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The GOP and the Refugee Doorway

The Republicans are trying hard to push back against the inflows of refugees and immigrants. Here’s my take. Often when I do cartoons that have muted colors, I get complaints from editors who want brighter colors. Refugees don’t lend themselves well to bright colors.

Often when I do cartoons have have muted colors, I get complaints from editors who want brighter colors. Refugees don’t lend themselves well to bright colors. I’m trying to do more texture in my cartoons now. Here’s a detail.

refugeeDoorDetail

Here’s my rough and dirty sketch. You can see that I fiddled around with the position of the elephant’s trunk before I was happy with it.

Doorsketch

I put a “Thanks to Michael Kounturis” in the lower left. Michael works out of Athens, Greece and he is one of my favorite cartoonists; he recently came back to our CagleCartoons.com newspaper syndicate package after a hiatus. My GOP Doorway cartoon was inspired by Michael’s cartoon below.

I stole a lot from Michael’s cartoon, including the position of the door and the guy pushing back on the door – and the general composition with the doorway poking up, off-center. It is all lovely – so thanks, Michael, and you have my apologies for ripping you off! See more of Michael’s great cartoons here.

 

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Republicans and Refugees

This week the House passed a bill that would stop the US from taking in 10,000 Syrian refugees; President Obama promised to veto the bill if it reached his desk. All of the Republican presidential candidates have been crowing about stopping refugee immigrants in the wake of the terror attacks in Paris, and the cartoonists have been doing some healthy Republican bashing in response, often including the Statue of Liberty with its obvious irony. Here’s mine …

I was impressed by this one, from my buddy Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune, featuring the dead Syrian toddler found on the beach in Greece, with Lady Liberty’s toes …

This Liberty in the position of the dead boy on the beach, by my cartoonist buddy Milt Priggee impressed me even more. (It would have been better without the sentence in the black rectangle.)

This Liberty is from my socialist cartoonist buddy, Rainer Hachfeld, from Germany.

There’s no Statue of Liberty, but this refugees cartoon by Hajo de Reijger of the Netherlands is so elegant in its form that I had to share it here …

 

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Andy Singer’s Panel Cartoons in the Editorial Cartoon Spot

Editorial page editors typically reject anything new and different from editorial cartoonists. Unusual styles and formats are just not what editors want to see. Editors like cartoons that look like what they think editorial cartoons should look like – which leads to lots of cartoons that look much the same.

I’ve been a big fan of Andy Singer’s self-syndicated, altie “No Exit” panel for years, and I’ve been encouraging Andy to try his hand at more traditional editorial cartooning. Andy’s panel has content that is socially conscious, like an editorial cartoon, but it is not the right shape, and it is wordy, and it doesn’t have caricatures of politicians and the panel format with a title is simply not something editorial page editors will consider putting in their daily editorial cartoon hole.

What to do? Andy wanted to be on the editorial pages but was committed to continuing the “No Exit” panel. Then he gave me a new pitch, saying, “Daryl, you know, when I put two of my panels next to each other it becomes the shape of an editorial cartoon, and if I do two panels that are on the same topic, and color them, it looks like one big editorial cartoon.” The idea looked interesting to me. The result is rather stylistically different than what editors are used to but Andy’s new editorial cartoon format looks like wordy, multi panel editorial cartoons, and editors seem to be accepting them. The connection between the two panels might be a stretch, but no one seems to notice. So far, so good.

A number of comic strip cartoonists, Like Dan Piraro and Wiley Miller, have been doing their cartoons in both strip and panel format for years. Andy’s work has some format advantages over most magazine gag cartoonists’ work; Andy’s panels are topically editorial cartoons to start with, and he doesn’t have a classic gag cartoon style with a caption at the bottom, which would be more difficult to reformat. Still, it may be that some other socially conscious panel or gag cartoonists could develop a new market by finding a procedure to reformat their ongoing work as editorial cartoons. Andy Singer is the trailblazer.

One of Andy’s new, combined format cartoons for the editorial pages. With the same characters and consistent color and format, it looks right as a single editorial cartoon and is proving popular so far.

Here are a couple more new editorial cartoons from Andy. Follow Andy’s work on Cagle.com here.

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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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Obama, Putin, Assad and Doggies

I think all world issues can be boiled down to doggies.

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Africa Dumping Refugees on Europe

I spent some extra time on this cartoon which was more complicated to draw than usual. I always complain about the cartoon ideas that enthusiastic readers suggest I draw because the readers think in words rather than images, and I get pitches like, “have one army on the left clashing with another army coming in from the right while the sky is filled with helicopters.” I’m much too lazy for that.

So, here I’m drawing a crowd of refugees crashing down on, and running through Europe. I’m too lazy for that, but, well … at least the sky isn’t filled with helicopters.

I laid it out in pencil first …

AfricaSketch700wide

And here’s a close-up view of the little refugees …

little-refugees

This is much bigger than my actual drawing and it looks pretty messy when it is blown up – rather disturbing – makes me want to go back in and clean it up a bit. I have to be realistic here; like the European Union, there’s a limit to how much of my resources I can free up for refugees.

 

 

 

 

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Training Iraqi Troops

Training Iraqi Troops © Daryl Cagle,CagleCartoons.com,Iraq,USA,America,military,army,Barack Obama,dogs,ISIS,ISIL,Daesh,Syria,Middle East

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Zits and ISIS-ISIL-Daesh

It is pretty common for editorial cartoonists to draw parody cartoons with the Peanuts characters. Lucy pulling away the football is a political cartooning standard. I wonder why it is always Peanuts, and not other strips that find their way into editorial cartoons – so, here’s my Zits-ISIS-ISIL-Dash-Zits cartoon.

I’m a big Zits fan.  I have two Zits originals, that I bought at charity events, hanging on the wall in my house.  Borgman and Scott are brilliant, although I don’t think they’d ever draw Jeremy joining ISIS, so … sorry about that. Kids and ISIS – always a surprise, huh?

I’m headed off to Ukraine next week and I won’t be drawing cartoons for a while. Hold your breath until I get back!

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ISIS Zits Parody

ISIS Zits Parody © Daryl Cagle,CagleCartoons.com,Zits,newspaper,sunday strip,comic strip,Jerry Scott Jim Borgman,ISIS,ISIL,Daesh,Middle East,Islam,Islamic Extremist,Syria,Iraq,Libya,terrorist,homegrown terrorist,Jeremy

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New Cartoon Brings Death Threats from ISIS/ISIL/DAESH

My cartoonist buddy Osama Hajjaj in Jordan drew a cartoon this week that he describes as depicting Arab women’s struggle and suffering under Islamic/Sharia Law. Osama tells me he’s received a torrent of abusive reaction to the cartoon from Muslim readers, but more of a concern are credible death threats from ISIS/ISIL/DAESH members emanating from Jordan and neighboring Syria. Osama writes:

“… but no matter what, those cowards won’t stop me and I still believe that Freedom of thought and expression is a human right. To detain and threaten people for exercising their human rights is the epitome of barbarism. Blasphemy is a crime for those who have weak ideas and corrupt morals.”

Osama sent me links to some news reports about the ISIL/ISIS/DAESH death threats, like this one, but I must admit, my Arabic is a little rusty. Police in Jordan are investigating. Being an editorial cartoonist in the Middle East is a dangerous job. See more of Osama Hajjaj’s work here.