Here’s my new cartoon – Obama tied in a knot.  As I was watching the inauguration it seemed to me that Obama won’t be moving too quickly to make all the changes he urged in his speech – therefore, he’s tied up in a knot.  Not too deep, but fun to draw.  Here is the rough pencil sketch …

I had to erase and think a bit to figure out how to tie the president into a knot. I was a lousy boy scout.  Here he is in line art, the way most people will see the cartoon in the newspapers.

… and here he is in color.

And here is the cartoon the very next day in my local newspaper (The Santa Barbara News-Press).

My previous cartoon was based on a famous old National Lampoon cover. I loved the old National Lampoon – this great one is from 1973, when I was a junior in high school. One of my favorite parts of the National Lampoon was the Chicken Guts comics by Randall Enos – who I now syndicate as an editorial cartoonist!

Unfortunately, I don’t think this cartoon will get reprinted much, because it is name-calling-Republican-bashing, because it requires some popular cultural knowledge, and because it is in a vertical format, which doesn’t fit the standard hole that editors leave open for the editorial cartoon.  Oh well – I’m the boss here at Cagle Cartoons, so I can draw what I want, even if nobody else wants it.