we should stop drawing more often

We win more awards that way.

We may be announcing something interesting soon. Be advised.

teh funny goes to teh movies!

I wish I had half his cartooning and Photoshopping skillz, but RJ Matson needs to stop getting high on his own supply:

Yesterday:

March 15:

February 22:

Though I wonder what he’ll do with Midnight Meat Train. I can’t think of anything that doesn’t have to do with an RNC afterparty.

throw the jew down the well / so obama can be free

In case you needed more depressing political news, the Hillary campaign is distributing an American Spectator piece casting oblique aspersions on Obama’s dedication to Israel. We’ve seen variations on this line of argument used against liberals before — basic right-wing doublespeak. There is no spoon, that type of thing. That is why it’s so bizarre to see this sort of attack coming from the Clinton campaign, which had previously dedicated itself to doing its best imitation of Edwards-style progressive politics. Now, in what I guess is a last-gasp attempt to catch up to Obama, it looks like Hillary has re-embraced the Lieberman/AIPAC-dominated worldview that regards Israel as the 51st state. That the Hillary people would advance this none-too-crafty rhetorical tactic — conflating reasoned objections to the Likudniks with anti-Semitism — should demonstrate once and for all the difference between what Spencer Ackerman calls the Obama doctrine and the foreign policy that has dominated American politics for the last few decades, represented by Mrs. Clinton.

ego tripping at the gates of the south lawn

When I glanced at the Post this morning, I couldn’t help but notice the juxtaposition of today’s top headline with today’s dominant photo:

Sorta brought me back to this cartoon from April 2005:

Slightly less than half of all Americans believed in the Easter Bunny at last count. But that is why we fight.

hoco

Hot Corner opened just as I came to Athens. As an off-and-on (but generally off) regular there for four years, I enjoyed having a place to go where, at any given hour, somebody I knew (or was at least acquainted with) would be lurking. This was pretty much the place’s only appeal, since their coffee was from (in the words of a regular) “Sam’s Club! Fucking Sam’s Club!” So we saw the shop slowly lose patronage and rely on blind loyalty from a small circle of devotees to remain open. Eventually the owners had to sell off HoCo’s side porch and “reading room” to some local entrepreneurs who turned that space into a pretty decent Belgian-microbrew-serving grad student bar. The stylistic contrast couldn’t have been clearer in the months that followed — excellent booze could be bought mere yards away from shitty coffee and microwave edibles. Well, the same folks just bought and renovated HoCo itself. If the success of Trappeze is any indication, then this should be good news for Hot Corner. And what’s more, the new owners plan to restore its late night hours, a decision that will should be met with celebration from all corners — from scene kids, to townies, to the homeless. And a beloved downtown hangout will have inexplicably cheated death.

o lord

First this.

Then this.

Then this.

And now this.

Of all the semesters to quit drawing significantly decrease my output of cartoons…

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

Steve McCroskey
Airplane!
1980

With apologies to Billmon, who pioneered this analogy.

another ill joint from back in the day

In honor of Easter. God bless us, everyone.

(from October 2005)

phew

Today the Braves announced that Javy Lopez has gone to Catcher Heaven after a long bout of irrelevance. These are good tidings for Braves fans — with one Old Man Courtesy Roster Spot already being taken up by Glavine until he retires in November, the Braves must realize that they can scarcely afford to waste another spot in an effort to recreate 1995. Besides, the fact that the Schuerholz-led Braves had such uncanny success at dumping players just prior to rapid depreciation in their respective values means that the Wren regime should have even fewer reasons to bring back former stars than other teams.

that’s what he said

Quote of the day:

Imagine if you went to a hospital to have an operation on your knee, and your surgeon completely botched it, permanently shattering your knee instead of fixing it and, in the process, needlessly removing your healthy kidney and recklessly causing damage to your heart and lungs. Then, as you tried to decide what you should do to rectify the damage — and you sought out the advice of doctors who presciently warned you not to have that doctor operate — the guilty surgeon insisted that he be allowed to operate again to fix it and that you listen to him regarding what should be done.

And when you screamed at the guilty surgeon — as every sane person would — to stay as far away from you as possible and that he was the last person from whom you wanted advice, he kept telling you: “Oh, forget about the past. This isn’t about assigning blame. What matters is figuring out what to do now.” You would think such a person insane for that line of thought. But that’s exactly what war advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter — and John McCain — are insisting that we do. That’s how the establishment can insist that the Iraq War is an asset for John McCain even though Americans overwhelmingly think that his support for it was a grave mistake. “Forget the past.”

how not to do word balloons

From March 2006, this is one of my favorite Luckovich cartoons of all time:

Which is why I was so disappointed with Monte Wolverton’s misuse of the same device just this week:

Your average reader would see these as being virtually identical in terms of their shared studium. Bush is dumb, so dumb that he thinks about absurdly banal things when asked to consider serious issues. It’s been done. But I think Luckovich’s take is much more effective than the Wolverton’s, despite their immediate similarities.

The difference lies in Luckovich’s use of the thought balloon as the sole connection between the real world and the Bush world. The Bush we see in the Luckovich cartoon doesn’t overtly claim that Gandhi is the same as Gumby. This is because this version of Bush lives in another universe that is totally disconnected from reality. And Bush doesn’t even have the self-awareness to communicate this difference. He lives the quiet life of a sociopath whose internal dialogue is bizarre and absurd, despite the chaos and death all around him. This is the message I get from Luckovich’s cartoon.

Meanwhile, Wolverton tries to do the same thing, but he overstates the poor relationship between Bush’s world and reality. He doesn’t trust his readers enough to make the connection between the real world and Bush’s oblivious internal dialogue, so he throws in a word balloon to make it totally obvious (“I always liked the Beach Boys…”). In doing so, he turns something that could have been subtly brilliant into a visual gag crippled by overexplanation.

You wouldn’t think that things like this would matter. But it’s not just the message that’s important in a cartoon — the best editorial cartoons also take into consideration the presentation and arrangement of a message (the studium) in the form of a punctum that makes us view the characters in a particular way. This could mean the difference between Wolverton portraying Bush as an obnoxious buffoon (something that probably isn’t accurate, unless the rumors surrounding the president’s renewed relationship with Jim Beam are true) and Luckovich portraying Bush as a brooding sociopath whose world is entirely disconnected from reality and the consequences of his actions (something that has been shown over and over again). Without careful arrangement of its elements — even something as simple as a misplaced word balloon — a cartoon becomes a loud, sputtering mess.