Leeuwen made me laugh, at 35:10 into the video, the A.I. Overlord animated the eyes on Trump and Biden and it looks pretty funny. Take a look.
At 44:47 into the video, this cartoon by Dave Granlund also gets strangely realistic, with moving eyes that reminded me of the mouths on the old Clutch Cargo show from 1960. I liked that show when I was five years old. It was creepy.
Even though you might think that Adam and I are occasionally having a stroke, I decided to leave this version of the video up without re-editing. I won’t be using the Overlord again.
Cartoonists who keep their eyes focused on A.I. are getting other headaches now. Here’s a cartoon by Bob Englehart that was recently stolen and redrawn with AI.
The U.S. economy shrank in the first quarter this year, but don’t blame Trump’s tariffs or all the uncertainly created by his administration during his first 100 days in office. No, according to Trump, this is still the economy of Joe Biden, who hasn’t been president for more than three months.
Our most-reprinted cartoon this week, drawn by Dave Granlund, shows a middle class family alongside other endangered species. Another popular economic cartoon came from Dave Whamond, who knew exactly where to put a cartoon of eggs in the jewelry store.
Here are our top ten most reprinted cartoons of the week:
#1. Dave Granlund
#2. Dave Whamond
#3. Bruce Plante
#4. Chris Weyant
#5. Dave Whamond
#6. Dave Whamond
#7. Dave Granlund
#8. Bob Englehart
#9. Dave Whamond
#10. Daryl Cagle
For the past few weeks, mysterious drones flying over New Jersey have raised a lot of questions that remain largely unanswered by the government.
Authorities have said there’s nothing to worry about, and that a majority of the drone sightings are actually planes and passenger jets. Yet this week, the FAA temporarily banned drone flights over 20 locations in New Jersey “out of an abundance of caution.”
Not surprisingly, our cartoonists were fixated on the drone story, using the timing of Christmas to point their fingers at Santa. I liked Rick McKee’s cartoon, which features three wise men and a drone stand-in for the North Star.
McKee also had our most-reprinted cartoon of the week, but it didn’t have anything to do with drones – it shows Santa being confronted by a kid with an empty stocking. Just wait until Trump’s tariffs kick in.
Here are our top ten most reprinted cartoons of the week:
#1. Rick McKee
#2. John Darkow
#3. Dave Granlund
#4. Gary McCoy
#5. Dave Whamond
#6. Dave Whamond
#7. Rick McKee
#8. Dave Granlund
#9. Bill Day
#10. Dave Whamond
Our brand new Caglecast features brilliant caricaturists Ed Wexler and Taylor Jones along with their favorite Trump Bashing cartoons. Readers have written asking for the cartoonists to talk more about their art process, so Ed and Taylor show off a bunch of their favorite cartoons and discuss discuss how they approach drawing celebrities in the news.
Taylor Jones shows his favorite Trump cartoons in our new podcast …
And Taylor talks about his other carticature work, including this one, which is one of my favorites. Readers tell me they want to hear more from our artists about their process of doing their art. OK. I hear you.
I’m sorry it has been so long since the last podcast –I’ve been away! There is more to come, I promise!
The episode starts off with Ed talking about his Trump alphabet, which has led to a number of lively Trump cartoons, like the ones below. Ed has a special exhibition this year at the St Just about his Trump Alphabet cartoons!
And ed talks about his brilliant caricature work, like this front/back cover for the Hollywood Reporter.
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It was a real smorgasbord of a week, with topics ranging from president debates to airplanes falling apart to the threat of yet another potential government shutdown.
Our most popular cartoon this week was Jeff Koterba’s funny peek into something we’re all dealing with – managing out ever-growing list of streaming subscriptions and passwords.
Here are our top ten most reprinted cartoons of the week:
#1. Jeff Koterba
#2. Daryl Cagle
Don’t miss our new BIDEN BASHING (and Trump) podcast on YouTube!
#3. Bob Englehart
#4. Jeff Koterba
#5. Guy Parsons
#6. Gary McCoy
#7. DaveWhamond
#8. R.J. Matson
#9. Jeff Koterba
#10. John Darkow
Here’s my new cartoon about what the presidential race is looking like now. I talk all about it on our new Caglecast! We have three brilliant cartoonists, Michael Ramirez, Gary McCoy and Rivers showing off their cartoons from their alternative news bubble reality on the right.
Michael talks about a few of his wettest cartoons in this episode, here are my favorites:
Now there’s a highly unlikely couple.
On our most recent Caglecast podcast we asked three great editorial cartoonists to discuss drawings that depict the famous duo’s politics, cultural influence and, of course, their hair.
I’ll spare readers what Jeff Koterba, Rick McKee, Taylor Jones and I said about Trump or his politics — except to confess that we coupled him with Swift just because nobody watches if we don’t have the Donald to mock and skewer.
Joined by Jase Graves, a nationally syndicated humor columnist and Swiftie whom we syndicate at CagleCartoons.com, we concentrated on about 27 Swift cartoons.
We old guys generally agreed that she was a talented and beautiful person who despite being hard to caricature was fun to draw. Plus, I like Taylor Swift’s kind of politics just fine.
She too criticizes Trump. She is a pro-choice feminist. She supports LGTBQ rights and gun control. She voted for Biden-Harris in 2020. And she’s all for the removal of Confederate statues in Tennessee, where monuments to racist traitors are ubiquitous.
I’m a Swiftie – mostly for political cartoonist reasons. Another Swiftie is Jeff Koterba, who has drawn for over 30 years for the top newspaper in Nebraska.
We discussed his cartoon that showed a wall poster of Taylor on stage in a young girl’s bedroom and a poster in her brother’s bedroom that showed a busty Dolly Parton on stage in shorts with a bare midriff.
Jeff said he was looking for an upbeat and pleasant take on a world filled with awful terrible things like war overseas and nasty partisan politics at home.
Speaking of which – or should I say “drawing of which”? – Rick McKee’s Swift cartoon showed Uncle Sam buried under an avalanche of 20 important boulders like “Inflation,” “Ukraine War,” Govt. Corruption.”
A news reporter is bent over asking semi-crushed Uncle Sam, “How do you feel about Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift?”
McKee, who was the cartoonist for decades for the Augusta Chronicle in Georgia, was reacting to the Taylor Swift frenzy in the national media last summer. Though not a devout Swiftie, he admits being “a recent convert” to understanding her massive appeal.
Taylor Jones, who draws for the Hoover Digest at Stanford, showed Taylor Swift on stage surrounded by a bunch of birds. She asks, “Are you my fans too?” and one says, “We’re chimney Swifts — the original Swifties!”
When I said I found it hard to draw attractive people like Taylor because their features are, by definition, too normal, too smooth and boring looking, Jones disagreed.
“To me,” he said, “Taylor Swift is pretty distinctive looking…. She’s got very thick hair” and there’s hardly “any space between her bangs and her eyes.”
I added that in addition to her great smile, her teeth are not just distinctive, they are cute. Usually you’d think teeth should not be noticeable.
Jace Graves, the writer among us, said, it’s not just that Taylor Swift is beautiful. It’s that “she’s aware of her imperfections and she’s very real. I think that’s one thing that draws people to her.”
We discussed other cartoons from around the country starring Taylor Swift, including one by John Darkow that played off the fact that Time magazine named her its Person of the Year.
As two AI robots are looking at the Time magazine with Swift’s face on the cover, Darkow has one saying, “We’ll let them have this one” and the other saying, “But it’ll be the last.”
Eventually we picked up on the subject of Taylor Swift’s gigantic impact on the sports world because of her romance with K.C. Chiefs star Travis Kelce.
Dave Whamond’s cartoon had Taylor Swift named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year – and the NFL’s MVP.
We spent most of our 40 minutes focused on Taylor Swift and the impact she’s had on the economy, culture, sports, politics, the music industry and the hearts, minds and bodies of young girls.
We had virtually nothing negative to say about her – which was a refreshing change for our profession.
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Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of CagleCartoons.com, a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to over 500 subscribing newspapers.
We have a cool – yet hot – new Caglecast about Global Warming with three brilliant, award winning cartoonists discussing their cartoons about our growing climate apocalypse. See the podcast here:
Pat Bagley has been the brilliant, cartoonist for the Salt Lake Tribune in Utah since 1979. Pat has won a ton of awards including the Herblock Award and he’s also a shining star in our profession.
Graeme MacKay is the brilliant cartoonist for the Hamilton Spectator in Ontario, Canada and he’s won a ton of awards too.
Rod Emmerson is the brilliant cartoonist for the New Zealand Herald since 2003, before that he was an Australian cartoonist and he’s won tons of awards too, including two Australian Stanley awards for best editorial cartoonist.
Come take a look on YouTube –it really is a great one with great cartoonists, and it is fun to see the faces behind the cartoons.
