Let's Have Us an Old-Fashioned Witch Hunt!

Bill Day, 5/16/13:

When the news is full of lurid stories about the scandals your guy and his hired guns caused, the only thing to do is to attack the messenger.

(I've written basically the same thing a dozen times here at least: "those bad, bad media folks!" cartoons indicate that the cartoonist's side has been taking a shellacking, and he can't think of anything of substance to contradict it.)

Huh! Good God!

Bill Day, 1/9/13:

War is not just bigger and more expensive than peace, it's just plain cooler!

I can't tell: is this a Hagel-for-SecDef cartoon, a let's-invade-Syria cartoon, or just a generic I-love-war cartoon?

Hegemonic Religion Round-Up: Infant Jesus Edition

The following cartoonists would like it to be known that their most central religious beliefs and concerns are precisely as shallow and bland as the average in their particular paper's circulation areas:

Randy Bish, 12/25/12:

Gary Varvel, 12/25/12 -- though he apparently worships an orb, and carefully avoids drawing any contemporary political parallels with "Prince of Peace":

Tim Hartman, 12/24/12 -- channeling a very clingy mother, or assuming we can all fondle the Baby Jesus through some hitherto unknown version of transubstantiation:

Rick McKee, 12/21/12:

Bill Day, 12/21/12, who also displays a shaky understanding of where babies actually come from:

And, finally, this odd little number from Berlin's Rainer Hatchfield, which, yes, does feature both Joseph copping a feel and farm animals devouring the newborn JC, 12/24/12:

Help Pay an Editorial Cartoonist's Salary

Editorial Explanations could not exist without the work of dedicated, professional, full-time editorial cartoonists. Sure, we might pick on them on any particular day, but we're all richer when there are more cartoonists, with more points of view, working and contributing to the discourse.

It's no secret that editorial cartooning is under serious stress -- every piece of the traditional newspaper is, from classified ads to the sports pages. But cartoonists, who tend to be a bit odd, and tend to poke at the foibles of the powerful in ways that often make them lightning rods for reader anger, are perhaps under even more stress, and in our current heavily-syndicated world, more and more papers are doing without their own dedicated cartoonist.

We can deplore that -- we do deplore that -- but there's not a lot we can do about it. (Well, if we're in a position to buy lots of newspaper ads, that would help. But most of "us" aren't.)

Bill Day was the staff editorial cartoonist for the Commercial Appeal of Memphis (after a 30-year-long career that also included a stint at the Detroit Free-Press) until early 2009, when he was laid off in a round of recession-caused job cuts. He's not the only one who lost a job, certainly, but he's been without a regular gig since then, and he's now close to losing his home.

Now Daryl Cagle, of CagleCartoons, has launched a crowdfunding effort, hoping to raise at least $35,000 to keep Bill Day cartooning, at least four times a week, for another year. That campaign, on Indiegogo, will run for another 52 days, and it's just over halfway to its goal.

If you like editorial cartoons -- or even if you just like seeing them made fun of -- please consider contributing to this campaign.

Don't Fire Until Three Days Before You See the Whites of Their Eyes

Bill Day, 7/1/12:

This patriotic cartoon appeared on the first of July, just in time to celebrate that noted North American holiday, Canada Day.

Hope Is the Thing With Feathers

Bill Day, 5/14/12:

That looks frighteningly like a Terry Gilliam concoction from the early days of Monty Python, so I keep expecting it to flap its wings and go terrorize some frumpy British women.

My hallucinations aside, is there any point to this cartoon? I can't even tell if it's supposed to be pro-Obama or anti.

The Obligatory "Everyone Who Disagrees With My Religion Will Be Tormented Eternally" Round-Up

Let's see who felt the urge to avoid actual work and instead signpost their mainstream, unsurprising religious views this weekend, shall we?

First up is Gary Varvel's 4/8/12 cartoon:

Which implicitly threatens the rest of the world with death. Classy!

And then there's Randy Bish's cartoon for the same day:

This one takes the same imagery, shows it twice for added boredom, and then throws in a pop-culture reference so stale that only an editorial cartoonist would attempt it!


Ed Gamble, also on 4/8/12:

He takes the bold step of simply stating his religious doctrine baldly, without any commentary and barely a stab at passable art. But Ed's a Christian in a majority-Christian society, so he gets to count the time he spent on this -- both minutes -- as work!

Tim Hartman's Easter Sunday cartoon

uses the same (tired, bland, sectarian) text and at least tries to re-link it to spring, rebirth, and (implicitly) all of those old spring festivals that the early Church stole from to begin with.

A day earlier -- note that, since it makes the whole point of the cartoon moot -- Joe Heller gave us this:

A poignant rewrite of the old Pennsylvania Dutch proverb "Kissing don't last; Cooking does;" Heller contrasts the candy his readers hadn't gotten yet when they saw this cartoon with the eternal damnation he knows is in store for them if they don't knuckle under to whichever particular denomination of American Christianity he's sure is the Only True Religion.

Rick McKee took his Friday cartoon (4/6)

to wish his co-religionists a happy holiday. He, too, got to count a greeting card as his work for the day. Nice work if you can get it.


Bill Day, even earlier than that (4/5) had this

horrifying vision of the Great Bird of the Galaxy hatching out of the shell of the earth. Either Day doesn't actually know how shells work, or he hopes that his little peace symbol will make everything OK. Either way, it's pretty creepy.

And, finally, Steve Breen actually understands the concept of an editorial cartoon, using the seasonal theme to actually make a comment on something else:

Everyone else, take a close look at this one -- we'll be checking to see if you learned it when Christmas rolls around.


(And, no, I didn't see a single Passover cartoon. Of course, only the hegemonic religion can be allowed this degree of flabbiness.)

Update:

Hey! Here's another actual editorial cartoon on an Easter theme, from Gary McCoy on 4/7:

It's paint-by-numbers and pretty dull, but it shines in this horrible company!

Update 2:
Glenn McCoy took the weekend off, but came back on Monday (4/9)

to point out that he, too, is a white Christian male (like Jesus!) and that he'd like the opportunity to avoid real work for another day.  

There's a House Down in Washington, DC....

Bill Day, 4/5/12:

Republican legislators are nothing but two-bit whores.

And the Ryan budget has nothing to do with any long-standing fiscal principles, or any other explanations: nope, it's all just sex for money.

Lake Michigan Has a Real Nice Pull

Bill Day, 3/23/12:

We've seen Florida as a gun -- both with the muzzle in the panhandle and pointing south from Miami -- and the whole US as a gun, or collection of guns. Now we see the US as the trigger guard of a gun -- implying, what, that we keep Canada from accidentally going off when it's stuck in a pocket? - and Trayvon Martin is a spot on the Florida-shaped bit of that trigger guard.

This, my friends, is what we call a muddled cartoon. Day wanted to do an "American is nuts about guns" cartoon, but his fellow cartoonists had gotten to all of the good ideas first, and this is all that was left at the bottom of the barrel.

Dumbo -- Is That YOU?!?

Bill Day, 12/12/11:

Important pro cartoonist tip: if there's no specific news story to comment on, and you still need to turn in a cartoon to get your paycheck, just do a really over-the-top caricature of whoever you hate the most at the moment.

It's almost the same as a real editorial cartoon!

You'd Think There Would Be Some Actual News to Base a Cartoon On, Somehow

Bill Day, 5/6/11:

It's so cute that the Persian Gulf thinks that "democracy is on the march" because a foreign power assassinated a terrorist leader in the mountains to its northwest. It doesn't make any sense, but it's cute.

Also, there is serious debate about the degree to which the old idea "democracies don't make war against each other" is really true, so PG's immediate equivalence of democracy and peace is naive at best.

Snakes and Sharks and Elphants, Oh My!

Bill Day, 5/7/11:

Presidential campaigns, as is well known, are always completely decided eighteen months ahead of time. That's why Bush the first had an easy coast to a second term, as did a certain Mr. Carter.

Ol' USA Teeth

Bill Day, 5/5/11:

I don't mind telling you that is one damn creepy picture. I also don't mind mentioning that it makes very little sense to me.

Or does it illustrate the well-known proverb "Kill a terrorist mastermind and the world smiles with you, present your birth certificate and you cry alone?"

And is there any significance to the fact that the place where Our President really and truly was born, Hawaii, is not part of his smile?

Looking for a Giant Tool

Bill Day, 4/19/11:

Don't let yourself get distracted by the disturbingly phallic (and proudly erect) nature of the Capitol Dome -- Day has a metaphor to put across, and it will take all of your wit to perceive it.

You see, the US Congress, under the influence of the Tea Party -- see their little tea-bag flag? -- has a gigantic screw loose.

Tusk!

Bill Day, 4/8/11:

Republicans are solely responsible for the government shutdown, seeing as how they control the White House and Senate as well as the House. Also, they're either a wooly mammoth (to show that they're ancient and/or on the verge of going extinct?) or display a marked tendency towards lycanthropism.

On the Horns of a Dilemma

Bill Day, 3/31/11:

Being stabbed with the four blunt tines of a gigantic silver elephant-head fork -- no prizes for guessing what that's supposed to represent -- is neither painful nor unpleasant, but purely funny for the one stabbed.

Or so Bill Day would have us believe.

The Latest Fashions

Bill Day, 3/23/11:

Gadaffi's hat is a barrel of oil that spews blood.

100 points to Day for symbolism, certainly, but no more than 5 or 6 for coherence.

At Least We Don't See the Single Tear

Bill Day, 3/22/11:

Isn't it awfully late in the hurricane/tsunami/nuclear meltdown news cycle for yet another "a sad thing happened" cartoon?

(Did some new sad thing happen in some Buddhist country I'm forgetting?)

Is That a Black Power Salute?

Bill Day, 3/3/11:

Either Gadaffi or Gov. Walker has stolen the statue's torch. And she's much more partisan than you would have expected.

The Tintinnabulation of the Bells

Bill Day, 2/18/11:

Once again, we see that freedom and liberty is the exclusive property of the USA, but licensed worldwide for a nominal fee.