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Oil Prices Drop on the Despots!

Oil prices dropped below $60/barrel this week, to the delight of American drivers and the dismay of ugly, oil-producing countries around the world. I thought of drawing a group scene with even more despots from nasty countries, like Libya, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the list – trouble is, there are too many of them, and they don’t have good, recognizable characters for the barrel of oil to bash.

So, I did three versions of this cartoon, Iran, Russia and Venezuela, which each have fascinating, and from an American point of view, encouraging stories of economic collapse with the drop in oil prices. Newspapers can pair these with Op-Ed pieces on each country’s interesting travails.

I tried combining these, but that was confusing. Simple is good. Here’s Vladimir Putin …

I love drawing Putin – he’s so creepy. Next is Venezuela and their president, Nicolas Maduro.

This is the first time I’ve drawn Maduro. I like his low forehead and widows peak. The last version is Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is a delight to draw, but like Maduro, he requires a label because people don’t know what he looks like.

Iran’s Supreme Leader makes me laugh. He also likes to throw Iranian cartoonists into jail, and my web sites are blocked in Iran – still, the Supreme Leader makes me laugh. Just the fact that he wants to call himself “Supreme Leader” is funny.

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Iran and Oil Price Drop

157399 600 Iran and Oil Price Drop cartoons

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Question: PICK ONE

Here’s my newest cartoon on the police shootings protests. Just pick one, from 1 to 4, then turn your computer over to read the answers. I don’t think that will work if you’re looking at this on your cell phone or tablet, because the screen will pop to right side up if you turn your computer over. I’m an old, desktop computer guy so it works for me. Heavy, though.

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Get Out of Jail Free!

Every couple of  years it is time for another Monopoly metaphor cartoon. Here’s my cartoon today about the police violence protests.

I get contacted by doctoral students who write their dissertations on the usage of particular metaphors in editorial cartoons – they like to count how many times they occur. Takes the joy out of a cartoon, huh? Well, that’s what doctoral students do. I might suggest that if anyone wants to do their thesis on Monopoly metaphors in editorial cartoons, they will have a lot of counting to do.

Here’s one I did back in 2008, on the Sarah Palin VP choice.

1121-PalinCommChestC

The next one is a rare cartoon where I had something positive to say, touting what was then the biggest charitable donation in history – Warren Buffet’s multi-billion dollar donation to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

887B-BuffetDonation_

 

The 1930’s era rich guy character in Monopoly, “Rich Uncle Pennybags“, is classic cartoon fodder whenever news about rich people comes along, and a pig character won’t do. Usually he doesn’t appear in political cartoons that are too flattering to him. I drew this next one with the George W. Bush stock market crash and subsequent bailout of the evil bankers (who, by the way, were never prosecuted).

1130B-BailoutMonopol

 

Remember when five Gitmo prisoners were traded for sketchy American POW, Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl? I drew this one with little caricatures of the released Gitmo prisoners.

GitmoJail

Back when I was working with msnbc.com I rarely got a call from an editor asking for anything, so I was surprised one day to hear from an editor at the Today Show, which was planning lots of coverage on Paris Hilton, who was being released from jail that day. They really wanted a quick cartoon, so I gave them this one.

1086B-Hilton_Jail_CM

When George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, not so long ago, I drew my most recent “Get Out of Jail Free” cartoon.

ZimmermanJail

So, doctoral students – start counting!

 

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The National Conversation About Race

We have a great collection of cartoons about the Grand Jury decision not to indict policeman, Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri – come take a look!

Here’s the rough sketch for my “National Conversation About Race” cartoon.

Sketch600wide

I draw pretty quick and messy in pencil on 11″x17″ tab size paper. Then I trace it neatly for the line art which most people see in the newspaper.

And here’s the color version for the Web and newspapers that print in color.

Somehow I think we’ll be drawing cartoons on this topic for quite some time.

Here is how the cartoon looks this morning in my local newspaper, the Santa Barbara News-Press.

Conversation600wide

So dark! I anticipate that all of my cartoons will darken when printed, but somehow I’m always surprised by how dark they get.

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Variations on Ferguson Protests

I hate drawing cartoons about crime; I don’t feel like I have an opinion that is worth drawing – crime is bad, police violence is bad, victims are to be grieved – nothing really for me to draw that says more. With so many young black men killed by police in America, it is disappointing that the case that catches the public and media attention isn’t more clear cut, without conflicting evidence, with a more sympathetic victim and a police officer who is clearly guilty. It would seem that there are plenty of better cases to choose to rally behind, but the issue is saddled with the randomness of the media and what catches fire with the public. I can always draw a cartoon about the media, and how they are drawn to violence, so I went with that.

Here’s a detail in black and white, what most people will see in the newspapers.

cagle-ferguson-media-detail

Then I got to thinking that the cartoon was too wide and complex, and it really didn’t need the media – just the juxtaposition of the protestors and the opportunistic thieves was enough. I cut the cartoon back to this …

This one makes a different point without the media in the middle. I like that it is simple and a more standard size that newspapers will likely print bigger. Sometimes I get too baroque and complex when I should just pare it down.

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Bill Cosby RIP

Readers love celebrity obituary cartoons, and until now I’ve waited for the celebrity to die before I drew an obit cartoon. Bill Cosby seemed like the perfect opportunity to make an exception to that rule.

Drawing celebrities is easier now than in the old days. I used to struggle to build a “morgue” of photos of everyone I might have to draw on short notice. I had a lot of file drawers dedicated to scraps of paper with little photos of everyone who might find their way into a cartoon. Those days are over, now every cartoonists simply goes to Google, does an image search and a page full of wonderful photo scrap comes up. Easy research!

In fact, since everyone does the same research now, I’ve noticed how common it is for caricatures to resemble one another. Here’s a recent Bill Cosby cartoon by my buddy, Taylor Jones.

With a Google Images search it usually turns out that one photo is better than all the others – and cartoonists often pick out the same one to work from. Here’s a link to the Cosby photo from the Google Images search.

Taylor’s cartoon is better than mine; Taylor wins. But I have the satisfaction of making Cosby go to Hell.

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“Like a Red Flag in Front of a Bull”

Today’s cartoon is inspired by a quote from incoming Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, who said that if President Obama does immigration reform with an executive order, over the objections of Republicans, that would be like, “waving a red flag in front of a bull.” Kind of obvious, but it was fun to draw McConnell and Boehner as bulls.

The drawing was a bit more difficult than usual. I think this is the first time I’ve ever drawn McConnell and I’m not really comfortable with him yet. My rough sketch is below.

MatadorSketch600wide

I was going to label the “red flag” as “immigration reform” but I decided that was unnecessary. I struggled with McConnell and I did a little patch to draw his face over until I was happy with it. Those marks between Obama and the bulls remind me to reposition them when I do the finished line art.

I also struggled with how to draw the bulls’ penises in a way that editors could stand, without killing my cartoon. I like how bull penises seem to come out of the middle of their bellies, and I tried to be discreet.

I like to do line art for the black and white version of a cartoon, without gray tones. There is something more elegant about lines – although it is hard to call this cartoon “elegant.” Here is the color version …

I played a bit with making Boehner orange, and with making the bulls have more light and shadow, but whatever I tried was too busy and I ended up with dull bulls. I’m not really happy with the color on this one. In fact, I’m usually never happy with my color.

I’m looking at doing a video of my drawing my cartoons to post on the site, or possibly to do live as a rather long and boring podcast. It is cartoons like this one that give me podcasting pause, because I fiddled around with it for a long time before I was happy with the caricatures – and cartoonists like to give the impression that drawing everything is quick and easy. I’ll have no secrets. On the other hand, the videos may be so boring that no one will notice.

I looked around for some other bulls and I found this one by Georgia cartoonist, Mark Streeter, who beat me to the matador punch.

Here’s an oldie by RJ Matson.

There was a big Yahtzee of matador cartoons about the European Union, back when Spain was having big financial problems and needed a bail-out. Here’s one I drew then.

This is a nice bull-fight cartoon from John Cole that is probably better now than when he drew it back in 2006. I like the blank, Orphan Annie eyeballs.

There are a whole lot of matador cartoons out there, but there’s always room for more.

And thanks to Jerry Moore for sending me this nice shot of the Op-Ed page of the Los Angeles Times today.
Cagle-LAtimes-Bullfighter-Cropped

 

 

 

 

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More Troops for Iraq

I voted for Obama because he promised to get the US out of Iraq – now he’s creeping us back in. With the Republicans controlling Congress, I’m guessing that the mission creep will continue. What is so bizarre is that everyone seems to recognize that Iraq (and the rest of the Middle East for that matter) is an endless quagmire – but still public opinion is solidly behind jumping back in to bash “ISIS-ISIL-IS-Islamic State-Daesh”.

It is fascinating to me that the vast majority of editorial cartoonists draw cartoon after cartoon about how bad the “ISIS-ISIL-IS-Islamic State-Daesh” guys are, and seem to be on the mission creep bandwagon, headed back to Iraq. Here’s today’s cartoon about the 1,500 additional troops Obama is sending to Iraq now.

Here’s a tiny detail, so we don’t lose track of the troops.

TrropDetail600wide

We’re bombing “ISIS-ISIL-IS-Islamic State-Daesh” in Syria also – but not bombing Bashar Assad. It wasn’t long ago that Obama was eager to bomb the Assad regime, after they used chemical weapons and crossed his “red line”. At the time, I drew this one …

and this one …

maybe these two cartoons were right for a few minutes – Obama seemed to back off and lose interest in bombing Assad. That red line nonsense seemed less important.

But now it has gone full circle – and the press, reflecting public opinion seems to be pushing Obama. I can’t really tell if Obama is reluctant or not. I suppose it doesn’t matter whether he’s being pushed or leading the charge when the direction is clear.

 

 

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World Press Cartoons Contest Winners

The World Press Cartoon contest just announced their winners. This contest is run from Portugal and has the biggest prizes, putting it at the top of the heap for world cartoon contests. I’m pleased that the grand prize winner this year is Shankar Parmathy, a brilliant, young caricaturist in Hyderabad, India. I met Shankar on my speaking tour in India and he contributes cartoons occasionally to Politicalcartoons.com (we need more cartoons from you, Shankar). Here’s Shankar’s lovely, grand prize winning portrait of Nelson Mandela.

ShankarMandela

Mandela is black, but his fist is pink – a Caucasian fist; I’m not quite sure what Shankar means by that, but it shows diversity, so I suppose that’s good.

This contest is in three parts, editorial cartoons, humor cartoons and caricatures; one of those division winners wins the grand prize, as Shankar did with his caricature. Often the winners are incomprehensible to an American eye. One year the winner was a depiction of the EU as the tower of Babel from an old painting – I had to have it explained to me – I didn’t know the old painting and I didn’t understand the EU reference. Caricature winners are sometimes soccer players that an American would never recognize. Even when I understand these winning cartoons, they can be strange. Here is this year’s humor category winner, by Agim Sulaj, an artist from Albania.

HumorWinner

 

This could be a photo of a sculpture, but I’d guess it is a realistic painting of a loaf of bread with a drawer containing coins. I suppose that’s funny. Nobody’s going to look there for your money, kind of like those fake rocks where you can hide your keys. Maybe it’s a “can’t have your bread and eat it too” cartoon, because you spent your money for the bread, but you’re keeping it too – but you can’t eat the bread, because it’s really a drawer. Maybe.

The editorial cartoon category winner, by cartoonist Zarko Luetic of Croatia, shows a banker greeting a guy with the European Union logo on his suit, with someone who is poor (indicated by patches on his gray unitard) who is being flung into the air by a casual flip of the hat from the EU guy, who is greeting the banker back.

HumorWonner2

 

As I read this one, the bankers and the European Union are are so unaware of the plight of the poor that they don’t even notice that they are flinging the poor around as they show, in contrast, that they are aware of each other by greeting each other. And they cast long shadows.

Alternatively, the banker may be noticing that the poor guy in the unitard is flying by, just about to steal the EU guy’s hat – the EU isn’t aware that his hat is about to be stolen by that darn, flying poor guy, but the EU will know in just a second what the banker already knows. The shadow shows us the poor guy is really there, not a figment of their imaginations. I guess that’s OK. Those darn poor are always demanding our attention, when we’d rather greet our powerful friends.

I think that’s right.