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
Here is my first try at doing a cartoon in Procreate.
It is my first steps. Like a baby picture. I’ve been getting my arm twisted by my son and a bunch of my artists to get off of Photoshop and my desktop Mac, and move to Procreate on an iPad. Here’s a detail.
My son, Buster, is doing all of his art on the iPad now, as are many of the CagleCartoonists. Some of them brag about how little time it takes them to color their cartoons. Rivers, our anonymous, conservative cartoonist is an example – he draws his cartoons alarmingly quickly in Procreate.
Rivers‘ linework is wonderful. He created his own “pen” for Procreate, that he shared with me and has been encouraging me to use. It is a lovely “pen” but I’m not there yet. I didn’t draw this cartoon in Procreate, I only painted it on the iPad and drew it in pencil on paper. I know. I’m late coming to this, and it took a lot of nagging to get me here, and this first one was a struggle – but I see that I have to do it.
I used watercolor brushes for this one, and it really does look like watercolor. Everyone can witness my next, painful baby steps with my next cartoons. (I cringe looking at this one.) If drawing cartoons was easier and faster, I would draw more cartoons, which is something I really should be doing.
There’s a lot I give up with Procreate. I like CMYK and true black lines on the K channel. Procreate doesn’t do that, and a lot of the things that Photoshop does easily are a challenge in Procreate. Still, gotta do it.
Here’s one from Rivers done in Procreate with his lovely pen.
Here’s one from Pat Bagley, drawn in Procreate, with his charming “carpenter’s pencil” lines.
Here’s a lovely, bloody oldie from the great Steve Sack, all done in Procreate.
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I’m sorry to write that my friend and longtime CagleCartoonist, Steve Sack has retired from editorial cartooning. Here’s a note Steve wrote for our subscribing editors:
It’s with extremely mixed feelings that after 42 years, and over ten thousand cartoons, I will be retiring from the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
I’ve been away from my drawing table in recent weeks, recovering from hand surgery for carpal tunnel and other nerve issues. I’ll eventually have my hand back. But after truly difficult reflection I’ve decided that I’d like to change my focus. At 68 I have other interests and projects, artistic and otherwise, that I’d like to devote more time to.
I want to sincerely thank you for printing or at least considering my work for your paper. An artist needs an audience and I am most appreciative that you could share my efforts with your readers. As much as cartoonists sometimes complain and butt heads with editors, in truth we depend on you.
I hope you continue to support our unique profession. It’s been my honor to appear on your pages.
Best,
Steve Sack
Steve drew his last cartoon for us two months ago, on February 25th. We were hoping for a quick come back from his surgery, but that was not to be. This is a sad day, but Steve doesn’t sound sad; he seems excited about different projects. Our door is always open to Steve to return. Steve’s cartoon archive will remain on our sites, with his oldies available to editors.
Steve’s actual last cartoon, or I should say, most recent cartoon, is this Tucker Carlson gem, in collaboration with Ed Wexler. Steve called Ed to describe his idea which Ed drew up. I’ve invited Steve to do the same with me; we’ll see if that happens.
Steve wrote this piece for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and asked me to hold it until today:
Message to Star Tribune readers
———————-
It’s with extremely mixed feelings that after 42 years, and over ten thousand cartoons, I will be retiring from the Minneapolis Star Tribune.I wish I was able to offer a proper farewell cartoon. I’ve been away from my drawing table in recent weeks, recovering from hand surgery for carpal tunnel and other nerve issues. I’ll eventually have my hand back. But after truly difficult reflection I’ve decided that I’d like to change my focus. At 68 I have other interests and projects, artistic and otherwise, that I’d like to devote more time to.
It’s been a pleasure to work with everyone at the Star Tribune. The support I’ve felt over the years from the editors, writers, and support staff from every department has made this a cartoonist’s dream job.
I’d like to express my sincere appreciation for you, my readers. Since my career’s beginning at the U of M student paper, The Daily, I’ve been cranking out cartoons for 45 years. They haven’t all been gems but I can honestly say I gave each one my all. Some readers have taken exception to a few of the views I’ve expressed. OK, maybe more than a few….that’s the nature of the opinion biz. The Minneapolis Tribune editor who hired me, the late great Charles Bailey, gave me just one directive: “Never be afraid to make people angry, but know exactly why you’re doing it”. A political cartoonist couldn’t ask for more.
A few years back the Star Tribune published a collection of my cartoons in a book, “The First and Only Book of Sack” (still available in the Star Tribune online store!). To help promote it I stepped up my public appearances and had the opportunity to visit with many of our newspaper’s readers in person. I never failed to be gratified by the appreciation for the Star Tribune’s journalism that was conveyed.
Editorial cartooning is a negative art form, for the most part. We look for things to complain about, find fault, point fingers. The world is a mess and always has been, somewhere. We look for it. Our tools can be harsh: Sarcasm. Caricature. Gross exaggeration. We twist politicians’ words, nitpik their faults and figuratively pull down their pants. The lofty goal of it all this is to expose a Greater Truth. Which simply boils down to sharing one’s view of the world. That’s the goal of every artist.
From Day 1 in 1981 its been my honor to be the cartoonist for the Star Tribune. Whether you loved my cartoons or hated them, posted them on your refrigerator or lined your bird cage, thank you for allowing me to be a small part of your day.
Steve Sack
See Steve’s farewell in the Star-Tribune.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune will continue running CagleCartoons now that Steve has left.
Our weekly Top Ten is now a newspaper column! Subscribing editors can find it at CagleCartoons.com with download links to grab the cartoons in high resolution.
Want to get EVERY new CagleCartoon from our 62 syndicated newspaper editorial cartoonists, in your email box every day? Just become a Cagle.com HERO and you get the exclusive daily emails of ALL THE CARTOONS! See all the cartoons before the newspapers print them and never miss a cartoon!
Here are our most reprinted cartoons of the year, 2020. We have about 700 newspapers in the USA that subscribe to our CagleCartoons.com syndicate service and we collect data on which cartoons newspaper editors download; these cartoons were the biggest hits – each was the #1 cartoons the week it ran.
The most reprinted cartoons of the year provide a clear lesson in what newspaper editors wanted to see with five of the cartoons explicitly about the pandemic and a couple of others generally about bad times. The cartoons emphasize how much editors want to see cartoons about holidays and events (Christmas, New Year, Election Day, Daylight Savings Time Day, change of season). The cartoons also clearly show how most newspaper editors tend to avoid cartoons about politics and president Trump, to the frustration of the political cartoonists.
What is most amazing about the Top Ten cartoons this year is the stellar performance of Dave Granlund who took the #1 and #2 spots with the most reprinted cartoons of the year. Jeff Koterba, Dave Whamond and I have two cartoons each on the list.
Congratulations to the other cartoonists with a most reprinted cartoons of the year: Dave Fitzsimmons. Rick McKee and Steve Sack! Check out the 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, editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers sink too, and along with them, our Cagle.com site.
The world needs political cartoonists more now than ever. Please consider supporting Cagle.com and visit Cagle.com/heroes.
Dave Granlund wins the year with this wildly popular Christmas/Pandemic cartoon.
Dave Granlund also takes second place with this Election Day reminder cartoon. Call to vote cartoons were very popular this year.
Jeff Koterba takes third place with his first of two cartoons in the Top Ten.
Dave Whamond takes 4th place, with the first of two cartoons on the list. Cartoons complaining about what a terrible year 2020 was, were very popular.
I took 5th place with this general complaint about the bad times.
Jeff Koterba takes 6th place with this COVID/New Year combo – his second on the list.
My second cartoon on the list was a call to vote emphasizing “mail-in voting” which President Trump claimed was fraudulent because more Democrats tend to vote by mail.
Dave Whamond claims 8th place with this cartoon about distance learning. Cartoons about school during the pandemic were top performers with editors this year.
Rick McKee takes 9th place with Christmas/COVID combo cartoon.
Steve Sack nabs tenth place with this lovely Autumn/how-bad-things-are cartoon.
Want to get EVERY new CagleCartoon from our 62 syndicated newspaper editorial cartoonists, in your email box every day? Just become a Cagle.com HERO and you get the exclusive daily emails of ALL THE CARTOONS! See all the cartoons before the newspapers print them and never miss a cartoon!
Here are the top ten most popular cartoons of the pandemic, from February 1st through May 4th, 2020. These are the cartoons that our newspaper subscribers chose to print from nearly 2,000 pandemic cartoons delivered from our syndication service, CagleCartoons.com. About half of America’s daily, paid-circulation newspapers subscribe to CagleCartoons.com, so these are likely the cartoons that most newspaper readers have seen in the past three months, appearing in hundreds of newspapers.
Regular readers of our blog and newsletter see our collection of the top ten cartoons every week, and have probably already seen all of these in our weekly collections, but this list puts them in perspective. (Subscribe to our free email newsletter so you never miss our weekly “Top Ten Most Popular Cartoons”.)
What really stands out is the stellar performance of freelance cartoonist, Rick McKee, who has the number one most popular pandemic cartoon and who crushes the coronavirus field with a whopping three cartoons dominating the pandemic top ten. Rick was recently laid off from The Augusta Chronicle newspaper in Georgia (what a mistake that was). The number two cartoon belongs to Steve Sack of The Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The rest in the top ten will be familiar to all of our fans.
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 world needs political cartoonists more now than ever. Please consider supporting Cagle.com and visit Cagle.com/heroes.
We need you!
The most popular cartoon of the pandemic is this one, from Rick McKee.
The second most popular cartoon is from Steve Sack of The Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
In third place there is a tie between Rick McKee and Steve Sack.
The fifth place cartoon comes from Gannett freelancer, Dave Granlund.
The sixth place cartoon is the third cartoon in the top ten that comes from Rick McKee.
The seventh place cartoon is the number one cartoon from last week, by John Cole of The Times-Tribune in Scranton Pennsylvania.
The eighth place cartoon comes from the Canadian cartoon maestro, Dave Whamond, who is the only non-American in the top ten.
The ninth place cartoon comes from Adam Zyglis, the cartoonist for the Buffalo News in New York.
The tenth place cartoon comes Dave Fitzsimmons of The Arizona Daily Star.
Please forward this to your friends – tell them our Cagle.com email newsletters are FREE and FUN! They can join the newsletter list at Cagle.com/subscribe.
Don’t miss our most popular cartoons of the week collections:
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through November 21st, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through November 14th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through November 7th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through October 31st, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through October 24th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through October 17th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through October 10th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through October 3rd, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through September 26th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through September 19th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through September 12th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through September 5th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through August 29th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through August 22nd, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through August 15th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through August 8th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through August 1st, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through July 25th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through July 18th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through July 11th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through July 4th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through June 20th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through June 13th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through June 6th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through May 30th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through May 23rd, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through May 16th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through May 8th, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Pandemic (as of May 4th)
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through May 2nd, 2020
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through 4/26/20, (all coronavirus)
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week through 4/18/20, (all coronavirus)
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week, through 4/11/20 (all coronavirus)
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week, 4/4/20 (all coronavirus)
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week, 3/29/20 (all coronavirus)
Top Ten Cartoons of the Week, 3/21/20 (all coronavirus)
Steve Sack’s favorite cartoons of the past decade are below! Steve is the Pulitzer Prize winning staff cartoonist for The Minneapolis Star-Tribune in Minnesota. See Steve’s favorite cartoons of the decade on USA Today, where you can click on each cartoon and see it blown up to fill the screen with a pretty, high-resolution image. See the complete archive of Steve’s editorial cartoons here.
Look at our other, great collections of Cartoons Favorites of the Decade, selected by the artists.
Pat Bagley Decade!
Nate Beeler Decade!
Daryl Cagle Decade!
Patrick Chappatte Decade!
John Cole Decade!
John Darkow Decade!
Bill Day Decade!
Sean Delonas Decade!
Bob Englehart Decade!
Randall Enos Decade!
Dave Granlund Decade!
Taylor Jones Decade!
Mike Keefe Decade!
Peter Kuper Decade!
Jeff Koterba Decade!
RJ Matson Decade!
Gary McCoy Decade!
Rick McKee Decade!
Milt Priggee Decade!
Bruce Plante Decade!
Steve Sack Decade!
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Here is my selection of my favorite cartoons of the decade. See them on the USA Today site here.
I pitched the idea to Gannett of running collections of favorite cartoons of the decade every day in December, the last month of the decade, with a selection by a different cartoonist each day. We, along with USA Today, selected the CagleCartoonists we would invite to participate and we asked them each to choose their favorite cartoons from the past ten years. I submitted twenty-nine batches of cartoons, selected by each of twenty-nine of our CagleCartoonists. USA Today plans on showcasing their own Gannett employee cartoonists, Thompson, Marlette, Murphy and Archer, through Thursday, with our CagleCartoonists finishing out the month, starting this Friday with Pat Bagley.
USA Today started off their daily, decade slideshows today with their talented cartoonist, Mike Thompson, who also did the work of laying all of these collections out for The USA Today Network sites (that includes the individual Web sites for all of Gannett’s 100+ daily newspapers). Visit USA Today’s Opinion page online to see these every day this month. Click on each cartoon in each slideshow to see a full-screen, high-resolution version of each cartoon, which is very nice.
It is very difficult to select a small batch of cartoons to represent an entire decade!!
Getting twenty-nine CagleCartoonists to each select a decade of favorites was challenging. Obama certainly got shorted as many cartoonists are obsessed with Trump now. A couple of cartoonists selected only Trump-bashing cartoons, which made for a poor representation of the decade –but hey, the fact that the cartoonists chose their own favorites made this project interesting. Some cartoonists, who have been with us for less than ten years, had to dig into their personal archives to cover the whole decade, so some of the cartoons haven’t been seen on Cagle.com. New Yorker/Mad Magazine/graphic-novelist Peter Kuper joined CagleCartoons.com just a couple of months ago and had to dig up his whole collection from his magazine gag cartoon archives. Dave Whamond and Ed Wexler, who joined us more recently, reached into their vaults for some of their early-decade cartoons; Ed selected some from when he was regularly drawing for US News & World Report magazine. Mike Keefe and Bill Schorr came out of their recent retirements to contribute their selections of favorites.
I wouldn’t call these selections the “best” of the decade, they are just the artists’ choices. I also can’t say that they represent the decade well (but what the heck).
Look at our other, great collections of Cartoons Favorites of the Decade, selected by the artists.
Pat Bagley Decade!
Nate Beeler Decade!
Daryl Cagle Decade!
Patrick Chappatte Decade!
John Cole Decade!
John Darkow Decade!
Bill Day Decade!
Sean Delonas Decade!
Bob Englehart Decade!
Randall Enos Decade!
Dave Granlund Decade!
Taylor Jones Decade!
Mike Keefe Decade!
Peter Kuper Decade!
Jeff Koterba Decade!
RJ Matson Decade!
Gary McCoy Decade!
Rick McKee Decade!
Milt Priggee Decade!
Bruce Plante Decade!
Steve Sack Decade!
We need your support for Cagle.com (and DarylCagle.com)! Notice that we run no advertising! We depend entirely upon the generosity of our readers to sustain the site. Please visit Cagle.com/heroes and make a contribution. You are much appreciated!
The huge, English language, official, government owned newspaper, The China Daily, subscribes to CagleCartoons, and we syndicate their lead cartoonist, Luojie. I have included a bunch of recent cartoons at the bottom of the page, from Luojie about the protests in Hong Kong. As we would expect, Luojie’s cartoons express the official view of the Chinese government, that the Hong Kong protesters are rioting terrorists.
Luojie‘s cartoons capture the tenor of the Chinese press reports and editorials about the Hong Kong “riots” which mention nothing about the protestors’ demands for continued autonomy and democracy, and have no mention of excessive violence by Hong Kong police that we are used to seeing in Western coverage. In fact, Luojie’s Hong Kong cartoons stand in stark contrast to all of the other cartoons from CagleCartoonists, and I would guess, from any editorial cartoonists outside of China.
I just got back from a couple of weeks visiting China for a big festival in the coastal city of Xiamen, put on by ASIFA China. I was invited to be a judge for their big cartoon competition.
They had two categories of judges for print and animation (I was on the print jury).
Here I am in the photo below, with my colleagues from both juries – that’s me in the center/front. The other Westerners are cartoon scholar John Lent on the far right, and Bosnian animator/DJ Berin Tuzlić behind me in the colorful shirt.
It took my jury three days of work to go through all the print submissions. The top prizes are $15,000.00 USD each, which is a hefty prize. I’m surprised that American cartoonists don’t enter this generous, annual competition. The Xiamen festival has invited a bunch of CagleCartoonists to be jurors in recent years, including Steve Sack, Bruce Plante, Milt Priggee and Pat Bagley. We all thought the competition and festival were great.
Like other cities in China, Xiamen looks brand new; it is busy, bustling and crammed full of tall skyscrapers. Xiamen is a small city by Chinese standards, with a population close to the size of Los Angeles, and it is home to lots of CGI animation studios.
I see Xiamen, and all of China, as a gastronomic adventure – eating is a joy in China!
I saw that the major Western news sites were blocked by China’s “Great Firewall” and I learned how to use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to read the Western newspapers and download my podcasts through Japan. The TV in my hotel room included CNN International, which was running regular updates on the conflict in Hong Kong that were either entirely blacked out, or selectively blacked out, showing criticism of the protestors but going silent and black when each segment turned to criticism of the government or police.
China’s “One Country, Two Systems” plan for Hong Kong isn’t looking very good; China makes the same pitch to Taiwan – a pitch that isn’t very attractive right now as it looks more likely that Hong Kong will be fully consumed and digested into China’s communist system, as the protests continue and intensify. I didn’t find anyone in mainland China that agrees with me. The Chinese folks I talked to privately told me that they shared the official view that the Hong Kong protestors were terrorists that must be put down.
I’m disappointed that President Trump seems to side with the government in China against the protestors, even so, the official view in China is that America is “supporting the terrorists” in Hong Kong, as Luojie illustrates. Here’s Luojie‘s official take on the Hong Kong protests …
I just got back from our big convention at the editorial cartooning festival in the little village of St Just le Martel, France.
The French call editorial cartoons “press cartoons” and editorial cartoonists are “dessinateurs de presse.” It was a struggle to get our dessinateurs de presse together for a group Cagle photo this year! Here’s one attempt.
CagleCartoonists above, standing from left to right are Iranian exile and new Cagle.com cartoonist, Hasan Kareimsdeh, Pierre Ballouhey from France, Manny Francisco from the Philippines, Gatis Sluka from Latvia, on top of the cow in the red hat is Cristina Sampaio from Portugal, standing below her is David Fitzsimmons, Ed Wexler, Steve Sack, Adam Zyglis and Pat Bagley. Kneeling or sitting from left to right are Christo Komarnitsky from Bulgaria, Jeff Koterba, me (Daryl Cagle), Emad Hajjaj from Jordan and Gary McCoy.
And here’s another attempt about fifteen minutes later with two new French CagleCartoonists added on the left, Robert Rousso and Jean-Michel Renault. Others wandered off. We missed seven or eight of our CagleCartoonists who were in St Just and didn’t show up for either photo. The cats just won’t stay in one place, and they don’t come when called.
This short video shows about half of our CagleCartoons Trump vs. Iran exhibit at St Just. We also participated in two other exhibits there, one bashing The New York Times for dropping editorial cartoons, and another, of memorial cartoons for the festival’s beloved founder, Gerard Vandenbroucke, who passed away in the last year.
https://youtu.be/54vreTdaJQ4
I’ve been coming to St Just for seven or eight years now and it has grown into an effective Cagle Cartoons convention for us. There is no other festival for editorial cartoons in the world that is anything like it. All the folks in the little village turn out to welcome the cartoonists, who they host in their homes. The cartoonists bond with their local host families and stay with the same family year after year. The charming and generous St. Just family, Greg and Geraldine Decoster, who hosted me and my cartoonist/musician son Michael, are shown in the photo at the right, in the cartoon museum.
The town’s teenagers are waiters at the huge, impressive dinners for the many editorial cartoonists from around the world. The video below was created by our CagleCartoonist, David Fitzsimmons, which shows the dinner scene, along with showing the cool editorial cartoon museum, the cute little town, St Just’s medieval church, the presentation of the cow to the cartoonist of the year (Swiss cartoonist, Thierry Barrigue) and more. (See my son, Michael drawing on the table at dinnertime in the video.)
Here are a bunch of Americans drinking and carousing at the home of Steve Sack‘s lovely St Just family (who prefers to remain anonymous).
Who are we? From the bottom going clockwise: in the red shirt there’s Jeff Koterba, in the lower left is my cartoonist/musician son, Michael, moving up and around the table, there’s Ed Wexler, Gary McCoy, Steve Sack‘s son and daughter-in-law Adam and Mandy, Dave Fitzsimmons, Ed Wexler‘s daughter Sarah, Adam Zyglis, Dave’s wife Ellen, Pat Bagley‘s girlfriend Kate and Pat, Steve Sack, and Ed Wexler‘s wife Toni. I’m missing from the photo. (Maybe I’m taking the picture, holding that mysterious glass of red wine.)
The festival (or “salon” as they call it) is growing and this was their biggest year out of nearly 40 years in existence, and they are taking on an increasingly important role for our troubled profession. St Just le Martel is much appreciated! Thanks everyone!
Anti-Vaxxers have been out in force, protesting California’s Senate Bill 276 that would make it harder for unethical doctors to grant bogus medical exemptions to parents who don’t want to vaccinate their children. Ignorant celebrities have been leading the charge. Last week we got stories about Justin Timberlake’s wife, Jessica Biel doing the lobbying rounds both evil. anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
The dangerous, celebrity idiots don’t like to be called “anti-vaxxers,” they prefer to be described as “pro-informed consent,” or “pro-vaccine choice,” or “anti-forced vaccination,” or “vaccine risk aware,” all of which mean the same thing. Dangerous and ignorant. Here’s an cartoon about the anti-vaxxers that I drew three years ago …
Here are some of my favorite anti-vaxxer cartoons by my buddies – these first two are by Nate Beeler.
The next two are by Steve Sack …
This one is by Adam Zyglis …
Here’s Dave Whamond on the celebrity asses …
Here’s a nice one from Dave Granlund.
Britain’s fever pitch of stress about Brexit is cranking up, day by day, as each new deadline approaches. One thing all the Brits seem to agree about is how they dislike Theresa May, her Brexit deal, and how she has gone about pitching and re-pitching the deal to Parliament. 
The topic dominates the minds of our international editorial cartoonists.
I like Theresa May. I don’t think her position on Brexit matters much since Parliament and the EU wouldn’t be able to agree on anything. Whatever position May had taken would lead to the same toxic impasse. My cartoon with May struggling to support Big Ben is actually a positive cartoon about her – I think she’s trying hard in a no-win situation.
I like the vertical cropping of my cartoon better than the wide version that I sent out to newspapers. I wanted May to look small under the crushing weight of the huge tower that looms over Parliament, but I wasn’t quite sure how small she could be to still be perceived as holding up the tower, rather than just looking like she’s being crushed –which would be a cartoon that means something else. I drew this as two pieces, one was the “Elizabeth Tower” (Big Ben), and the other was Theresa May, then I placed and sized May in Photoshop, making her as small as I thought I could for the cartoon to work.
I thought the tower was pretty forgiving and I got most of the architectural details wrong along with the perspective. The circle of the clock face is especially bad – I wasn’t thinking much about that at the time but now that I look at the reduced version, it bothers me. I should have generated a good circle in Photoshop and traced it, but no, I thought my lousy cartoonist freehand was fine. Too late now; it went out to newspapers already. Water under the bridge.
I don’t think I’ve seen any cartoons supporting May in the deluge of Brexit bashing that has been pouring into Cagle Tower in recent weeks. Powerful people get no sympathy, and editorial cartoonists aren’t known for sympathy. Here’s my wide cartoon and some of my recent Brexit favorites.
This one is by my buddy, Steve Sack of The Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
This one is by the brilliant, Dutch cartoonist, Hajo.
This one is by self-syndication king, Joe Heller.
This is by my new pal. Nicola Listes from Croatia.
And this Brexit Mobius Strip is by John Cole from Scranton, Pennsylvania!
Updated 2/19/19 with new cartoons – Daryl
Cartoonists around the world are drawing memorial tribute cartoons for our dear, departed friend Gérard Vandenbroucke, the founder and president of the Salon at St Just le Martel and long time champion of our editorial cartooning profession. Read my obit here. I’ll post new cartoons as they come in.
Gérard was also a politician who rose from being the mayor of the tiny village of St Just le Martel to being the president of the Limousin region of France, famous for their brown cows that are an icon of the cartoon museum – that’s why there are so many cows in the cartoons.
This one is by Christo Komarnitsky from Bulgaria
This one by Bob Englehart may require some explanation. Gérard was the mayor of St Just le Martel and he championed the cartoon museum and Salon in the tiny village. St Just le Martel translates to “Saint Just the Hammer.” As the story goes, God told Saint Just to throw his hammer and build a church where it landed; Bob’s cartoon puts Gérard in the St Just role, throwing his hammer to decide where to build the cartoon museum/festival.
This one is by Osmani Simanca from Brazil
This one is from Gary McCoy
Here is my own cartoon.
This one is by Ed Wexler!
This one is by Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
This cartoon is by Marilena Nardi from Italy
This one is by Jeff Koterba of the Omaha World Herald.
By Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune.
This is by Firuz Kutal of Norway.
This one is by Tchavdar Nicolov from Bulgaria’s Prass Press.
This one is by my buddy, Robert Rousso, who is the dean of the French cartoonists.
This linoleum block print is by Randy Enos.
This one is by Danish cartoonist Neils Bo Bojesen.
This one is by my buddy, Batti Manfruelli from Corsica.
Pierre Ballouhey drew Gérard on the left, resuming a conversation with his two deceased pals on a cloud. In the middle is the priest of the lovely, little, medieval church of St Just le Martel. At the right is the late, chain-smoking, French cartoonist Jean-Jacques Loup, a talented cartoonist who curated the exhibitions at the museum for many years.
Here’s another by Pierre, the Limousin cows paint themselves black with grief.
This charming cartoon is by the charming French cartoonist, Placide. The village of St Just le Martel is behind the statue of Gérard, with the cartoon museum in the middle and the medieval church on the right.
This cartoon is by Romanian cartoonist Pavel Constantin.
This one is by Rick McKee of the Augusta Chronicle.
By Oguz Gurel from Turkey
This one is by Cristina Sampaio from Portugal.
This Gérard tribute is from Brazilian cartoonist and animator, CAó Cruz Alves
From the French cartoonist, my buddy Noder
