DarylCagle.comLast week I drew this cartoon with Trump and L’il Kim mushroom cloud hair. Sometimes I travel around and give a Powerpoint presentation about editorial cartooning and I show a dozen or two cartoons of L’il Kim’s dad, Il, with mushroom cloud hair. I’ve seen a few L’il Kim mushroom cloud hair cartoons, but his Dad, Il, is the king of cartoon mushroom cloud hair.
The Sony Pictures hacker attack and the cowardly withdrawal of “The Interview” movie has been dominating the cartoons. I drew two!
A universal truth about evil dictators is that they have no sense of humor, so I suggest we mock the despots mercilessly. In fact, mocking mercilessly is really the only tool in my cartoonist tool belt – you know, if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
My second cartoon was quite popular on Facebook, featuring Kim Jong Un and the entertainment industry chickens. This one reminded me of my old Muppet days drawing Gonzo’s girlfriend, Camilla and all her chicken friends.
Today we got the news that North Korea’s internet service went down. Not much of a surprise – and probaby only a dozen people in North Korea have access to the internet – still interesting. North Korea makes a target of itself, which reminds me of a favorite Kim Jong Un oldie I drew below, which I should take out of mothballs.
And here’s one last Kim Jong Un oldie:
History keeps repeating itself! See more great North Korea cartoons on Cagle.com!
My last two cartoons have been about Kim Jong Un. The first was Li’l Kim making himself into a target. Here’s the rough sketch.
Here he is as line art. Most newspaper readers will see the cartoon in black and white like this.
I thought I would be bold with the color on this one – to make it more powerful with only line art and red. I’m sure some editors won’t print it because of my color choice. Editors like lots of “pretty” and “bright” colors. Editors generally avoid anything that can be called “bold.”
Since North Korea is still dominating the news I drew another one. This one with Li’l Kim as a doggie, with President Obama and the new Chinese president Xi Jinping.
I’ve done a whole lot of cartoons with leaders as doggies. In this case, i thought it would be interesting to have Obama reacting to Li’l Kim’s threatening barking, while Jinping reacts to Li’l Kim’s pee, with exactly the same body language. Here is the line art that most people see. Yes, I decided to move Obama closer, and I realized that I needed a label on Jinping, because he’s new and I didn’t know what he looked like until I looked him up.
Here is the color version – which is never as good as the simple black and white.
We have a wonderful collection of more than 250 North Korea cartoons here! I’ve drawn lots of leaders as doggies in the past. Here’s is Li’l Kim’s dad, Il, biting Obama’s butt from 2010. Things don’t change much.
Here’s one where Obama is the doggie on Wall Street’s leash.
Here’s Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as the doggie.
I drew this one back in the 2008 primary season, with President Clinton as the doggie on Hillary’s leash. Ugh, I hate looking at my old, early Obama.
I drew a lot of doggie cartoons with President Bush. The military was W’s doggie.
Drawing Muslims as doggies is deeply insulting to them, which is why so many cartoonists do it, I suppose. Here are the Sunnis and Shiites fighting at the height of Bush’s Iraq Mess, with Iraq’s president Maliki.
I drew lots of W as a doggie. Here he is marking his territory.
And here is W the doggie, during the run-up to war in Iraq.
I’ll bet my cartoons would be much more popular if I drew nothing but doggies. I’ve considered it.
Check our our collection of the best cartoons of 2011 here
The end of December is as good a time as any to reflect on the year gone by. As a cartoonist, I find it interesting to look back at all the cartoons our cartoonists have drawn over the course of the year, reminding me of all the news events and controversies I might otherwise have forgotten (was Arnold’s love child already wiped out of your memory too?).
2011 was filled with many monumental moments – the death of Osama bin Laden and Moammar Gadhafi, the passing Kim Jong Il, the rise of the Arab Spring, the growth of Occupy Wall Street.
So check out the best cartoons by your favorite artists in our comprehensive collection of the best cartoons of 2011, and don’t forget to “Like” our cartoons on Facebook.
Every Friday, we collect the best political cartoons of the week and stuff them into one big, glorious slideshow.
So just relax and catch up on a week’s worth of news with our Best Cartoons of the Week slideshow.
Like many cartoonists, I’m sad that I’ll never get the chance to draw North Korea’s nutty leader Kim Jong Il again. Here’s my cartoon about his death:
Kim Jong Il was great to draw. I was able to do this caricature of him featuring the back of his head, and everyone could still get who I was drawing. You can’t do that with many characters:
Kim Jong Il was a pain in the rear for many Presidents. The most recent of course was President Obama:
A lot of times, it seemed like Kim Jong Il was toying with the world. Having a nuclear arsenal certainly gave him some leverage:
Most of the time, I think this was his attitude towards everyone except Elvis:
He was also a torn in the side of the Bush administration, who tried to reach out to the wacky leader on more than one occasion:
His enduring legacy – a nutjob with crazy hair in charge of a country with nuclear weapons. Sounds like the plot of an Adam Sandler movie:
