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Cole Decade!

Here are John Cole’s favorite cartoons of the past decade! John is the staff cartoonist for the Scranton Times-Tribune in Pennsylvania, and he also draws local cartoons about North Carolina for NCPolicyWatch.com

See John’s favorite cartoons 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. John’s cartoons are very impressive in a large scale!  See the complete archive of John’s syndicated cartoons here.

Look at our other, great collections of Cartoons Favorites of the Decade, selected by the artists.
Pat Bagley Decade!
Nate Beeler Decade!
Daryl Cagle Decade! 
Patrick Chappatte Decade!
John Cole Decade!
John Darkow Decade!
Bill Day Decade!
Sean Delonas Decade!
Bob Englehart Decade!
Randall Enos Decade!
Dave Granlund Decade!
Taylor Jones Decade!
Mike Keefe Decade!
Peter Kuper Decade!
Jeff Koterba Decade!
RJ Matson Decade!
Gary McCoy Decade!
Rick McKee Decade!
Milt Priggee Decade!
Bruce Plante Decade!
Steve Sack Decade!

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!

 

    

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Blog Newsletter Syndicate

Favorite Cartoons of the Decade

Here is my selection of my favorite cartoons of the decade. See them on the USA Today site here.

I pitched the idea to Gannett of running collections of favorite cartoons of the decade every day in December, the last month of the decade, with a selection by a different cartoonist each day. We, along with USA Today, selected the CagleCartoonists we would invite to participate and we asked them each to choose their favorite cartoons from the past ten years. I submitted twenty-nine batches of cartoons, selected by each of twenty-nine of our CagleCartoonists.  USA Today plans on showcasing their own Gannett employee cartoonists, Thompson, Marlette, Murphy and Archer, through Thursday, with our CagleCartoonists finishing out the month, starting this Friday with Pat Bagley.

USA Today started off their daily, decade slideshows today with their talented cartoonist, Mike Thompson, who also did the work of laying all of these collections out for The USA Today Network sites (that includes the individual Web sites for all of Gannett’s 100+ daily newspapers). Visit USA Today’s Opinion page online to see these every day this month. Click on each cartoon in each slideshow to see a full-screen, high-resolution version of each cartoon, which is very nice.

It is very difficult to select a small batch of cartoons to represent an entire decade!!

Getting twenty-nine CagleCartoonists to each select a decade of favorites was challenging. Obama certainly got shorted as many cartoonists are obsessed with Trump now. A couple of cartoonists selected only Trump-bashing cartoons, which made for a poor representation of the decade –but hey, the fact that the cartoonists chose their own favorites made this project interesting.  Some cartoonists, who have been with us for less than ten years, had to dig into their personal archives to cover the whole decade, so some of the cartoons haven’t been seen on Cagle.com. New Yorker/Mad Magazine/graphic-novelist Peter Kuper joined CagleCartoons.com just a couple of months ago and had to dig up his whole collection from his magazine gag cartoon archives. Dave Whamond and Ed Wexler, who joined us more recently, reached into their vaults for some of their early-decade cartoons; Ed selected some from when he was regularly drawing for US News & World Report magazine. Mike Keefe and Bill Schorr came out of their recent retirements to contribute their selections of favorites.

I wouldn’t call these selections the “best” of the decade, they are just the artists’ choices. I also can’t say that they represent the decade well (but what the heck).

Look at our other, great collections of Cartoons Favorites of the Decade, selected by the artists.
Pat Bagley Decade!
Nate Beeler Decade!
Daryl Cagle Decade! 
Patrick Chappatte Decade!
John Cole Decade!
John Darkow Decade!
Bill Day Decade!
Sean Delonas Decade!
Bob Englehart Decade!
Randall Enos Decade!
Dave Granlund Decade!
Taylor Jones Decade!
Mike Keefe Decade!
Peter Kuper Decade!
Jeff Koterba Decade!
RJ Matson Decade!
Gary McCoy Decade!
Rick McKee Decade!
Milt Priggee Decade!
Bruce Plante Decade!
Steve Sack Decade!

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!

 

 

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Blog Syndicate

Comey Clouds

There were lots of cloud cartoons after former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony last week about President Trump asking Comey to “lift the cloud” of the FBI’s investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. I drew a cloud cartoon myself!

The Comey testimony was a TV ratings hit and I was impressed by how different the coverage was on CNN and MSNBC versus Fox News – that’s what led to my cloud cartoon, and another one I’m drawing up today.

Here are some more Comey cloud cartoons I enjoyed; By Nate Beeler, Steve Sack and John Cole …

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Blog

“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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Blog

C-SPAN: The Role of Editorial Cartoonists

This past weekend, editorial cartoonists from all across the country gathered in Washington, D.C. for our yearly Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC) convention.

C-SPAN aired a segment about the role editorial cartoonists play in journalism featuring syndicated cartoonist Mark Fiore and our very own John Cole, the staff cartoonist for the Scranton Times-Tribune (whom I syndicate via Cagle Cartoons).

 

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A Cartoonist’s Thoughts On Scranton’s Salary Slash

Yesterday, the mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania announced that due to ongoing budget problems and the threat of bankruptcy, all of Scranton’s 398 city workers — including cops and firefighters — will be paid minimum wage effective immediately.

I asked John Cole, the staff cartoonist for the Scranton Times-Tribune (whom I syndicate though Cagle Cartoons), what his thoughts were on the news:

Ask 10 Scrantonians who and/or what is to blame for their city’s seemingly inexorable slide into insolvency and you’ll likely get 10 different answers. OK, maybe seven. Or even five. Whatever the number, they’ll all be right to one degree or another. Scranton’s cash crunch has been years in the making and — in my opinion, at least — is the product of four forces: An eroded and aging tax base; Pennsylvania’s system of tiny, autonomous municipalities; expensive public-safety union contracts, and a fractious and parochial political culture.

The first three ingredients in that recipe would be manageable if the fourth weren’t so completely dysfunctional. The current mess is largely due to a power struggle between Scranton Mayor Chris Doherty and a veto-proof “super-majority” on the city council that’s led by Council President Janet Evans. Doherty has been trying without success for years to rein in union labor costs through a state-backed recovery plan; the unions in turn have fought back furiously with the help of local pols like Evans. The result has been a back-and-forth stalemate of sorts, with the courts occasionally stepping in to make matters worse.

Here are seven cartoons drawn by Cole dating back to November 2010, tracing the arc of Scranton’s decline:

A state court sided with the police and fire unions, thus putting Scranton on the hook for tens of millions of dollars to cover back pay and future pay raises. The city hadn’t anywhere near the means to cover the tab. It still doesn't, in fact.
Just as the city pleaded poverty, the city discovered $3 million in parking meter receipts. It’s the latest example of a government too incompetent to account for the revenue it has on hand.
Barack Obama came to town, offering a reminder to Scrantonians of how similar their own local government is to the polarized, obstructionist and ineffective mess in Washington, DC.
Saddled with local school and city taxes while supporting a number of non-profit institutions (three hospitals, two universities and many social service organizations), Scranton’s tax base has been effectively picked clean.
Around Christmas last year, the state Supreme Court sided with the city's police and fire unions, effectively saying that the state’s recovery plan cannot preempt arbitration or the unions’ contracts and ending the city's legal argument. This set the stage for the city’s current financial nightmare.
In late June, the council super-majority voted not to pay off the Scranton Parking Authority’s city-guaranteed bonds, effectively placing the authority and city in default. Quite predictably, lenders took flight and the city’s credit line effectively disappeared. (The council furiously back-pedaled on this issue a week later, but the damage was done). Coincidentally, the council also pushed a 67-percent raise for its solicitor, who earlier had told the council he saw no problem with its decision to default.
Facing payless paydays for its employee and vendors threatening to cut off supplies for things like gas to power its police cruisers, Scranton weighs bankruptcy.
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George Zimmerman: Three Different Cartoons

With the announcement that George Zimmerman has been charged with second-degree manslaughter in the death of Trayvon Martin, we can finally begin to figure out what really happened the night a Florida teenager was shot and killed in a gated sub-community.

 
[ VIEW OUR COLLECTION OF TRAYVON MARTIN CARTOONS ]


 
Unfortunately for some, the case has become a media firestorm, where advocates on both sides seem to be determined to present their views of the case (although many credit the media outcry for bringing enough attention on the case to lead to an arrest in the first place.)

John Cole, the cartoonist for the Scranton Times-Tribune, does a nice job of rounding up all the usual suspects and hanger-ons, from both the left and the right, that have tried to use this case for their own political advantage…

Conservatives have bemoaned an NBC tape that was revealed to be heavily edited in order to portray Zimmerman in a harsher racial light. NBC has since apologized and fired those responsible, but to cartoonist Eric Allie, the bias is still present and the damage is already done…

Liberals, on the other hand, have pointed at Rush Limbaugh and Fox News as trying to portray Zimmerman as the victim of civil right advocates run amok. Interestingly, Fox News was silent about the Trayvon Martin case in the beginning, but once President OBama spoke about the shooting, they seemed to put things into high gear. Media Matters cartoonist Rob Tornoe presents what he sees as their perspective of the case…