Most Popular Cartoons of the Pandemic

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date May 5, 2020

Here are the top ten most popular cartoons of the pandemic, from February 1st through May 4th, 2020. These are the cartoons that our newspaper subscribers chose to print from nearly 2,000 pandemic cartoons delivered from our syndication service, CagleCartoons.com. About half of America’s daily, paid-circulation newspapers subscribe to CagleCartoons.com, so these are likely the cartoons that most newspaper readers have seen in the past three months, appearing in hundreds of newspapers.

Regular readers of our blog and newsletter see our collection of the top ten cartoons every week, and have probably already seen all of these in our weekly collections, but this list puts them in perspective. (Subscribe to our free email newsletter so you never miss our weekly “Top Ten Most Popular Cartoons”.)

What really stands out is the stellar performance of freelance cartoonist, Rick McKee, who has the number one most popular pandemic cartoon and who crushes the coronavirus field with a whopping three cartoons dominating the pandemic top ten. Rick was recently laid off from The Augusta Chronicle newspaper in Georgia (what a mistake that was). The number two cartoon belongs to Steve Sack of The Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The rest in the top ten will be familiar to all of our fans.

Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you! Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.

The world needs political cartoonists more now than ever. Please consider supporting Cagle.com and visit Cagle.com/heroes.

We need you!

#1

The most popular cartoon of the pandemic is this one, from Rick McKee.

#2

The second most popular cartoon is from Steve Sack of The Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

#3 is a tie

In third place there is a tie between Rick McKee and Steve Sack.

#5

The fifth place cartoon comes from Gannett freelancer, Dave Granlund.

#6

The sixth place cartoon is the third cartoon in the top ten that comes from Rick McKee.

#7

The seventh place cartoon is the number one cartoon from last week, by John Cole of The Times-Tribune in Scranton Pennsylvania.

#8

The eighth place cartoon comes from the Canadian cartoon maestro, Dave Whamond, who is the only non-American in the top ten.

#9

The ninth place cartoon comes from Adam Zyglis, the cartoonist for the Buffalo News in New York.

#10

The tenth place cartoon comes Dave Fitzsimmons of The Arizona Daily Star.

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Tags cartoon, coronavirus, COVID-19, editorial cartoons, pandemic, Rick McKee, Steve Sack

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Steve Sack Decade!

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date December 29, 2019

Steve Sack’s favorite cartoons of the past decade are below! Steve is the Pulitzer Prize winning staff cartoonist for The Minneapolis Star-Tribune in Minnesota. See Steve’s favorite cartoons of the decade 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. See the complete archive of Steve’s editorial 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!

Tags anti-vaxxer, climate change, disco, donald trump, hackers, impeachment, Minneapolis, nra, Obama, Obamacare, Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Vladimir Putin, Wayne LaPierre, White House

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Favorite Cartoons of the Decade

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date December 2, 2019

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).

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Cartoons in China!

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date November 17, 2019

The huge, English language, official, government owned newspaper, The China Daily, subscribes to CagleCartoons, and we syndicate their lead cartoonist, Luojie. I have included a bunch of recent cartoons at the bottom of the page, from Luojie about the protests in Hong Kong. As we would expect, Luojie’s cartoons express the official view of the Chinese government, that the Hong Kong protesters are rioting terrorists.

Luojie‘s cartoons capture the tenor of the Chinese press reports and editorials about the Hong Kong “riots” which mention nothing about the protestors’ demands for continued autonomy and democracy, and have no mention of excessive violence by Hong Kong police that we are used to seeing in Western coverage. In fact, Luojie’s Hong Kong cartoons stand in stark contrast to all of the other cartoons from CagleCartoonists, and I would guess, from any editorial cartoonists outside of China.

I just got back from a couple of weeks visiting China for a big festival in the coastal city of Xiamen, put on by ASIFA China. I was invited to be a judge for their big cartoon competition.

They had two categories of judges for print and animation (I was on the print jury).

Here I am in the photo below, with my colleagues from both juries – that’s me in the center/front. The other Westerners are cartoon scholar John Lent on the far right, and Bosnian animator/DJ Berin Tuzlić behind me in the colorful shirt.

It took my jury three days of work to go through all the print submissions. The top prizes are $15,000.00 USD each, which is a hefty prize. I’m surprised that American cartoonists don’t enter this generous, annual competition. The Xiamen festival has invited a bunch of CagleCartoonists to be jurors in recent years, including Steve Sack, Bruce Plante, Milt Priggee and Pat Bagley. We all thought the competition and festival were great.

This big poster shows all the nominees in the animation and print categories.

I took my son, Michael along on the trip. Here we are standing with our lovely interpreter, Jasmine Xu, at the beautiful Buddhist temple in Xiamen.

Like other cities in China, Xiamen looks brand new; it is busy, bustling and crammed full of tall skyscrapers. Xiamen is a small city by Chinese standards, with a population close to the size of Los Angeles, and it is home to lots of CGI animation studios.

I see Xiamen, and all of China, as a gastronomic adventure – eating is a joy in China!

The festival looked more like a business conference than a Comic Con. Here’s a photo from a room listening to a presentation about the business of a CGI animation studio.

I saw that the major Western news sites were blocked by China’s “Great Firewall” and I learned how to use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to read the Western newspapers and download my podcasts through Japan. The TV in my hotel room included CNN International, which was running regular updates on the conflict in Hong Kong that were either entirely blacked out, or selectively blacked out, showing criticism of the protestors but going silent and black when each segment turned to criticism of the government or police.

This festival photo shows the orderly, businesslike kiosks on the convention floor.

China’s “One Country, Two Systems” plan for Hong Kong isn’t looking very good; China makes the same pitch to Taiwan – a pitch that isn’t very attractive right now as it looks more likely that Hong Kong will be fully consumed and digested into China’s communist system, as the protests continue and intensify. I didn’t find anyone in mainland China that agrees with me. The Chinese folks I talked to privately told me that they shared the official view that the Hong Kong protestors were terrorists that must be put down.

I’m disappointed that President Trump seems to side with the government in China against the protestors, even so, the official view in China is that America is “supporting the terrorists” in Hong Kong, as Luojie illustrates. Here’s Luojie‘s official take on the Hong Kong protests …

Tags animation festival, ASIFA China, Berin Tuzlić, Bruce Plante, Cartoon Festival, China, CNN International, Jasmine Xu, John Lent, Luojie, Milt Priggee and Pat Bagley, protests, Steve Sack, The China Daily, Virtual Private Network, VPN, Xiamen

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Cagle Cartoonists in France!

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date October 17, 2019

I just got back from our big convention at the editorial cartooning festival in the little village of St Just le Martel, France.

The French call editorial cartoons “press cartoons” and editorial cartoonists are “dessinateurs de presse.” It was a struggle to get our dessinateurs de presse together for a group Cagle photo this year! Here’s one attempt.

CagleCartoonists above, standing from left to right are Iranian exile and new Cagle.com cartoonist, Hasan Kareimsdeh, Pierre Ballouhey from France, Manny Francisco from the Philippines, Gatis Sluka from Latvia, on top of the cow in the red hat is Cristina Sampaio from Portugal, standing below her is David Fitzsimmons, Ed Wexler, Steve Sack, Adam Zyglis and Pat Bagley. Kneeling or sitting from left to right are Christo Komarnitsky from Bulgaria, Jeff Koterba, me (Daryl Cagle), Emad Hajjaj from Jordan and Gary McCoy.

And here’s another attempt about fifteen minutes later with two new French CagleCartoonists added on the left, Robert Rousso and Jean-Michel Renault. Others wandered off. We missed seven or eight of our CagleCartoonists who were in St Just and didn’t show up for either photo. The cats just won’t stay in one place, and they don’t come when called.

This short video shows about half of our CagleCartoons Trump vs. Iran exhibit at St Just. We also participated in two other exhibits there, one bashing The New York Times for dropping editorial cartoons, and another, of memorial cartoons for the festival’s beloved founder, Gerard Vandenbroucke, who passed away in the last year.

https://youtu.be/54vreTdaJQ4

My charming and generous St. Just family, Greg and Geraldine Decoster, who hosted us, in the cartoon museum with me and my cartoonist/musician son, Michael.

I’ve been coming to St Just for seven or eight years now and it has grown into an effective Cagle Cartoons convention for us. There is no other festival for editorial cartoons in the world that is anything like it. All the folks in the little village turn out to welcome the cartoonists, who they host in their homes. The cartoonists bond with their local host families and stay with the same family year after year. The charming and generous St. Just family, Greg and Geraldine Decoster, who hosted me and my cartoonist/musician son Michael, are shown in the photo at the right, in the cartoon museum.

The town’s teenagers are waiters at the huge, impressive dinners for the many editorial cartoonists from around the world. The video below was created by our CagleCartoonist, David Fitzsimmons, which shows the dinner scene, along with showing the cool editorial cartoon museum, the cute little town, St Just’s medieval church, the presentation of the cow to the cartoonist of the year (Swiss cartoonist, Thierry Barrigue) and more. (See my son, Michael drawing on the table at dinnertime in the video.)

Here are a bunch of Americans drinking and carousing at the home of Steve Sack‘s lovely St Just family (who prefers to remain anonymous).

Who are we? From the bottom going clockwise: in the red shirt there’s Jeff Koterba, in the lower left is my cartoonist/musician son, Michael, moving up and around the table, there’s Ed Wexler, Gary McCoy, Steve Sack‘s son and daughter-in-law Adam and Mandy, Dave Fitzsimmons, Ed Wexler‘s daughter Sarah, Adam Zyglis, Dave’s wife Ellen, Pat Bagley‘s girlfriend Kate and Pat, Steve Sack, and Ed Wexler‘s wife Toni. I’m missing from the photo. (Maybe I’m taking the picture, holding that mysterious glass of red wine.)

The festival (or “salon” as they call it) is growing and this was their biggest year out of nearly 40 years in existence, and they are taking on an increasingly important role for our troubled profession. St Just le Martel is much appreciated! Thanks everyone!

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Anti-Vaxxer Celebrities

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date June 23, 2019

Anti-Vaxxers have been out in force, protesting California’s Senate Bill 276 that would make it harder for unethical doctors to grant bogus medical exemptions to parents who don’t want to vaccinate their children. Ignorant celebrities have been leading the charge. Last week we got stories about Justin Timberlake’s wife, Jessica Biel doing the lobbying rounds both evil. anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The dangerous, celebrity idiots don’t like to be called “anti-vaxxers,” they prefer to be described as “pro-informed consent,” or “pro-vaccine choice,” or “anti-forced vaccination,” or “vaccine risk aware,” all of which mean the same thing. Dangerous and ignorant. Here’s an cartoon about the anti-vaxxers that I drew three years ago …

Here are some of my favorite anti-vaxxer cartoons by my buddies – these first two are by Nate Beeler.

The next two are by Steve Sack …

This one is by Adam Zyglis …

Here’s Dave Whamond on the celebrity asses …

Here’s a nice one from Dave Granlund.

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I Like Theresa May

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date April 7, 2019

Britain’s fever pitch of stress about Brexit is cranking up, day by day, as each new deadline approaches. One thing all the Brits seem to agree about is how they dislike Theresa May, her Brexit deal, and how she has gone about pitching and re-pitching the deal to Parliament. The topic dominates the minds of our international editorial cartoonists.

I like Theresa May. I don’t think her position on Brexit matters much since Parliament and the EU wouldn’t be able to agree on anything. Whatever position May had taken would lead to the same toxic impasse. My cartoon with May struggling to support Big Ben is actually a positive cartoon about her – I think she’s trying hard in a no-win situation.

I like the vertical cropping of my cartoon better than the wide version that I sent out to newspapers. I wanted May to look small under the crushing weight of the huge tower that looms over Parliament, but I wasn’t quite sure how small she could be to still be perceived as holding up the tower, rather than just looking like she’s being crushed –which would be a cartoon that means something else. I drew this as two pieces, one was the “Elizabeth Tower” (Big Ben), and the other was Theresa May, then I placed and sized May in Photoshop, making her as small as I thought I could for the cartoon to work.

I thought the tower was pretty forgiving and I got most of the architectural details wrong along with the perspective. The circle of the clock face is especially bad – I wasn’t thinking much about that at the time but now that I look at the reduced version, it bothers me. I should have generated a good circle in Photoshop and traced it, but no, I thought my lousy cartoonist freehand was fine. Too late now; it went out to newspapers already. Water under the bridge.

I don’t think I’ve seen any cartoons supporting May in the deluge of Brexit bashing that has been pouring into Cagle Tower in recent weeks. Powerful people get no sympathy, and editorial cartoonists aren’t known for sympathy. Here’s my wide cartoon and some of my recent Brexit favorites.

This one is by my buddy, Steve Sack of The Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

This one is by the brilliant, Dutch cartoonist, Hajo.

This one is by self-syndication king, Joe Heller.

This is by my new pal. Nicola Listes from Croatia.

And this Brexit Mobius Strip is by John Cole from Scranton, Pennsylvania!

Tags Big Ben, Brexit, Elizabeth Tower, great britain, Hajo de Reijer, Joe Heller, Nicola Listes, Steve Sack, Theresa May

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Memorial Cartoons for Gérard

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date February 18, 2019

Updated 2/19/19 with new cartoons – Daryl

Cartoonists around the world are drawing memorial tribute cartoons for our dear, departed friend Gérard Vandenbroucke, the founder and president of the Salon at St Just le Martel and long time champion of our editorial cartooning profession. Read my obit here. I’ll post new cartoons as they come in.

Gérard was also a politician who rose from being the mayor of the tiny village of St Just le Martel to being the president of the Limousin region of France, famous for their brown cows that are an icon of the cartoon museum – that’s why there are so many cows in the cartoons.

This one is by Christo Komarnitsky from Bulgaria

This one by Bob Englehart may require some explanation. Gérard was the mayor of St Just le Martel and he championed the cartoon museum and Salon in the tiny village. St Just le Martel translates to “Saint Just the Hammer.” As the story goes, God told Saint Just to throw his hammer and build a church where it landed; Bob’s cartoon puts Gérard in the St Just role, throwing his hammer to decide where to build the cartoon museum/festival.

This one is by Osmani Simanca from Brazil

This one is from Gary McCoy

Here is my own cartoon.

This one is by Ed Wexler!

This one is by Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

This cartoon is by Marilena Nardi from Italy

This one is by Jeff Koterba of the Omaha World Herald.

By Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune.

This is by Firuz Kutal of Norway.

This one is by Tchavdar Nicolov from Bulgaria’s Prass Press.

This one is by my buddy, Robert Rousso, who is the dean of the French cartoonists.

This linoleum block print is by Randy Enos.

This one is by Danish cartoonist Neils Bo Bojesen.

This one is by my buddy, Batti Manfruelli from Corsica.

Pierre Ballouhey drew Gérard on the left, resuming a conversation with his two deceased pals on a cloud. In the middle is the priest of the lovely, little, medieval church of St Just le Martel. At the right is the late, chain-smoking, French cartoonist Jean-Jacques Loup, a talented cartoonist who curated the exhibitions at the museum for many years.

Here’s another by Pierre, the Limousin cows paint themselves black with grief.

This charming cartoon is by the charming French cartoonist, Placide. The village of St Just le Martel is behind the statue of Gérard, with the cartoon museum in the middle and the medieval church on the right.

This cartoon is by Romanian cartoonist Pavel Constantin.

This one is by Rick McKee of the Augusta Chronicle.

By Oguz Gurel from Turkey

This one is by Cristina Sampaio from Portugal.

This Gérard tribute is from Brazilian cartoonist and animator, CAó Cruz Alves

From the French cartoonist, my buddy Noder

Tags Batti Manfruelli, Ed Wexler, France, Gerard Vandenbroucke, Jean-Jacques Loup, Jeff Koterba, Neils Bo Bojesen, Pat Bagley, Pavel Constantin, Pierre Ballouhey, Placide, Randy Enos, Rick McKee, Robert Rousso, St. Just Le Martel, Steve Sack, Tchavdar Nicolov

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Trump and Rep Frederica Wilson

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date October 23, 2017

The story about President Trump’s awkward condolence call to the widow of a fallen soldier has dragged on for more than a week. I wasn’t going to draw about it, but as the story droned on and on, with more awkward false tweets and statements from the White House, it looks like I can’t avoid this one.

See more cartoons on the topic here. Here are a few of my favorites; the first is by RJ Matson.

Isn’t the hair nice on this Ed Wexler cartoon?

I think the image of Trump throwing paper towels to the hurricane victims in Puerto Rico, and Trump’s love of walls struck a chord with Marian Kamensky.

Sean Delonas may be our most conservative cartoonist. Here Sean shows his disgust for Congresswoman Frederica Wilson.

Our consistently conservative cartoonist, Rick McKee, seems to like Chief of Staff John Kelly’s statement, even though it contained false accusations about the Congresswoman.

Nate Beeler can sometimes lean to the right too …

Here’s one from Steve Sack.

I think this Pat Bagley cartoon is my favorite.

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CagleCartoonists Meet in France

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date October 20, 2017

Every year, CagleCartoonists get together at the big editorial cartoons (they call them “Press Cartoons”) convention in St Just le Martel, France. The small village has dedicated itself to our art form, building a grand cartoon museum and hosting a great party for us. The museum is run by local volunteers; the townsfolk put most of the cartoonists up in their homes and they cook for us, and give us an open bar, and the teenagers in town are our waiters! I can’t imagine anything like that happening in the USA.

It is a delight to visit St Just and see our profession held in such high esteem. Because of the generosity and support of the village, it is actually cheaper for the cartoonists to come to the convention in St Just than to go to our own, American cartoonist conventions.

This year we had 17 CagleCartoonists from around the world at St Just –you can see 14 of them in the group photo above. That’s our bovine Statue of Liberty looking us over, in the cartoon museum, at our “Trump: Nine Months Later” exhibit.

Our own Angel Boligan went home with the cow –the big annual prize in St Just. Congratulations to Angel!

The CagleCartoonists above are, from left to right: Manny Francisco (Singapore), Angel Boligan (Mexico), Christina Sampaio (Portugal), Pierre Balouhey (France), Pat Bagley (Utah), Gatis Šļūka (Latvia), Steve Sack (Minnesota), Osmani Simanca (Brazil), Monte Wolverton (Washington), Bill Schorr (California); Ed Wexler (California); Jeff Koterba (Nebraska) and Emad Hajjaj (Jordan). I’m seated in the front. Missing from our group photo (and probably hiding in the museum’s bathroom) are Rainer Hachfeld (Germany), Jos Colignon (Holland), and Christo Komarnitski (Bulgaria).

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