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Obama Kisses Saudi King’s Butt

President Obama has threatened to veto a bill that would allow 9-11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia for their support of the 9-11 terrorists and would make public 28 redacted pages from the 9-11 Commission report that likely implicates Saudi Arabia. This week Obama traveled to meet with Saudi King Salman, so I drew this.

obama-kiss-saudi-butt

I’d like to see the bill pass and I’d like to see what is on those 28, top secret pages in the 9-11 Commission Report. The Saudis have threatened to sell all of their hundreds of billions of dollars of assets in America if the bill passes. That’s fine with me.

Here’s the first of two videos of my live stream drawing this one.

In the second video, below, I finish up the drawing and color it in Photoshop as I chat with my live viewers. Come to Twitch.tv/darylcagle to follow me and be notified when I come online to draw the next streaming cartoon.

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Blog Syndicate

Boots on the Ground in Syria

President Obama took another military step in Syria, authorizing American special forces to conduct combat operations, despite his promise to have “no boots on the ground” in Syria. I suppose my now we shouldn’t take these promises too seriously.

There have been a whole lot of quagmire cartoons about Syria. I noticed this similar, recent one by my buddy Steve Sack after I sent mine out – Steve’s is better.

Here’s an Afghanistan quagmire from Chinese cartoonist, Loujie.

Here’s a nice quagmire from Australian cartoonist, Paul Zanetti.

Here’s an Iraq quagmire from Dave Granlund …

… and an Obamacare quagmire from my buddy, conservative cartoonist Eric Allie …

Quagmires are a cartoon standard.

Here’s my quagmire cartoon in USA Today today. It has been a long time since I worked for MSNBC.com, but it is a never ending quest to get people to change my attribution. (Does it help that they call it “Toon Talk”?)

DarylinUSAtodayToday

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Blog Columns

The NRA and Comic-Con

This weekend I went to the National Rifle Association (NRA) convention in Nashville, Tennessee, my hometown. I’m an editorial cartoonist; I sit at home drawing and I rarely go to big conventions. The only thing I have to compare the NRA to is the San Diego Comic-Con, and I thought the NRA convention stacked up pretty well to Comic-Con.

The NRA convention is half the size of Comic-Con. The crowd was certainly different, with the NRA sporting more beer bellies and gray hair than Comic-Con. Both the NRA and Comic-Con are mostly male, and both are full of fervent fans. It is a lot easier to park and get a hotel room at the NRA convention, and it is much cheaper and easier to get into the NRA than Comic-Con, which costs well more than ten times the $25 it costs to join the NRA and attend the NRA convention. Comic-Con sells out months in advance; anyone can go to the NRA at the last minute – like me.

There isn’t much religion at Comic-Con, although it isn’t unusual to hear people exclaim, “Oh my God” when they see the length of the line to meet the cast members of “The Big Bang Theory.”

NRA-PrayforWeb
Everyone in a crowd of thousands at the NRA Annual Meeting held hands, bowed their heads and followed along in a prayer about how God has chosen the NRA to defend us against the “enemies of freedom.” I was actually near the front of the room, where I took this photo. That’s the NRA’s executive officers on the stage in the distance, holding hands. Click on the photo to enlarge.

There’s lots of religion at NRA conventions. The Saturday morning NRA annual meeting began with everyone in the audience holding hands and bowing their heads as someone on the stage prayed about how God has chosen the NRA to lead the fight against the “enemies of freedom” who, we were later told, are President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Michael Bloomberg, in that order.

There are enemies at Comic-Con too; scattered through the crowd are assorted Darth Vaders, storm-troopers, super-villains and monsters. Years ago there were Klingons everywhere, but the Klingons have dwindled in recent years, and now they are rare. My effort to build up my Klingon vocabulary has clearly been a waste of time. “Ghay’cha’!”

There was an anti-gun protest group, in town for the NRA convention, that had trouble making a dinner reservation. I’m told they were unwelcome at nearby restaurants, and their group had to drive thirty minutes out of Nashville, to Murfreesboro, for dinner. It is also difficult to make a dinner reservation at Comic-Con.

The exhibit floors at the NRA and Comic-Con are fascinating. One NRA exhibit I enjoyed featured videos of cool stuff getting shot, including row after row of watermelons, which made impressive explosions. Rows of televisions being shot were much less interesting than the watermelons. The legislature in Tennessee is debating allowing exploding targets. Tennessee already allows for the sale of fantastic fireworks – the aerial kind that would start forest fires if they were allowed in flammable California – but in Tennessee, fireworks are wholesome fun. Explosions are popular at Comic-Con too (the Death Star comes to mind). Alas, real, legal explosions in California are just the stuff of dreams.

Tennessee’s Republican legislature has been pandering to the NRA in the weeks leading up to the convention; they are close to passing a “Guns in Parks” bill that would prohibit cities from banning guns in their municipal parks. Most of the prospective Republican presidential candidates gave speeches at the NRA convention on the first day. At the annual meeting, many mentions of vile Democrats were met with hisses from the enthusiastic, Republican crowd, who were equally angry about Islamic extremists, defending the border with Mexico, and President Obama as they were about threats of gun control. The NRA convention is about much more than guns; it is about a broad agenda that is Republican, conservative, and Christian.

The same mission-creep is apparent at Comic-Con, which should be about comic books, but has grown to be about anything entertainment related, which may have nothing to do with comics. Any TV show. Any movie. Whatever. Are there some TV stars from a detective, procedural show doing a panel? Yes? Let’s go stand in line! My God, the line is so long.

As the Klingons would say, “petaQ!”

nra-and-comic-con

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Blog

My Charlie Hebdo Week Rant

I usually don’t draw such wordy cartoons, but I thought this would get around better than if I wrote the same points in a column.

To explain this one, reading from left to right, the wart-hogs become progressively more disturbing. On the less disturbing left is The Los Angeles Times, which ran a blank, editorial cartoon shaped spot that wasn’t really blank, but contained a line of words, telling readers that this is what the world would look like if there were no editorial cartoons, with an attribution to the write who wrote those words. Ironically, The Los Angeles Times runs no cartoons three days a week or so – they could run that line three times a week with no blank spot. Cartoonists are at their best when times are tough and feelings run high. Editors are most cartoon averse when times are tough and feelings run high. (That said, the LA Times runs three or four of our cartoons a month – we usually love you, LA Times.)

The second wart-hog represents “Web pirates”, who are a problem for cartoonists most of the time, although now they have their heart in the right place with Charlie Hebdo tribute cartoons, and I can’t be too angry at them this week. I’m more angry with the big Web sites like The Daily Beast and The Huffington Post that are stealing cartoons and not paying the cartoonists right now. Even The New York Daily News is non-paying pirate now. Come on people – you should pay the cartoonists. Cartoons are cheap. You can see how important editorial cartoons are around the world now. Pay the cartoonists.

The third wart-hog is The Sun-Sentinel newspaper in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which just laid-off their nationally syndicated cartoonist, Chan Lowe, at a time that couldn’t be more awkward. The Sun-Sentinel just dropped the most important part of their newspaper.

CharlieHebdoCoverMore on word-people who don’t get it – The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, neither of which has an editorial cartoonist. My New York Times wart-hog says, “We can write about dead editorial cartoonists; we don’t need to hire any editorial cartoonists.” My faux quote is inspired by The New York Times‘ famous statement that they don’t need to show the Danish Muhammad cartoons because they can describe the cartoons with words – of-course, they can’t. And The New York Times has been making similar statements recently about not showing the Charlie Hebdo cover.

There are a couple of quotes from The New York Times that I have no attribution for, just cartoonist gossip, but they both ring true. The times is quoted saying, “We would never hire an editorial cartoonist because we would never give so much power to one man.” and the second quote: “We would never hire an editorial cartoonist because you can’t edit art like you can edit words.” At least they are honest, bone-headed word-people. Both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal run cartoon illustrations, where they give an assignment to a illustrator, rather hiring a real editorial cartoonist who draws what he thinks, like a columnist writes what he thinks – no, not that.

President Obama is on the right. Instead of going to Paris with the other world leaders, Obama met with the N.B.A. Champion San Antonio Spurs. Looks like the White House is run by The New York Times.

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Blog

Daryl in China – And Nazi Stolen Art, Obamacare, Tea Party and more!

I’ll be a special guest at the “Red Man” cartoon festival and competition in Guiyang, China, from the 20th through 25th of November – in a couple of weeks.  If you’ll be in Southern China, stop by.  I’ll give a speech and be on their contest jury.  Also there as special guests and jury members are my cartoonist buddies, Ross Thompson from Britain and Marlene Pohle from Germany.

Sorry to be so slow about posting my new cartoons – I’ll catch up now.  The newest one is this cartoon about the Nazi stolen art treasure that was found last week in Germany.  Given the subject matter, it may be better in grayscale.  What do you think?
139924 600 Daryl in China And Nazi Stolen Art, Obamacare, Tea Party and more! cartoons
139925 600 Daryl in China And Nazi Stolen Art, Obamacare, Tea Party and more! cartoons

After I finished this and sent it out, I had second thoughts about the color, and I did this revised version, starting with a nasty sepia-tone and moving up the saturation to the last panel.  I think it is better, so I sent out a revised version.  It makes the older panels seem older, and nastier.
139937 600 Daryl in China And Nazi Stolen Art, Obamacare, Tea Party and more! cartoons
I heard some pundit describe Obamacare as a “heavy lift” for the president, which got me thinking about this caduseus cartoon …

139765 600 Daryl in China And Nazi Stolen Art, Obamacare, Tea Party and more! cartoons

I’m trying to go lighter with my colors, and have a little bit of texture in everything.  Bad printing darkens everything up so much, many cartoonists are shocked to see how muddy their cartoons look in print.

I did two versions of this next “X-Ray Specs” cartoon about President Obama and his intrusive spying, which made Germany’s Angela Merkel angry when she learned that the NSA had been tapping her cell phone for years.  It should make most Americans angry too, at lack of deference shown to our privacy rights by our paranoid, overeaching government – so I drew the Statue of Liberty as the victim of the X-Ray Specs too.  Perhaps our young readers are too young to know, but there was a time when there was an ad for “X-Ray Specs” in every comic book – and we all read comic books because there were no video games. And no cell phones.  And we had manual typewriters.  I’m so old.  OOooh.
139650 600 Daryl in China And Nazi Stolen Art, Obamacare, Tea Party and more! cartoons

139648 600 Daryl in China And Nazi Stolen Art, Obamacare, Tea Party and more! cartoons

Here are the X-ray Specs in SPANISH!
Daryl in China And Nazi Stolen Art, Obamacare, Tea Party and more! cartoons

The troubles with Obamacare’s roll out, and lousy web site, have been great fun for the Republicans – so I drew them dancing on Obamacare’s and Secretary Sebelius’ graves, a bit early.

139588 600 Daryl in China And Nazi Stolen Art, Obamacare, Tea Party and more! cartoons

The recent election didn’t go too well for Tea Party candidates and moderates stole the day.
139265 600 Daryl in China And Nazi Stolen Art, Obamacare, Tea Party and more! cartoons

I was interested to see how the liberal cartoonists all turned so quickly on Obama when the Web site was bad. Here’s my bad Website cartoon.
139156 600 Daryl in China And Nazi Stolen Art, Obamacare, Tea Party and more! cartoons

This is one I missed from way back when we had the government shut-down.  It seems so long ago now – Republicans have had some good days with Obamacare’s troubles since then.  Times change fast.

138720 600 Daryl in China And Nazi Stolen Art, Obamacare, Tea Party and more! cartoons

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My Very Own Kim Jong Un and Doggies!

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.

Kim600TargetSketch My Very Own Kim Jong Un and Doggies! cartoons

 

Here he is as line art. Most newspaper readers will see the cartoon in black and white like this.

129508 600 My Very Own Kim Jong Un and Doggies! cartoons

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.”

129506 600 My Very Own Kim Jong Un and Doggies! cartoons

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.

Dog600Sketch My Very Own Kim Jong Un and Doggies! cartoons

 

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.

129677 600 My Very Own Kim Jong Un and Doggies! cartoons

Here is the color version – which is never as good as the simple black and white.

129678 600 My Very Own Kim Jong Un and Doggies! cartoons

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.

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Here’s one where Obama is the doggie on Wall Street’s leash.

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Here’s Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as the doggie.

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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.

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I drew a lot of doggie cartoons with President Bush. The military was W’s doggie.

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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.

32763 600 My Very Own Kim Jong Un and Doggies! cartoons

I drew lots of W as a doggie.  Here he is marking his territory.

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And here is W the doggie, during the run-up to war in Iraq.

7541 600 My Very Own Kim Jong Un and Doggies! cartoons

I’ll bet my cartoons would be much more popular if I drew nothing but doggies. I’ve considered it.

 

 

 

 

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Cyprus, GOP Autopsy, Netanyahu, Li’l Kim, the New Pope, Europe and So Much More!

Cyprus, GOP Autopsy, Netanyahu, Lil Kim, the New Pope, Europe and So Much More! cartoons

Saturn/Bankers Eating Cyprus, by Goya and Daryl. Click on the image for a larger view.

It has been too long since I have posted my new cartoons in the blog; so here is a big batch, with some comments.

The Cyprus bank crisis is great fun, and a good excuse for another cartoon abusing an art masterpiece. This time it is Saturn Devouring his Children by Francisco Goya. Of-course, Saturn knew one of his children would kill him, so eating the kids was the obvious thing to do. Goya painted this on the wall of his dining room. A charming, dinnertime feast for the eyes.

Saturn’s son, Zeus, escaped being eaten, came back, cut open Dad’s belly (or induced Dad to vomit, depending on the version of the story) freeing his siblings, who emerged just fine from their digestive confinement. This is an apt metaphor for Cyprus bankers, who consumed Cyprus’ economy, only to have the EU cut their financial belly open sometime next week, freeing the Cypriot economy which will come out of its digestive confinement, looking no worse for wear. By some accounts Zeus also went on to castrate his father, also an apt metaphor for the EU and Cyprus.

GoyaClip Cyprus, GOP Autopsy, Netanyahu, Lil Kim, the New Pope, Europe and So Much More! cartoons

A clip from Goya’s Saturn Devouring his Children.

That’s a clip from Goya’s unaltered painting on the left. The problem I had was that I couldn’t just replace Saturn’s child/dinner with a map of Cyprus, because the child and Cyprus aren’t the same shape. And people want to see me draw in my cartoons, not just retouch masterpieces, so I decided to obviously draw over the painting.

What are public domain masterpieces good for, if not a lack of respect?

It is common for cartoonists to use famous paintings as metaphors in cartoons, and I notice that when I do it the cartoons are reprinted much more than any others.  Editors seem to love it – and it amuses me.  So there should be more to come.

My previous cartoon defaced a famous 1632 painting by Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. The cartoon mocks the GOP “autopsy” this week by GOP Chair Reince Priebus – it amused me that Priebus chose to use the word “autopsy,” acknowledging that the patient was already dead. It was actually a pretty good GOP autopsy, and the reaction from the GOP old-guard made me laugh.

129098 600 Cyprus, GOP Autopsy, Netanyahu, Lil Kim, the New Pope, Europe and So Much More! cartoons

The previous cartoon was about President Obama’s trip to Israel, and how I imagined his conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu would go. “Overstating the obvious” always works in cartoon.

128867 600 Cyprus, GOP Autopsy, Netanyahu, Lil Kim, the New Pope, Europe and So Much More! cartoons

 

Bellicose rhetoric from North Korea dominated the news the day I drew the cartoon below. I enjoy drawing the crazy, comicana cursing. This story doesn’t change much. I think North Koreans and Li’l Kim look for slow news days when they can make crazy threats and get some attention.

128777 600 Cyprus, GOP Autopsy, Netanyahu, Lil Kim, the New Pope, Europe and So Much More! cartoons

The cartoon below is a Euro-evergreen. When I draw “everyman” characters in cartoons, I try to make them look like real people, rather than big-nosed-nobodies. I thought the girl looked kind of like Penny from The Big Bang Theory. Some readers commented that she looked more like Chelsea Clinton, with a “There’s Something About Mary” hairdo, having lunch with young Nicolas Cage. Oh well …

128609 600 Cyprus, GOP Autopsy, Netanyahu, Lil Kim, the New Pope, Europe and So Much More! cartoons

Everyone drew something about Rand Paul’s filibuster. I thought John McCain’s strained reaction, calling Rand Paul a “Wacko Bird” was great fun, and I drew this … I think McCain is hard to draw. His face is like pudding, with no particular shape to it. And, whatever he has to say, he has a “GET OFF MY LAWN” expression on his face.

128537 600 Cyprus, GOP Autopsy, Netanyahu, Lil Kim, the New Pope, Europe and So Much More! cartoons

The cartoon below is about Obama’s recent “charm offensive” where he invited GOP leaders over for dinner or lunch. We saw lots of smiling faces.

128475 600 Cyprus, GOP Autopsy, Netanyahu, Lil Kim, the New Pope, Europe and So Much More! cartoons

This is another “charm offensive” cartoon about Obama’s dinner with Republicans. This was a quickie and I didn’t bother to color it. I got comments from conservatives who thought it was funny that I drew Obama in the role of Jesus at the last supper. hmmm.

128425 600 Cyprus, GOP Autopsy, Netanyahu, Lil Kim, the New Pope, Europe and So Much More! cartoons

128663 600 Cyprus, GOP Autopsy, Netanyahu, Lil Kim, the New Pope, Europe and So Much More! cartoons

Pope Francis as a gaucho.

One last one and I’m caught up! I drew this one (on the right) as fast as I could, when the new Pope was announced, and we learned he was from Argentina. I went to Google Images and looked up all I could find on gaucho costumes. So here is Pope Francis as a gaucho.

I won’t fall so far behind again!  I promise!

 

 

 

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Five Timely ‘Buffett Rule’ Cartoons

As Tax Day approaches, and we all shuffle to figure out how much we owe Uncle Sam, the President and Democrats are hard at work pushing their message of tax fairness.

The core of their plan is the so-called “Buffett rule,” named after billionaire Warren Buffett, who has said that he pays a lower percentage in income taxes than his secretary. Obama’s plan would force the rich to pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes.

Here are five timely cartoons that wade into the murky waters of any tax plan pushed during an election year…

Kirk Anderson / PoliticalCartoons.com (click to view more cartoons by Anderson)
John Cole / Scranton Times-Tribune (click to view more cartoons by Cole)
Joe Heller / Green Bay Press-Gazette (click to view more cartoons by Heller)
Kap / Cagle Cartoons (Click to view our newest political cartoons)
Taylor Jones / Cagle Cartoons (click to view more cartoons by Jones)
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State of the Union Cartoons

Tonight, President Obama will deliver his State of the Union speech as GOP candidates bludgeon themselves over vulture capitalism and influence peddling. Are Republicans making it easy for a President facing high unemployment and record levels of debt?

We’ll leave the history of tonight to Newt Gingrich. For now, check out our new State of the Union cartoon collection.

Chris Weyant / The Hill (click to view all our State of the Union cartoons)