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Andy Singer’s Panel Cartoons in the Editorial Cartoon Spot

Editorial page editors typically reject anything new and different from editorial cartoonists. Unusual styles and formats are just not what editors want to see. Editors like cartoons that look like what they think editorial cartoons should look like – which leads to lots of cartoons that look much the same.

I’ve been a big fan of Andy Singer’s self-syndicated, altie “No Exit” panel for years, and I’ve been encouraging Andy to try his hand at more traditional editorial cartooning. Andy’s panel has content that is socially conscious, like an editorial cartoon, but it is not the right shape, and it is wordy, and it doesn’t have caricatures of politicians and the panel format with a title is simply not something editorial page editors will consider putting in their daily editorial cartoon hole.

What to do? Andy wanted to be on the editorial pages but was committed to continuing the “No Exit” panel. Then he gave me a new pitch, saying, “Daryl, you know, when I put two of my panels next to each other it becomes the shape of an editorial cartoon, and if I do two panels that are on the same topic, and color them, it looks like one big editorial cartoon.” The idea looked interesting to me. The result is rather stylistically different than what editors are used to but Andy’s new editorial cartoon format looks like wordy, multi panel editorial cartoons, and editors seem to be accepting them. The connection between the two panels might be a stretch, but no one seems to notice. So far, so good.

A number of comic strip cartoonists, Like Dan Piraro and Wiley Miller, have been doing their cartoons in both strip and panel format for years. Andy’s work has some format advantages over most magazine gag cartoonists’ work; Andy’s panels are topically editorial cartoons to start with, and he doesn’t have a classic gag cartoon style with a caption at the bottom, which would be more difficult to reformat. Still, it may be that some other socially conscious panel or gag cartoonists could develop a new market by finding a procedure to reformat their ongoing work as editorial cartoons. Andy Singer is the trailblazer.

One of Andy’s new, combined format cartoons for the editorial pages. With the same characters and consistent color and format, it looks right as a single editorial cartoon and is proving popular so far.

Here are a couple more new editorial cartoons from Andy. Follow Andy’s work on Cagle.com here.

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Cartoons

Nobel Peace Prize Regrets

154630 600 Nobel Peace Prize Regrets cartoons

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Cartoons

California Drought Seal

147683 600 California Drought Seal cartoons

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Cartoons

Kim Jong Il Dead

Kim Jong Il Dead © Daryl Cagle,MSNBC.com,Kim Jong Il,North Korea,skulls,skeletons,nuclear bomb,missile,death,memorial

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Blog

More of My Sketches

Readers seem to like it when I post my rough sketches, so here we go again, with my sketches for my last couple of cartoons.  The first one is the Obama Healthcare Caduceus.  I do the rough sketch in hard pencil on slick paper, so I’m not tempted to do details and render.

Then I trace over the sketch on drafting vellum, with a hard pencil that I scan to look like ink and save as a bitmap file for black and white printing.  The image below is what most readers see in the newspaper.

Then I add the color in Photoshop.  I use rather unsophisticated colors because newspaper printing is lousy, and if I use anything that isn’t pastel and bright I get complaints from editors.

Here’s the sketch for another health care cartoon.  Same thing here, hard pencil on slick paper.

I did the same thing with the pencil on vellum, but this time I just added a bit of gray tone to the drawing because I wasn’t quite inspired to color this one.

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Blog

None Too Happy With Mr. Fish

From my e-mail box … somehow I don’t think Mr. Fish’s response to this reader will be satisfying to him.

Memorial Day cartoon from Mr. Fish.
Memorial Day cartoon from Mr. Fish.

Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2009 7:49 PM

To: cagle.com
Subject: Mr. Fish Memorial Day “Cartoon”

Please tell Mr. Booth that although it is fair to humiliate politicians who unthinkingly send young men off to war, it his improper and unacceptably demeaning to belittle those who are brought up in the tradition of answering the call to arms when it comes.  The cartoon is also unbelievably cruel to those who have lost family members in defense of our country.

Unless Mr. Booth can prove he served and put his tail on the line for this country, I suggest he keep his figurative mouth shut and ink bottled rather than make fun of a tradition that keeps us free and safe  Without all Kevins, you would have a very small volunteer military indeed.  And whether he agrees or not, we would be far less safe and fat and happy here if that were the case.

As a Former New Yorker, now living in Oklahoma, I further submit that since this tradition is strongest in the American South, Midwest and West, the cartoon is also brazenly elitist and sectionalist.  I teach returning GI’s from Iraq and Afghanistan and Booth should be first in line to kiss the ground upon which these wonderful men and women walk.

I am so sorry you gave this piece of trash the light of day.

Bob Avakian
Tulsa, Oklahoma

On May 25, 2009, at 1:04 PM, Daryl Cagle wrote:

Hola, Dwayne,
Write a nice response and I’ll post it in the blog and newsletter.
Best,
Daryl

From: Mr. Fish
Subject: Re: Mr. Fish Memorial Day “Cartoon”
Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 14:28:21 -0700

Hey Bob,

I must respectfully disagree with your assertion that we must support and honor all men and women who choose to sacrifice their bodies to the perpetuation of massive amounts of violence in any war, particularly one predicated on hubristic goals with reprehensible consequences.  Additionally, to address the broader implication of your note, to suggest that the tradition of any one nation engaged in war with another (or, in this particular circumstance, the tradition of one nation invading and then occupying another) be respected merely because it is a tradition is lazy at least and fascistic at worst.  Remember, slavery was also a tradition.  Should that atrocity be respected as well?  Do you, Bob,  raise your fist to the sky every morning and curse the fact that you have to dress yourself and prepare your own breakfast and rake your own yard?  Or, more to the point, do you waste your time addressing emails to abolitionists in the past who felt it was their moral obligation to dispel the horrific myth that insisted indentured servitude was glorious and should be cherished and upheld for future generations?  (I will now take a moment of silence so that you can sing Ol’ Man River with tears in your eyes.)  Finally, committing brave servicemen and women to acts of criminal behavior in an illegal war and then saying that their intentions are really to uphold peace, democracy and humanitarian law, none of which apply to the situation at hand, is a treacherous sleight of hand and one that should be ridiculed.  When an army is sent to commit a crime in the name of bureaucratic criminals, the nation is not being defended for me or anybody else.  Instead, it is being made uglier and morally indefensible.

Fish

I’m eager to see the comments on this one. See more of Mr. Fish’s cartoons here.
-Daryl

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Cartoons

Obama Hillary Nails in the Coffin

Obama-Hillary Nails in the Coffin COLOR © Daryl Cagle,MSNBC.com,coffin, nails, hammer, death, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, texas, primary, democrats

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Cartoons

The Death of Newspapers

The Death of Newspapers © Daryl Cagle,MSNBC.com,Saddam, Iraq, hang, execution, Britney Spears, panties, underwear, newspapers, publishing, internet, web, teenagers, couch, dead, death, laptop, iPod, news

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Cartoons

Saddam Skin Rug

Saddam Skin Rug © Daryl Cagle,MSNBC.com,Saddam, Hussein, Iraq,bear,rug,hunt,gun, President Bush, death, execution

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Cartoons

Schiavo Whip

Schiavo Whip © Daryl Cagle,MSNBC.com,uncle sam, medicine, terri, teri, schiavo, death, euthanasia, courts, federal, congress, whip, self, flagellation, life