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Republican Nooses

The Republicans infighting in congress is pretty crazy – enough for another noose cartoon. 

I seem to draw a lot of nooses. I draw lots of wordless cartoons and a noose is a good, simple, graphic threat. Here are the Republicans with a caduceus noose, from when they were trying to stop the government over and over, to protest Obamacare.

And here’s a more recent Trump tongue noose, when everyone, including me, thought that Donald Trumps provocative statements would knock him out of the presidential race – I was wrong; I guess I was playing too loose with that noose.

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In the Trump Shadow

Donald Trump casts a big shadow over the Republican field as we approach the first debate. I drew little caricatures of all the candidates – can you name them all? (I would have missed Jim Gilmore – he declared late and I stuck him behind the crowd, behind Ben Carson, as an afterthought.)

I started off drawing this one with Donald Trump as a storm cloud raining on the other Republicans.

When I posted this we started getting calls from editors who wanted a color version, and I haven’t done that yet. I suppose I still should, but I think the shadow version is better.

I’m guessing that the Fox News debate will be either storm or shadow, with Trump on top. We’ll see.

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Common Core in Tennessee

Here’s my new cartoon for the Nashville Next altie-weekly newspaper. Tennessee has a number of commissions that are passionately reviewing the Common Core standard that conservatives in this red state just can’t stand.

7-CommonCoreElephants700

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Cartoon Bombs … Really

Nothing makes Islamic radicals more angry than cartoons, so, why not drop cartoon bombs on the enemy? Looks like the Pentagon already thought of that.

According to the Daily Mail in Britain, the U.S. Air Force recently utilized an F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet to drop a specially designed “leaflet-dispenser-bomb” for the first time in Syria, dispersing 60,000 copies of the cartoon below on the town of Raqqa, the self-proclaimed capital of ISIS, ISIL, Islamic State, IS or “Daesh”.

The sign in the cartoon reads, “Daesh Recruiting Office,” the word on the meat grinder is “Daesh”. The wording on the monitor at the right of the cartoon reads, “now serving 7001” and the ticket dropped by the first person in line has the number “7001.”

This cartoonist could have a promising career as a conservative – just put donkey heads on these two Daish guys, change the wording on the meat grinder to “Obamacare” and I could see this cartoon being reprinted in Tennessee.

DroppedonRaqqa

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Hillary and a Tempest in a Teapot

Here’s my new one. I was trying to stretch this to make a better tea-party reference to the elephant, but I decided, nah, it is clear enough. Then I thought of putting the GOP elephant in a Fox New t-shirt, and I thought, nah, it is clear enough.

Here’s a Hillary, Benghazi, GOP oldie that will probably never grow stale. Hillary is a wonderful character – I’m looking forward to the campaign!

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New Years BITE

Happy cartoon New Year! I was busily drawing my New Years Day cartoon, with Obama going out and coming in for the year, and with little biting GOP elephants, when the news started blaring about North Korea calling Obama a “monkey.” I am a slave to the news, so I had to do a second version with L’il Kim. Here’s the GOP …

And here is the L’il Kim version …

L’il Kim may be a plague to the world, but he is a gift to cartoonists.

The “Father Time and Baby New Year” thing is standard cartooning fodder. Here’s my New Year cartoon from last year …

Back in December, 2012, all the talk was about the “Fiscal Cliff” budget fight in Congress; it looked like doomsday. I drew this one …

At the end of 2010 the house had fallen under Republican control, and it looked like the GOP was eager to jump into more war – instead, Congress didn’t do much of anything, and Obama got us into more war. Oh well …

At the end of 2008: Obama won the presidency, George W. Bush was out of a job, and my drawings of Obama needed some more time to mature.

As 2005 turned into 2006 George W. Bush’s Republicans had lost the mid-term elections, but Bush was doubling down on the Iraq War anyway. There was lots more war to come.

Back in 2001 all the news was the 9/11 attacks as our troops poured into Afghanistan. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

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“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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Big Election for Republicans and Tic-Tac-Toe

The big election wins for Republicans gave us an elephant cartoon festival that continues today. Here is our great new collection of cartoons on the GOP sweep.

I posted three cartoons yesterday! The first one started out as I was thinking of the Republicans taking “a big bite of the apple” which didn’t quite work, because it looked like the elephant was damaging and consuming the capitol, so I went with a Capitol ice cream cone and a big lick. (No, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the perspective on the Capitol – hey, this is a cartoon.)

And here’s the GOP having a nice day, while the Democrats are having a lousy day.

Here’s the GOP win. They played a good game this time around.

Tic-Tac-Toe cartoons are a favorite of mine; they show more than winners and losers, tic-tac-toe shows a strategy. I drew this one when it became clear that Obama was going to beat Mitt Romney.

I drew this one four years earlier, when it was clear that Obama was going to beat McCain.

Tic-tac-toe isn’t only good for elections. I drew this one a few years ago, when Saddam Hussein’s regime fell.

I regret that my early Iraq cartoons were not very sophisticated, and were much to supportive of the war. I’ve learned my lesson this time around and all the warmongering media and public support for going back into Iraq looks like the old rush to war winning over the public again … as illustrated in the tic-tac-toe-oldie below. Somehow it looks like there is more tic-tac-toe to come.

 

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Epic Dysfunction in Congress, Obamacare and Ted Cruz as a Monkey Throwing his Poo

Here is my last week of cartoons.  Today I’m headed out for the editorial cartooning convention in St. Just, France, with my brilliant cartoonist buddies, Steve Sack, Bob Englehart and Pat Bagley.

Here’s my most recent cartoon, with the GOP all tied up in a knot.  They seem to be pretty dysfunctional right now, gumming up the government for everybody.  (I was just drawing the heels of his shoes with the old fashioned nails and gripper on the back, I wasn’t think of his heels having happy faces.  I guess I have to think of everything.)

600 GOPknot300dpiCMYK9 Epic Dysfunction in Congress, Obamacare and Ted Cruz as a Monkey Throwing his Poo cartoons

 

I did a second GOP knot cartoon this week, which makes the point more about the split in the Republican party.

600 ElephantKnot300dpiCMYK Epic Dysfunction in Congress, Obamacare and Ted Cruz as a Monkey Throwing his Poo cartoons

 

I’m trying to do more texture in my cartoons.  I’ve been asked why I do the yellow backgrounds so often in my cartoons.  I like the yellow because it is intense and light so that it doesn’t draw away from the line art.

I drew a THIRD Republican knot cartoon this week.  This is my knotty Republican week.  Here is the GOP hanging himself on the medical Caduseus (Obamacare).

1790B GOPCadeuseus300dpiCMY Epic Dysfunction in Congress, Obamacare and Ted Cruz as a Monkey Throwing his Poo cartoons

Enough of knots. When Ted Cruz was doing his useless filibuster, reading from Dr. Seuss, and the other cartoonists were all making Dr. Seuss metaphors, I was rather more annoyed with Cruz, so I drew him as a monkey throwing his poop.

600 CruzMonkey300dpiCMYK Epic Dysfunction in Congress, Obamacare and Ted Cruz as a Monkey Throwing his Poo cartoons

I know that there won’t be many newspapers that will print this (if any will at all).  I guess that is one of the perks of being my own editor – I can draw whatever I want even if nobody wants to see it.  This cartoon is actually a homage to the great, British cartoonist Steve Bell, who drew a famous image of George W. Bush in a similar pose.  I’m a big Steve Bell fan.

The last one for the week is this Republican suicide bomber cartoon.  I’m leaving for the convention in France at a difficult time, with all the wonderful, crazy politics going on now.  I won’t be drawing new cartoons for a week or so, but when I come back I expect to have some pent up angst, ready for the drawing board.

600 GovtBomb300dpiCMYK Epic Dysfunction in Congress, Obamacare and Ted Cruz as a Monkey Throwing his Poo cartoons

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Arab Spring, Obamacare, Republicans and Teachers!

Here are my three most recent cartoons! I just finished this one on the Republicans’ 40th vote against Obamacare and their recent attempt to shut down the government over Obamacare. They will be run over each time.  They don’t learn.

135509 600 Arab Spring, Obamacare, Republicans and Teachers! cartoons

Since you folks like to see my messy, rough sketches, here you go …

ObamacareSketch600 Arab Spring, Obamacare, Republicans and Teachers! cartoons

The next one is the Arab Spring in Egypt.  Here is the line art that most people will see in the newspapers.

135225 600 Arab Spring, Obamacare, Republicans and Teachers! cartoons

I try to do enough line work in these that I get some dark and medium areas to anchor the composition.  I wouldn’t worry so much about that if I knew it would only run in color.  The color version is below.  I’m trying to use more texture in my color now, mostly with a rubber stamp pattern in Photoshop that looks like a sponge.

135235 600 Arab Spring, Obamacare, Republicans and Teachers! cartoons

And I did this cartoon about teachers, then and now …

135351 600 Arab Spring, Obamacare, Republicans and Teachers! cartoons

This is a refurbished oldie which has been a big seller in pay-per-use. I noticed another nice book sale on this one in our system last week, and I thought the cartoon needed to be freshened up.  Here’s the original …

77685 600 Arab Spring, Obamacare, Republicans and Teachers! cartoons

I always tell cartoonists not to put the year in their cartoons.  For some reason artists like to put the year after a copyright circle ©, which just makes the old cartoons, that should sell as evergreens, suffer for their age.  Now this cartoon isn’t dated, and I think it is greatly improved with the black and white in the first,  1960 panel.

I noticed after I posted this last week that almost every newspaper subscriber was downloading it, even though I marked it as a revision.  Some cartoons strike a chord.  I got this idea from my Israeli cartoonist buddy, Uri Fink.  Thanks again, Uri.