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Orlando Shooting

Such a horror. I drew this one quickly this morning. Our hearts and prayers are with the victims and their families.

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Trump and the Easter Bunny

There has been a lot of talk about Donald Trump’s foreign policy advisors. Trump says he consults himself on foreign policy issues, which makes for a nice Easter cartoon. The cartoon harkens back to Jimmy Stewart’s “Harvey” the invisible bunny friend.

trump-bunny750

The video below shows me drawing the whole thing, from start to finish in real time!

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Trump, Polls and the GOP!

I drew today’s Trump cartoon live on YouTube. Here is the finished color version.

trump-polls

That’s the GOP’s tarnished image at the right, as Trump rockets up in the polls. To really be going up in the polls, he should be facing to the right instead of the left – and I thought about that for a bit, as you can see in the video, but having Trump go the wrong way is better.

Today’s Trump news, about how he would ban Muslims from coming into the USA until we figure out “what the hell is going on” is great fun, because Trump’s supporters love what he has to say, while mainstream Republicans and the media are offended, demanding again and again that Trump leave the race. That tarnished GOP brand is starting to look pretty crusty.

Living here in red-state Tennessee I see angry Republicans are all around me; they live in their own news bubble, with their own history of the world, reinforced by their communities of like minded, angry, evangelical conservatives. The typical Republican voters are much father right than their knuckle-dragging candidates. Trump has plenty of room to his right to be even more outrageous.

Oh! Today I learned that the government of Pakistan is no longer blocking access to Cagle.com within Pakistan! Welcome to all of our new Pakistani readers!

COME WATCH ME DRAW THIS THING!

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The pundits on Fox News are holding their breath, turning blue, waiting for Obama to say the words, “Islamic Terrorists.” It may be a long wait.

I’ve gotten comments about how there appears to be nothing inside of Obama’s head. I wasn’t really thinking about making him be brainless, rather I was thinking of his skull as something of an echo chamber.

This cartoon was the product of my first try at live streaming the process of my drawing a cartoon. I had some tech difficulties, particularly with the sound. And I see that I will need to develop a new skill set for talking constantly while I draw. I should do a little better next time, solving these problems as I go along. Take a look at the YouTube video of my drawing session below. If the streaming is popular I’ll set up a regular time for it in the future. In the meantime, I’ll announce on Facebook and Twitter when I’ll be going live on YouTube.

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San Bernardino, Guns, Republicans and the NRA

My cartoon today about the terror attack in San Bernardino, inspired by the interesting front page on the New York Daily News.

Standing in a crowed of bloody, murder victims while saying something ironic or hypocritical is a cartoon cliche that every cartoonist has drawn many times. Here’s a similar cartoon that my buddy Pat Bagley drew recently in response to San Bernardino …

This Steve Sack cartoon is probably my favorite San Bernardino cartoon – it is a response to the New York Daily News  prayer front page and the rejection of another gun control vote in congress, with a wonderful rosary.

Here’s another one of my dead field of victims cartoons about Bashar Assar – as fresh today as it was when I drew it some time ago.

Here’s another one where I used the same victims. I traced the same dead crowd, and changed their clothes to Taliban duds.  There was a story at the time criticizing American servicemen for peeing on the corpses of Taliban fighters they had just killed in battle. I got a lot of angry reader response to this cartoon.

This also isn’t the first time I’ve drawn the NRA as a pig. Here is a Cagle classic NRA pig cartoon …

Pigs are a wonderful cartoon standard; they are a symbol of greed. Here’s a standard Cagle piggy oldie …

Pigs and standing among fields of the dead are two of my favorite things! (Maybe that’s another reason why those Islamic extremists don’t like cartoonists.)

 

 

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The GOP and the Refugee Doorway

The Republicans are trying hard to push back against the inflows of refugees and immigrants. Here’s my take. Often when I do cartoons that have muted colors, I get complaints from editors who want brighter colors. Refugees don’t lend themselves well to bright colors.

Often when I do cartoons have have muted colors, I get complaints from editors who want brighter colors. Refugees don’t lend themselves well to bright colors. I’m trying to do more texture in my cartoons now. Here’s a detail.

refugeeDoorDetail

Here’s my rough and dirty sketch. You can see that I fiddled around with the position of the elephant’s trunk before I was happy with it.

Doorsketch

I put a “Thanks to Michael Kounturis” in the lower left. Michael works out of Athens, Greece and he is one of my favorite cartoonists; he recently came back to our CagleCartoons.com newspaper syndicate package after a hiatus. My GOP Doorway cartoon was inspired by Michael’s cartoon below.

I stole a lot from Michael’s cartoon, including the position of the door and the guy pushing back on the door – and the general composition with the doorway poking up, off-center. It is all lovely – so thanks, Michael, and you have my apologies for ripping you off! See more of Michael’s great cartoons here.

 

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France Weeps

We’ve been receiving a torrent of cartoons from around the world about last Friday’s terror attacks in Paris. I’ve been disappointed by most of the cartoons so far, many of which contain graphic pools of blood, depictions of monsters and broken Eiffel Towers. I think the first few days after an event like this are a time to express sympathy, so I went with a weeping Marianne, the French symbol from the Eugene Delacroix painting La Liberté Guidant le People (Liberty Leading the People). 

Marianne2
Delacroix’s Marianne.

I struggled to think of what I wanted to draw, so I wouldn’t be drawing blood, candles, monsters or Eiffel Towers like the rest of the crowd. I like Marianne as a symbol for France and I like that the French embrace her as their own symbol. It was interesting to see so many of the cartoonists drawing the Statue of Liberty this weekend, the statue was a gift from France but she is a symbol of America.

Marianne has some problems: first, she may not be recognizable enough when she is seen out of the context of the Delacroix painting: second, her face exists only as a profile facing left, which can be a little limiting; third, she has one bare breast (or arguably, two bare breasts) and American editors are reluctant to print bare breasts – even though her bare breast is necessary to define who Marianne is in the cartoon. I suppose it is fitting that I had to struggle with this one.

Below is my rough sketch.

FranceLibertySketch700

I started out thinking of more cliches, like the candle and the flag at half staff – both bad ideas. I also ruminated about how to draw the drapery in her dress, which seems to be a heavy fabric rather than a normal fabric, along with her emerging toes. Here she is in black and white. (Yes, the flag pole covers up her nipple – I debated about that too.)

Then I colored her in – and I was disappointed with the result.

france-weeps-cagle-COLOR

Editors and readers always like cartoons better when they are in color, even in cases like this, where the color only cheapens the cartoon. One of my readers on Facebook, Rod Underhill, made the excellent suggestion that I limit the color to the flag; that was a great suggestion – and voila, a much better cartoon (shown at the top of the page)! I deleted the previous color version and sent a correction out to the newspaper clients.

Here’s another Marianne cartoon, a double breasted version. This one was popular in France where they find President Francois Hollande rather annoying.

This interesting Marianne comes from my French cartoonist buddy, Pierre Ballouhey, who includes characters surrounding the recent Paris attacks.

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Marianne is much easier to deal with in a goofy drawing. Here’s a nice Marianne by Angel Boligan, drawn after the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

This bloody Marianne is from my buddy, Martin “Shooty” Sutovec from Slovakia. With no side-boob, and no flowing ties on her sleeveless, fringeless dress, her new style beret and blonde hair in a different doo – I almost missed her, but Shooty got me to take another look.

shooty-marianne

Jordanian cartoonist Osama Hajjaj drew a weeping Marianne with an Eiffel Tower in a pool of blood (perhaps he could have thrown in a couple of candles, terror monsters and the Statue of Liberty to make it complete). Osama obscured Marianne’s profile and bare breast issues, and he lost her beret. hmm. OK.

This Marianne is from Taylor Jones, after the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

Here’s a Charlie Hebdo aftermath Marianne from RJ Matson – looks like this one was a quicky to draw in Photoshop.

Visit our big collection of cartoons drawn in response to the Paris attacks.

 

 

 

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Obama, Putin, Assad and Doggies

I think all world issues can be boiled down to doggies.

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Training Iraqi Troops

There’s been a a lot in the news about how Iraqi troops cut and run when they face off with ISIS. The US Army trained Iraqi troops for years, but it doesn’t seem to stick. Now President Obama is re-doubling the training efforts, but I’m guessing that won’t make any difference.

I had in mind that there would be a caption to this cartoon, “Training Iraqi Troops,” and as I looked at it, it seems better without a caption, although it isn’t really clear that it is about training Iraqi troops, still, no caption is better.

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Training Iraqi Troops

Training Iraqi Troops © Daryl Cagle,CagleCartoons.com,Iraq,USA,America,military,army,Barack Obama,dogs,ISIS,ISIL,Daesh,Syria,Middle East