Surprisingly, no Cartoonist With Attitude - or just a cartoonist with a love of snark - has linked to this commentary by college editorial cartoonist Ryan Rosendal on the requirements of the profession.

It's pretty funny.

Link found via Journalista!

I just learned the news from The Daily Cartoonist that Will Elder has died. Alan Gardner links to a great tribute by MAD cartoonist Tom Richmond. Tom links to Mark Evanier, as well as some great stories about Elder at Journalista!.

For those who don't know, Elder was among the original stable of MAD Magazine cartoonists and a frequent collaborator with Mad founder Harvey Kurtzman. As a kid of the 1970s, I grew up reading MAD, absorbing stylistic tics from Mort Drucker, Sergio Aragones, Al Jaffee, George Woodbridge and, of course, Don Martin. Then one day, I picked up one of MAD's anniversary issues that had a bonus reprint of one of the original incarnations of the magazine from the 1950s - the Kurtzman era. It was like a whole other world, a completely different take on a magazine I had known so well. It was wilder, more anarchic, more irreverent, and screamingly funnier. I loved this MAD. I wanted more of this MAD. At the time, I didn't know where to look, so I re-read that one issue, trying to suck in through my eyeballs all the drawing lessons I could absorb from both Elder and Wally Wood. To this day, as I draw I consciously and sometimes unconsciously ape elements of the detailed, gorgeously rendered yet highly energetic style Elder pioneered.

The NY Times Arts & Leisure section has a wonderful profile of Al Jaffee, the cartoonist behind MAD Magazine's long-running "fold-in" gag and "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" series.

Among the many great MAD cartoonists, the most influential for me as a young, budding toonster were Sergio Aragones, Mort Drucker, George Woodbridge, and Jaffee. Drucker had spot-on caricatures, and Woodbridge had such a biting style. But Jaffee and Aragones drew what I considered proper "cartoons" by proper "cartoonists": they wrote and drew their own stuff in a less realistic, more funny style. And they hit on a wide variety of subjects, from current events, politics, fashion and pop culture, to more sinister aspects of modern American society. I love this fold-out as described in the NY Times profile:

July 1968: “What is the one thing most school dropouts are sure to become?” A picture of teenagers at an employment center folds into a piece of artillery with a kid stuffed in it, and the answer: “Cannon fodder.”

Jesus, that's brilliant. Bitter, angry, caustic - yet funny. It's something I aspire to with every In Contempt strip I draw. Glad to see Jaffee continues to put out his stuff, despite cancer and advanced age, with a technique I am still too timid to take up: water color and gouache. Photoshop has made things too damn easy.

From Mr. Fish...of course.

Speaking of white privilege, I'm following the conversation over at Daily Cartoonist regarding a plan by several syndicated African American cartoonists (including Cartoonists With Attitude member Keith Knight) to publish a similar cartoon on the same day. The idea is to make fun of the habit of newspaper editors to lump all comic strips created by black cartoonists as "black strips" regardless of the actual content of the strip. For some strange reason, the Daily Cartoonist has called it a "sit-in" which tends to distort (unintentionally) the purpose of the protest. As Cory Thomas puts it, "I think 'sit-in' is making this seem a lot more militant and mirthless than it actually is."

BTW - Until now I had not heard of Cory Thomas. His "Watch Your Head" is incredibly well drawn and pretty amusing. So, yay, new discovery for me!

Without disputing the concerns of the protest, I should add that the chances of new material by cartoonists of all stripes would be greatly enhanced were newspaper editors not so beholden to zombie strips like, oh, I dunno, Blondie?

In this latest installment, Dr. Knott continues to probe the inner recesses of Sheldon's mind.

Part of this page was drawn with actual crayon. It was fun to go outside the digital box. And into the Crayola box.

On to other things: In a NY Times Book Review of Islamophobia: Making Muslims the Enemy, Shibley Telhami describes the focus by the authors on political cartoons that have appeared following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001:

The cartoons show violent, oversexed males, oppressed females, deceptive foreigners. The cartoonists, the authors argue, frequently conflate terrorist groups or the Taliban with Muslims or Arabs in general. One example shows the Taliban in Arab headdresses. “The underlying presumption is that Pashtun Muslims dress as all Muslims dress — as the stereotyped Arab.” (They don’t.) Another cartoon, they say, suggests that “Islamic beliefs inflamed Arab hatred of the United States.”
Still, it’s hard to tell how representative these examples are, since we can’t compare them with other cartoons that may have been more balanced. It’s also hard to measure their impact on public opinion.

As someone drawing political cartoons since before 9/11, I have been observing the work of my peers in the mainstream and alternative presses as well. The latter crowd have been pretty careful in their representations of Muslims, recognizing that there are geographical, historical ethnic and sectarian divisions within a religion comprising over a billion people throughout the world. Personally speaking, I took pains to examine news photos of the specific people whose countries we were bombing or threatening to bomb, noted common modes of dress, ethnic characteristics and gender signifiers. I wanted to get the details right, because I was attempting to portray people I have little personal contact with yet who suffer at the weapons of my government. I'm not tooting some sanctimonious horn here; it's what a responsible artist does.

The mainstream folks are more spotty; some cartoonists are more conscious than others, and some are just total hacks. Prior to 9/11 newspaper editorial cartoonists, with few exceptions and regardless of political leanings, portrayed Arabs mostly as fat sheiks with "OPEC" branded on their bellies or headdresses; only the Palestinians warranted different costumes, mostly militant and violent. It should be noted here that "Muslim" and "Arab" and "Palestinian" were frequently conflated concepts. Whether or not such cartoons had direct "impact on public opinion" they were symptomatic of a larger cultural ignorance that, once attacked by the more extreme elements from a part of the world hitherto ignored, kicked into paranoiac and viciously racist overdrive.

I think it's appropriate to use political cartoons in the mainstream press as indicators of a society's tropes of fear, ignorance and anger, especially in a critique of American cultural responses to unprecedented terrorist attacks on American soil. Editors choose and pay for political cartoons because they concisely express a viewpoint reflecting popular discourse on a topic. This discourse is framed by various interests, of course, not least of which is the publisher's, an increasingly faceless entity as newspapers are consumed within the larger matrices of corporate properties. One instance of an Islamophobic cartoon - or even a handful of such - is a likely aberration; but we're talking about a frequently occurring set of negative stereotypes that are widespread and run deep historically. Indeed what troubles me is that these stereotypes are so ingrained they can be produced effortlessly with no conscious malice on the part of the offending cartoonist. After 9/11 and into the present day the tactics of our warmongering political class have exploited these stereotypes to keep the fear, anger and ignorance alive, overwhelming rational dissenting criticism of policies that threaten to establish a police state at home and a perpetual war abroad. Cartoonists should never allow themselves to be so used. 

As someone who strives hard to nail the essence of a politician or a public figure through caricature, I have a longstanding love (and envy) for the work of Pat Oliphant and Steve Brodner.


Pat Oliphant, 12/19/2007. And here's one where Cheney is skeet shooting children which offended readers at The Houston Chronicle. Survey the field of editorial cartoonists and you'll find a lot of artists inspired by Oliphant but few who match him for wit and bite. Two aspects of this drawing make it a great caricature: its subject is immediately recognizable and the artist's attitude or feeling toward (or in this case, against) is obvious. Oliphant has brought out key features of Cheney here: the smirk, the hunk, the glare, the side-of-the-mouth talking, and the overall sense of a conniving, criminal mind full of machinations.

Machinations!

Working in a more exaggerated and painterly style, Steve Brodner is often compared to Ralph Steadman and Gerald Scarfe (who get compared to each other often enough.) Yet Brodner is far more accurate in both his rendering and in his grasping the core of his subject's persona. The examples from Brodner's Person-of-the-Day blog), below, are excellent, although they don't reflect Brodner's watercolor work, which is the artist at his best.



From Steve Brodner, 12/5/2007.

And now Brodner riffing on Andrew Sullivan's remark that Hillary Clinton is really Dick Cheney  in a pantsuit.

Cheney in both drawings is deliciously grotesque, a snarling figure - or as George Bailey might put it, "a warped, frustrated old man" and a "scurvy little spider." The only thing recognizably "Hillary" is the hair and the pearls. I don't think the purse is necessary, as I don't think I have ever seen Senator Clinton carrying one. The bombs falling his/her sleeve is an apt touch.

Here is a cartoon by nationally syndicated political cartoonist Mike Lester:



Here is what Pacman Jones looks like:





The real solution to this discrepancy is that Lester needs to learn (or to remember) how to draw people period. Then he needs to remember that caricature exaggerates recognizable features of the subject. For example, Hillary Clinton has apple cheeks and heavy lidded eyes, so most caricatures of her focus on those features. Barak Obama has a long neck and big ears. Pacman Jones has dreds. He does NOT have big lips. Unless the only people Lester knows are tight-lipped WASPs, he should realize the Jones' lips are about average for a human being, regardless of race, ethnicity or sex. They are clearly not his most recognizable feature. At best I would focus more on set of his mouth, a kind of ironic smirk that befits his bad boy image. It would still not take up half his head.

Do political cartoonists have seminars on this stuff?

Recently I became a member of Cartoonists With Attitude, a group of dedicated and funny cartoonists who have all a) appeared in one of the ATTITUDE collections edited by Ted Rall  (I was in 2) and b) continue to put out comic strips with a hard, satiric edge. I'm not yet on the front page, but you can see me listed among the artist biographies. Half of those folks are already on my friendslist, and a few of them are fellow Portlanders. Barry Deutsch isn't on there yet, but he will be soon. As soon as he gets off his ass!

Just kidding, Barry. Ya knows I loves ya.

You may be asking, "Well, smart guy, what kind of attitude is this?" or "Where's Dr. Dre?"

Last first, Dr. Dre is currently bringing the funk to Ithaca (which could use it), but has no connection to CWA.

Now the first question: I think the defining attitude is a mixture of outrage and skepticism regarding politics, popular culture, so-called "common sense" or "conventional wisdom," and ideological canards from any part of the political spectrum. Most CWAers hold strong left-of-center, left-of-liberal, or so-far-left-it's-like-a-whole-other-dimension-out-here beliefs on social justice, economic equality, cultural and sexual identity, and so on. But all of us hold an equally strong independent streak that resists doctrinaire thinking or the creation of propaganda for some "party line."

At least, that's how I would describe it. Others might say we're malcontents who make rude noises and snarky comments in the back of the classroom. And that would fit, too.

UPDATE 11/10/07: Barry's bio is now up, too, with a handsome portrait of the cartoonist at work. He gets serious maturity points. As opposed to yours truly.