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As a kid I loved the shapes of states and countries. Especially the really interesting ones like California, Texas, and Nebraska. In my grade school classroom we had a really big map of the United States, which reminds me of that joke by the comedian, Steven Wright: “At home I have a map of the United States. Actual size.”
So, okay, the map at school wasn’t quite that big, but it was large enough to constantly distract me from paying attention to my teacher. Mostly, I found myself focusing on the middle of the map, on the city in which I was born and raised —Omaha, Nebraska.
Like most kids, I believed that the world revolved around me. And to reinforce this idea I was at the center of all things, it didn’t help that Omaha was at the center of that map, smack dab in the middle of the country.
As an adult and as a cartoonist, I have remained fascinated with maps. And whenever the opportunity arises for me to include a map in one of my cartoons, I’ll certainly draw one in.
But in adulthood, something would shift from how I viewed maps in childhood. This shift began when I first traveled to Russia one cold and snowy January and found myself feeling disoriented. I felt like I was on the Moon. To ground myself I studied a map of Russia and found myself looking to the middle of that map, fully expecting to find … Omaha. You know, just east of Moscow.
But it wasn’t until a few years ago, when, for the first time ever, I moved away from Omaha for nearly two years and found myself living in Innsbruck, Austria. That’s when my world —and my view of maps —literally turned upside down.
So much so, I gave a recent TEDx talk on the topic:
And if you missed it the first time around, here’s my previous TEDx talk on how embracing one’s vulnerabilities can increase one’s creativity—in my case how my having Tourette Syndrome helped me to become a better cartoonist:
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Look at our other, great collections of Cartoon Favorites of the Decade, selected by the artists, in the links below. ( There is ONE more artist decade to go!)
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Dave Whamond’sfavorite cartoons of the past decade are below! Dave’s work has appeared in magazines and newspapers including The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, Readers Digest and many more. He has won 7 Silver Reubens from the National Cartoonists Society and several book awards. Dave has written and/or illustrated over 50 books and his syndicated comic, “Reality Check”, has appeared in newspapers since 1995. He hails from Alberta, Canada. See Dave’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 Dave’s editorial cartoons here.
Look at our other, great collections of Cartoon Favorites of the Decade, selected by the artists, in the links below. ( I didn’t quite keep up the pace and there are a couple more artist decades to post here!)
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Years ago, my wife was doing a lot of theater work both acting and directing with small groups mostly in New York. One time, however, in June of 1989, she was called to Washington, D.C. to direct a play there. A few days later, while she was there, our anniversary came along and we decided that I would take the train down to Washington to celebrate it with her.
When I got to Washington, my wife had arranged an evening out at a small jazz club she had been told about called Blues Alley. It turned out to be a small, brick-walled, intimate little place with a small stage and little bar at the rear. The performance that evening was a quartet whose leader was not “small” or “little”at all. It was none other than the legendary Dizzy Gillespie. I couldn’t believe it. There he was a few feet in front of us with that trumpet bell pointed up at the ceiling wailing away. Every player had a mic on their instrument which I thought was odd because the place was tiny and it didn’t seem to require any amplification at all. It was incredibly loud but … what the hell, it was Dizzy Gillespie.
Dizzy’s autograph!
I had this great icon standing right in front of me so decided that I should make a sketch that I could take home and amplify into a nice caricature. I had drawn him for Playboy back in the 60’s from photos but here was my chance to draw him in the flesh, with those big cheeks of his, blown out like a squirrel packing nuts. I scribbled away on a napkin feverishly. When I finished, he was finished playing and went to the back bar to have a drink. I showed my drawing to Leann. She said, “I’m going to give it to him!” I said “NO, I need it, I’m going to do a major caricature of him from this when I get home!” Naturally, she snatched it from me and got up. I said, “You can’t go over there and bother him –he’s DIZZY GILLESPIE!”
My caricature of Dizzy for Playboy.
She went right over to him. He was alone at the bar. I watched her chatting away to him for about 5 minutes before I got up the courage to go over. He asked where we were from, and when we said “Westport, Connecticut,” he said, “Oh, I know Westport, I’ve been there, I have friends there!” To which I replied, “Oh, of course you do, Dave Brubeck and Gerry Mulligan live there!” He said, “Well Brubeck is a friend of mine but not Mulligan.”H-m-m-m-m … I don’t know what that was all about but I didn’t comment on it.
We continued chatting away for some time. He talked about his wife, family etc., and he asked about ours, and he was so “down-to-Earth”, so “ordinary”, so “regular”, that I quite forgot that I was talking to one of the most famous and greatest jazz musicians of all time.
I broke my rule of never asking for autographs so he scribbled one out for me on the back of a stained little bar menu. It hangs on my studio wall.
It was a good trade for my little sketch.
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Today’s cartoon is about California’s new law, AB 5, that went into effect this week. The law is terrible for cartoonists and Cagle.com. It was intended to force Uber to make their drivers into employees, but overzealous lawmakers overextended into other areas that they didn’t understand, including journalism. Here’s my cartoon …
The law is decimating publishers throughout California. AB 5 affects us at California-based Cagle Cartoons also, because we publish Cagle.com, we’re defined as a publisher rather than just as a syndicate. We’ve dropped a number of California cartoonists from our roster and some of the changes that we were forced to make were painful. Some contributors who were paid are now paid nothing, to comply with AB 5. Cagle.com features almost all non-California cartoonists and columnists now. (Out-of-state cartoonists and columnists are exempt from AB 5.)
Under AB 5, self-syndicating California cartoonists and columnists are screwed. The bill has a limit of 35 “contributions” per year that a writer or cartoonist can make to a publisher. The bill’s author is quoted as saying that the arbitrary number was selected so that weekly newspaper columnists could not be freelancers and must be employees.
A self-syndicating California cartoonist or columnist might have ten newspaper clients who each subscribe to the same cartoons or columns, each might pay $40/month; AB 5 mandates that this cartoonist or columnist has to be taken on as an hourly employee by each and all of her ten subscribers –of-course, no subscriber would take on a self-syndicating cartoonist or columnist as an employee.
Thirty years ago, altie weeklies were thriving and there were a bunch of self-syndicating cartoonists. It used to be that young cartoonists were advised to start their careers drawing local cartoons for their local paper for a tiny fee. Self-syndicating cartoonists were diverse, with more women and minorities and more diverse points of view than among the mainstream editorial cartoonists. AB 5 would have had a big impact years ago, snuffing out these California cartoonists –but today I fear that the self-syndicating California cartoonists have already died off; young, local cartoonists no longer exist, so there are few or no independent newspaper cartoonists that are left for AB 5 to crush. (If there are any, I’d like to hear about them.)
There’s another interesting point about AB 5 and editorial cartoonists. Some years ago it was conventional wisdom that, “in the future,” editorial cartoons would be animated. The big editorial cartooning awards wanted to be seen as forward-thinking so they selected award winners who did animated cartoons and many award-hungry editorial cartoonists spent a lot of time learning animation techniques. With very few exceptions, animation never caught on in the editorial cartooning business. The Web never developed a culture of paying for content and the remaining political cartoonists have been clinging to the sinking ship of print. AB 5 expressly bans freelance cartoonists from doing even one animation. Animated editorial cartoons can only be done by employees in California. California Democrats slammed the door on our future that never happened.
Legislators who supported AB 5 argue that it is good for journalists and cartoonists, because they need better jobs that get employee benefits. What is actually happening is that the journalists simply don’t get hired and they lose their freelance gigs; the journalism doesn’t get done and the publishers are shrinking and suffering even more. At Cagle Cartoons, we can’t afford to hire any cartoonists or columnists as employees, and none of them would want to suffer the restrictions of being our employees. The idea that publishers, including little Web sites, would hire cartoonists as employees now is whimsical nonsense from another era. In California, the “Gig Economy” is now the “can’t get a gig” economy.
It is ironic that we read so much about President Trump attacking journalism, but the truly effective attacks on journalism come from liberal Democrats in Sacramento.
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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!
Caged: June 20, 2018March 26, 2013January 12, 2013August 29, 2013April 15, 2014April 16, 2014May 14, 2014December 4, 2015April 17, 2016May 27, 2016May 28, 2016November 18, 2016November 30, 2016February 28, 2017September 7, 2017The press: August 16, 2018Ford and Kavanaugh: September 28, 2018Eric Garner case: July 17, 2019The undoing: September 27, 2019
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!
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!
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!
As a kid I loved the shapes of states and countries. Especially the really interesting ones like California, Texas, and Nebraska. In my grade school classroom we had a really big map of the United States, which reminds me of that joke by the comedian, Steven Wright: “At home I have a map of the United States. Actual size.”
But in adulthood, something would shift from how I viewed maps in childhood. This shift began when I first traveled to Russia one cold and snowy January and found myself feeling disoriented. I felt like I was on the Moon. To ground myself I studied a map of Russia and found myself looking to the middle of that map, fully expecting to find … Omaha. You know, just east of Moscow.
A few days later, while she was there, our anniversary came along and we decided that I would take the train down to Washington to celebrate it with her.
