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Opus 363 (February 28, 2017). We review six new books, plus a new Wallace Wood tome, The Life and Legend of WW, Volume 1, plus two first issues of new comic book titles, contemplate the fourth-grader mind of the Trumpet, bemoan the loss at the New York Times of the Graphic Novel Bestseller lists, look at nudes at Playboy and SI’s annual Swimsuit issue, ponder politics in newspaper comic strips and anti-Semitism in cartoons, and more—much more. Here’s what’s here, in order, by department—:
NOUS R US American History Month Comics Now Mainstream More Awards for March: Book 3 Resist! Goes To Second Issue Peanuts for Sale? Prince Val Is 80 Bernie Wrightson Retires Nudes Back at Playboy—But No Cartoons Taxing for Gender Equity Crumb and Kominsky Crumb Show Historic First Comics Criticism in U.S. NY Times Drops Graphic Novel Bestseller Listings
Odds & Addenda Marvel’s Runaways for Hula Black Lightning at CW The Devil Jake Tapper’s A-borning Crime Novel
WORD OF THE YEAR
Flat Earth News THE BRILLIANCE OF TRUMP
FUNNYBOOK FAN FARE Will Eisner’s The Spirit by Francesco Francavilla The Few Bullseye Resident Alien
EDITOONERY A Round-up of Trumpery from Last Month—: Pat Oliphant Returns Trump and the Press Bronco Bama Leaves Politics in Comic Strips
Politics in Candorville
THE FROTH ESTATE Polls
NEWSPAPER COMICS PAGE VIGIL Some of the Wonderful and Strange in the Funnies
CIVILIZATION’S LAST OUTPOST Who Are the Biggest Liars in the 2016 Campaign?
CARTOONS UNINTENTIONALLY SPARK OUTRAGE Norman Rockwell Imitation Anti-Semitism
BOOK MARQUEE Short Reviews Of—: Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse, Vols. 6-9 Mary Astor’s Purple Diary (Edward Sorel illos) The Best of Archie Comics: 75 Years, 75 Stories “Riverdale”—Archie on Television Black History in Its Own Words Jim Davis’ Garfield Original Daily and Sunday Art Showcased
BOOK REVIEW Longer and Opinionated Review Of—: The Life and Legend of Wallace Wood, Volume 1
A-GAGGING WE SHALL GO Single Panel Cartoons of Sipress
ONWARD, THE SPREADING PUNDITRY The Final Dignity of Hillary Clinton
CORRECTION—: For Biogaphical Sketches of Cartoonists and Illustrators in the Swan Collection of the Library of Congress— T.E. Coles
PASSIN’ THROUGH Obits for—: Jack Mendelsohn Herb Galewitz Don Spiegle
QUOTE OF THE MONTH If Not of A Lifetime “Goddamn it, you’ve got to be kind.”—Kurt Vonnegut
Our Motto: It takes all kinds. Live and let live. Wear glasses if you need ’em. But it’s hard to live by this axiom in the Age of Tea Baggers, so we’ve added another motto:. Seven days without comics makes one weak. (You can’t have too many mottos.)
And our customary reminder: don’t forget to activate the “Bathroom Button” by clicking on the “print friendly version” so you can print off a copy of just this installment for reading later, at your leisure while enthroned. Without further adieu, then, here we go—:
NOUS R US Some of All the News That Gives Us Fits
AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH Yes, we know it’s Black History Month, but we celebrate the African American contributions to the history of cartooning all year long, whenever something rears up. Genuflecting in the direction of this commemorative month, we recommend you re-visit our review of Tim Jackson’s benchmark book, Pioneering Cartoonists of Color, Opus 358. And then go order your copy online (try AddALL.com). Or you could visit the Library Journal site where they’ve posted an article entitled “Superheroes & Heroic Struggles: 21 Graphic Novels for February, Black History Month.” Go to http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2016/11/books/graphic-novels/superheroes-heroic-struggles-18-graphic-novels-for-february-black-history-month Or you could scroll down to our Book Marquee department where we briefly review Ronald Wimberly’s illustrated book of quotations, Black History in Its Own Words.
UPWARD TO ENHANCED MAINSTREAM STATUS Now it’s official: comics are a legitimate part of mainstream popular culture. Entertainment Weekly is our guide. The Defenders (Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Daredevil and Iron Fist) were on the cover of the January 20 issue; and the next week, tv’s “Supergirl” and funnybooks’ Patsy Walker: AKA Hellcat were numbers 4 and 5 of the week’s Must List—“the things we love this week.” Validation. Then the next week, Time magazine (dated February 6) did a two-page serious review of “Riverdale,” the “dark” tv version of the Archie Universe. How dark? Archie is getting over an affair with his music teacher; and a murder is afoot. Time is a supposedly serious newsmagazine; EW is cake and cool whip. After Time coverage of Archie, we need look no further for the ultimate validation. But it goes on. The next week, Time took up the matter of National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates’ writing comic books—specifically, Black Panther. And when Coates produced a story Black Panther & The Crew with Black Lives Matter symbolism, Coates responded to a question: “This is in the air. It’s not like I looked at a Black Lives Matter protest and said, ‘Hey, I want to write a comic book about that.’ But you’re confronted with it every day. So when I sat down to think about what is this story with four black protagonists about, that rose up. The events of the day are with me. “These issues are all over comic books,” he continued, “—and particularly throughout the history of Marvel. What weighs on me is reading X-Men as a child. They were charged. They dealt with discrimination. They dealt with being an outsider. They dealt with the things that I was feeling. The comics I’ve always read have always had a philosophical thread. The Black Panther books are not just a story about a king trying to rule. I’m trying to answer other questions, philosophical questions, social questions.” Time accompanied the interview with sidebars about “comics we can’t wait for”—Motor Crush, Steven Universe, Batwoman (“perhaps the highest-profile queer superhero”), Extremity, and America (“queer Latina superhero America Chavez gets her own comic”), all illustrating the premise that “comic books have become ground zero for new kinds of heroes.” Comics may have arrived in popular culture, but not at the New York Times. For explanation of that cryptic remark, scroll down to Scandal of the Month.
MARCH MARCHES ON Congressman John Lewis made history at the 2017 American Library Association (ALA) Youth Media Awards (YMA) on Monday, January 23, when Top Shelf’s March: Book Three, the third installment of his graphic autobiography, written with Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell, took four YMA wins, including the Robert F. Sibert Medal, the Coretta Scott King Author Award, and the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Award and, the crowning honor, reported Christina Vercelletto and Sara Bayliss at slj.com— the Michael L. Printz Award. Previously, March: Book Three earned the 2016 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature as well as the 2017 Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstandig Children’s Literature. It irks me just a little that all these awards, an indisputably distinguished list of honors, proclaim the book as children’s literature thereby ignoring its suitability for adult readers as well. It’s almost as if—“Well, comics—it’s for kids, right?” No, not any more. But you couldn’t tell by looking at the awards the book has collected. Lewis, however, was not inclined to carp. ““I love books and I love librarians,” he said. “When I was growing up, I tried to read every single thing I could. I hope these awards will help inspire all of our young people—and some of us not so young — to read, to learn, and to act. March is a guidebook reminding us that we all must speak up and stand up for what is right, what is fair, and what is just.”
MORE RESISTANCE After 58,000 copies of Resist!, the free comics newspaper edited by Francoise Mouly and Nadja Spiegelman, were distributed at Women’s March events throughout the country on January 21, the decision has been made to produce a second issue, reports ICv2's Milton Griepp. Over 1000 submissions for the first issue were received in a whirlwind process between the election and the Inauguration, and the 40-page tabloid included pieces from such notable contributors as Alison Bechdel, Lynda Barry, and Roz Chast not to mention offerings from male cartoonists—including a Zippy piece by Bill Griffith, and a piece by a family member of the editors, Pulitzer Prize winner Art Spiegelman. The print run of the first issue was increased from a planned 20,000 to 58,000 after a contribution from Mitch Berger and preorders from thousands of supporters, including retailers. Submissions for a second issue are now being solicited, with a release date planned for this summer, perhaps around July 4. Visit resistsubmission.com/ The free distribution outside of comic collector channels has driven demand for the post-Inaugural issue higher than supply. Buy It Now prices for the first issue on eBay as this is written range from $14.95 to $79.95. But here at Rancid Raves, you get it for a mere pittance—the cost of subscription $3.95/quarter. So if you missed getting a copy of the whole enchilada, an ample sample appears right chere at the elbow of your eye.
Irks & Crotchets The Women’s March on Washington last month, organized as a show of feminist solidarity, was roiled by infighting after some organizers told white women to “check their privilege” so women of color and lesbians could lead the protest. Being white is “not okay right now,” one organizer declared “—especially after 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump.”
PEANUTS FOR SALE? Reuters reports that the U.S. brand management company Iconix Brand Group Inc is exploring a sale of its majority stake in Peanuts Worldwide LLC, which owns the rights to cartoon strip characters Snoopy and Charlie Brown, according to people familiar with the matter. Created by Charles Schulz and licensed in over 100 countries, the characters generate about $30 million in 12-month earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, the source added. They declined to comment on the expected deal valuation—and they cautioned that there was no certainty that any deal at all would occur. So why report this? Because if true, it means big bucks for someone. In 2015, Twenty-First Century Fox Inc released “The Peanuts Movie,” which was nominated for a Golden Globe award and grossed $246 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo (quoted by Reuters), a website that tracks the revenue that movies generate. Peanuts' largest international market is Japan, where a new Snoopy museum opened last year. Iconix, which also owns clothing brand Joe Boxer and outdoor wear brand London Fog, purchased an 80 percent stake in Peanuts in 2010 from U.S. media company E.W. Scripps Co in a deal valued at $175 million. The remaining 20 percent is owned by Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates, which is controlled by the Schulz family. But if “sources” aren’t prepared to vouch for the veracity of their own rumors, we can safely disregard this whole blurb.
PRINCE VAL IS 80 By Brian M. Kane Before television, when most films were still black and white, the Sunday comics were an oasis of color in a Depression-era gray world. Highly popular comic strips drove newspaper sales in the early 20th century, so it is little wonder that their creators were regarded as celebrities. The epic Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur by Harold Rudolf “Hal” Foster premiered in the color comics section on February 13, 1937. Prior to Prince Valiant, Foster originated the adult-protagonist adventure strip genre by adapting Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan as a black and white daily strip in 1928, which was followed by the Tarzan color Sunday feature from 1931-1937. Faced with imposing financial and creative constraints as a work-for-hire artist, Foster focused his considerable skills as an illustrator toward producing his own strip. The extraordinary effort resulted in international prominence for both Prince Valiant and Foster. Today, after 80 years, “Val” remains one of the few adventure strip characters still in print, now being expertly drawn by Tom Yeates. Fitnoot: For all of Kane’s commemorative article, plus brilliantly colored illustrations from the strip, visit kingfeatures.com/2017/02/prince-valiant-turns-80/
BERNIE WRIGHTSON RETIRES A week or so ago, veteran illustrator Bernie Wrightson announced his formal retirement due to health complications. In a Facebook post co-authored by his wife Liz Wrightson, the couple shared news of Wrightson’s recent brain surgery and complicated recovery, which has left the artist with limited function on his left side and diminished use of his left hand. "We have had to come to the sad conclusion that he is now effectively retired: he will produce no new art, and he is unable to attend conventions. Should this situation change I will happily announce it here," the post stated. "He can still sign his name (in fact he was signing Kickstarter prints in the hospital!), and is otherwise pretty healthy and has good cognition," the post continued. "We expect to continue releasing signed prints, and offering occasional pieces of art for sale from the collection that remains." Wrightson co-created DC’s Swamp Thing with writer Len Wein in 1971. He also co-created Destiny, a character that would become famous in Neil Gaiman comics. He drew the poster for the Stephen King-scripted film Creepshow and later illustrated a comic book adaptation of the property. He spent several years drawing detailed pen-and-ink illustrations to accompany an edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1983. Over his career, he worked for DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Bongo, Fantagraphics Books, and Warren Publishing, among others. He worked as a concept artist on Ghostbusters, Galaxy Quest, Spiderman, Land of the Dead, and The Mist.
BARENEKIDWIMMIN RETURN TO PLAYBOY But Where Are the Cartoons? After just a year of foisting off on us its colossally bad taste in banning nipples and pussy from the magazine, Playboy with its March-April issue (on the stands February 28) restores total nudity to its accustomed pedestal in Hugh Hefner’s epoch-making magazine of sexual license. Nakedness in the magazine, despite the alarmist news coverage of its banishment a year ago, never actually disappeared: the women in the photographs were all naked, but nips and pudendum were always discretely shielded from display. The ill-conceived decision to ban tit-tips and snatch was made because the management at the time felt the content had become passe in an era of online porn easily available on personal computers and smart phones.. According to Michael Liedtke at The Republic, the decision to show less skin was made under the regime of Playboy Enterprises CEO Scott Flanders. At the time of the decision, Flanders told the New York Times that it was simply silly for the magazine to keep focusing on boobs, butts and vaginas. “You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free,” Flanders explained.” So why engage in redundant activity? That’s how the so-called reasoning ran. And then Playboy turned into a caricature of itself, saith BuzzFeed’s Anne Helen Petersen. Flanders, we must note, left Playboy last May to run eHealth Inc., a health insurance exchange. So much for his judgement. The decision to return to nudity was made, we assume, by Cooper Hefner, Playboy’s chief creative officer and the son of the magazine’s founder Hugh Hefner. Cooper called the nudity ban a mistake in a post on his Twitter account . “Nudity was never the problem because nudity isn’t a problem,” Cooper wrote. “Today we’re taking our identity back and reclaiming who we are. I’ll be the first to admit that the way in which the magazine portrayed nudity was dated, but removing it entirely was a mistake.”
I haven’t see the new manifestation, so I can’t tell you how the “new” way of portraying nudity is more, er, contemporary. (Nude is nude, right? Well, not according to Cooper Hefner.) “This is a remarkably special moment personally and professionally that I get to share this issue of Playboy magazine with my Dad as well as with readers,” Cooper continued. “It is a reflection of how the brand can best connect with my generation and generations to come.” Magazine expert Samir Husni said the prohibition on nudity probably alienated far more readers than it attracted. “Playboy and the idea of non-nudity is sort of an oxymoron,” said Husni, a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi. “They are always going to have the stereotype as a nude magazine. The people who grew up with Playboy are starting to fade away so they will have to figure out what the millennial generation wants in the 21st century if they are going to survive.” That challenge may fall largely on Cooper, 25, who replaced his 90-year-old father as Playboy’s chief creative officer last summer. In addition to reviving female nakedness, the magazine is also reinstating the Party Jokes department, which serves to “provide a quick beat of humor and celebrates the playful side of the brand.” Also returning, Cooper said, is “The Playboy Philosophy,” a column reinstated 40 years after his father’s last installment in the 1960s. Cooper said the column is meant “to explore the current political and cultural climate in the U.S.” In his first “philosophical” column, he wrote about the effect that Playboy has had on the general public and people's comfort in discussing certain taboo topics (in italics)—: In the 1950s, the brand fought against McCarthyism with the decision to publish American writers, artists, and others who had been blacklisted by the U.S. government. In the 1960s, the company unapologetically promoted a racially integrated lifestyle in its clubs, in its publication, and on its national television shows when few others were willing to do so. Throughout the 1960s and onward, Playboy published cartoons and stories that challenged social norms, as well as advocated for the LGBTQ community when society had abandoned or, worse, aggressively gone on the attack against it. Although it is a blessing to be able to continue something my father wrote with such conviction, my real motivation for bringing these installments back to life is my belief that we have entered a time when history is beginning to repeat itself. Cooper compared the final years of the Jim Crow era and McCarthyism in the 1950s to America today under the Trump administration. He said that liberal ideology imposes a culture of political correctness and discourages debate because people get their feelings hurt before taking aim at conservative politicians, who "seem comfortable jeopardizing the rights of specific groups in the belief that it will ‘make America great again.'" Concluding his column, Cooper said that regardless of one's political opinion, an attack on "Muslim Americans, on women's healthcare rights, on the LGBTQ community, or on the First Amendment" is an attack on everyone's rights. He did not directly mention Trump, but he appeared to be taking aim at Trump and his supporters by referencing the president's campaign slogan and echoing attacks that critics have levied against him. “Playboy will always be a lifestyle brand focused on men’s interests,” he went on, “but as gender roles continue to evolve in society, so will we.” Alas, no mention was made in any of the press releases (or anywhere else I looked) about the return of cartoons, for which Playboy was as famous as for its naked ladies. We’ll see.
TAXING FOR GENDER EQUITY “Each time a woman buys a tampon or pad in Colorado, she pays sales tax. It’s just a cost of being female,” observed Brian Eason at the Denver Post, introducing news that the state legislature is considering a law that would exempt these and similar feminine hygiene products from state sales tax. “It doesn’t seem fair to me that we tax something that women have to have, for a bodily function that we cannot control,” said Representative Susan Lontine, who sponsored the bill. Seven states have already given up the “tampon tax,” exempting menstrual products from sales taxes; if Colorado goes along, it’ll be the eighth state to do so.
KOMINSKY-CRUMB & CRUMB SHOW A new show displays the work Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Robert Crumb have made over the decades of their partnership. At newrepublic.com, Josphine Livingstone begins her report: ‘As a woman with a big ass, I’ve always liked Robert Crumb. Those who are familiar with Crumb’s art only in passing will know him for the big, sturdy, sexualized women he drools over in his comics. ‘Nice big legs!’ one drawing reads, next to an arrow pointing to some nice, big legs. Crumb draws himself as a paltry little nerd, sometimes clinging to the legs of an enormous woman, his eyes hidden completely behind bottle-bottom glasses. Flecks of saliva tend to fly across the paradigmatic Crumb page.” Although he is the better known of the two, Livingstone continues, “Crumb has been married for 40 years to the equally talented comics artist Aline Kominsky-Crumb. A new exhibition at David Zwirner gallery in New York City (previously on view at the Cartoonmuseum Basel) displays the work they have made together and separately over the decades of their partnership.” Sorry:
I beg to differ. Aline Kominsky-Crumb is not anywhere near as talented a
cartoonist as her husband. She may have an underground cartoonist’s
sensibility, but she can’t draw worth a toot, as we can plainly see in the
accompanying visual aid in the picture at the lower right of the cover of their Drawn Together that shows both cartoonists Key to the show, Livingstone goes on, is Aline & Bob, the collaborative comic that represents the scenes and stories and romances of their life together. The pair met in 1972, in the Bay area; they have lived in France since the early 1990s. The comic covers all of this. We see domestic scenes, sex scenes, banal conversations, glorious fantasies. We see them eat dinner, deal with French villagers, and so on. We see their daughter Sophie grow up. We see Sophie’s children as babies. [Wonderful. But we could do without Kominsky-Crumb’s alleged artwork.—RCH]
FIRST COMICS CRITICISM IN THE U.S. From John Adcock at his blogspot—: EXTRA, NO. IX. The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck, often labeled “the first American comic book,” first issued to subscribers as a 40-page ‘Extra, No. IX’ issue of Brother Jonathan weekly in New York, and dated September 14, 1842, was a reworked bootleg version in English of Swiss cartoonist Rodolphe Töpffer’s comic strip Les Amours de Mr. Vieux Bois or Histoire de Mr. Vieux Bois (1827, Geneva album published 1837). If Oldbuck might be called the first American comic book, the following short newspaper quip might be called the first criticism of comic books in America—: Does the “Brother Jonathan” often humbug the public with such trash as the “Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck”? The respectable papers of Boston should not become a party to such impositions by puffing them. — Gloucester [Massachusetts] Telegraph, Sep 16, 1842
Scandal of the Month GRAPHIC NOVELS AREN’T BESTSELLERS ANY MORE Starting February 5, the esteemed New York Times dropped graphic novels from its bestseller lists—i.e., Hardcover Graphic Books, Paperback Graphic Books and Manga. Among graphic novel publishers, this maneuver is seen as a serious blow to the future of graphic novel publication. “In recent years, we introduced a number of new lists as an experiment, many of which are being discontinued,” New York Times VP-Communications Danielle Rhoades Ha said in an email to ICv2's Milton Griepp. “The discontinued lists did not reach or resonate with many readers.” The graphic novel bestseller charts date to 2009, with George Gene Gustines of the Times marking the significance of the launch in the Arts Beat blog with the pronouncement that “Comics have finally joined the mainstream.” There probably should have been an exclamation point at the end of that sentence. Being among the New York Times bestseller lists marked, for many, a cultural milestone for the comics medium. “We read the ‘did not reach or resonate’ comment as ‘didn’t get enough clicks,’” wrote Griepp, “but note that publishers and comic creators have used the ‘New York Times bestseller’ moniker frequently as a way to provide a widely accepted measure of a title’s popularity. So even if direct traffic was less than the Times wants for the amount of labor it took to produce the lists, they certainly spread the brand and credibility of the Times to a broader audience. “We see this as a retreat,” Griepp continued, “— by the most important publication in the U.S. from one of the fastest-growing and most influential parts of pop culture, even though [as promised] the Times may increase other forms of [graphic novel] coverage.” According to Ha, “The change allows us to expand our coverage of these books in ways that we think will better serve readers and attract new audiences to the genres.” But, saith Griepp, “The lack of understanding that comics are a medium, not a genre, is not reassuring. And even if there are more reviews and other coverage, there is no way that the number of titles affected by such reviews can ever come anywhere near the number of titles to which publishers were able to append ‘New York Times bestseller’ for the past eight years. It’s an unfortunate event for the comics business, which has been growing (particularly in the graphic novel format, which, coupled to comics sales, topped $1 billion in sales in a recent report), and one sign of the seemingly inexorable forces that are pummeling the newspaper business at the Times and elsewhere. “Regardless of the reasons for the move,” Griepp went on, “the impact on comics will be negative, particularly on the front lines of the medium’s battle for legitimacy, such as schools and libraries. And we find it hard to believe that it will ultimately be good for the New York Times.” The decision apparently came directly from the Times book review editor Pamela Paul, who took to Twitter to defend her decision: “Quick note to fellow comics/graphic novel fans: the Times is not cutting back on coverage of these genres/formats but rather expanding on coverage in ways that reach more readers than the lists did. To wit: new graphic reviews by comic artists, more reviews and more news and features about the genre and it's [sic] creators. We are big fans, and want to recognize growing readership. Stay tuned.” But Paul had betrayed a somewhat snide attitude about the comics medium lately when when she tweeted about the third volume of March — the award-winning graphic memoir about Representative John Lewis’s time in the civil-rights movement, co-written by Lewis and Andrew Aydin and drawn by Nate Powell, that just won the National Book Award; Paul’s initial reaction was “Hey, kids: The new children's book by @repjohnlewis has set an awards record.” Calling a book of that weight a “children’s book” and beginning a message about it with “Hey, kids” is not a great look. The Mass Market Paperback, Middle Grade E-book and Young Adult E-book lists have been cut as well, Publishers Weekly reported. Paul assured that the Times’ “major lists,” including four lists devoted to books for young readers, will live on in print. In addition, such lists as Paperback Trade Fiction, Paperback Nonfiction, Advice Miscellaneous, Business, Science and Sports will continue online. “Comics will still be counted on the main lists,” Paul tweeted, “as they were before we spun them off separately.” But, “obviously, the bar will be raised a little bit higher for books to become New York Times bestsellers,” Paul said. Paul noted that the discontinuation of some “genre” lists had been planned since last year. The Times major lists will remain, including: Top 15 Hardcover Fiction, Top 15 Hardcover Nonfiction, Top 15 Combined Print and E Fiction, Top 15 Combined Print and E Nonfiction, Top 10 Children's Hardcover Picture Books, Top 10 Children's Middle Grade Hardcover Chapter Books, Top 10 Children's Young Adult Hardcover Chapter Books, and Top 10 Children's Series. Several more including Paperback Trade Fiction, Paperback Nonfiction, Business, Sports, Science, and Advice Miscellaneous will remain online.
THE TIMES BESTSELLER LIST alleviated two problems about the world of comics publishing. First, as the Times reported, “is one of the most infuriating aspects of the comics world is its dearth of meaningful, industry-wide statistics. ... The premiere compiler and publisher of retail data — the invaluable John Jackson Miller of Comichron — only has access to estimates of the number of copies ordered by comic shops, not how many they sell.” And because the data focuses only on specialty shops that “means the high-ranking titles at Comichron only really represent the tastes of niche geekdom. The Times list has been a vitally necessary counterweight to that imbalance. Although it was based on sales estimates, not comprehensive sales data from every store in the country, it was still a useful indicator of what people in mainstream bookstores were buying. “With comics increasingly accepted and embraced outside of nerdom, that kind of information is critical for seeing the future of the medium. For example, industry-watchers have long been pointing out that the Times best-seller lists were typically dominated not by superheroes but by young-adult titles, especially female-led stories written and drawn by Ghosts creator Raina Telgemeier. The Times lists thus shone a light on the fact that there’s a huge — and growing — market for cape-free comics made by women and about women. That light will no longer shine.” The second issue is one of legitimacy, the Times report continued. “When the Gray Lady set up isolated categories for graphic literature, it was a godsend for struggling creators and publishers because, all of a sudden, you had a shot at being able to promote yourself as a New York Times best seller. That’s not insignificant. Beyond that, it was just nice that comics were important enough to be acknowledged and tracked by the paper of record. All that's gone now.”
FOR AN INDUSTRY THAT HAS SPENT DECADES working its way into the mainstream, Michael Cavna said at Comic Riffs, “the death of the graphic-books lists feels like an odd setback that runs counter to recent trends. Just this month, Publishers Weekly reported that according to Nielsen BookScan numbers, all types of adult fiction books decreased in sales in 2016 — except for graphic novels, which increased 12 percent over 2015.” “The Times may not fully realize how significant their list has been to the development of our art form,” said editor Leigh Walton, whose Top Shelf imprint launched the best-selling March trilogy. “For decades, the majority of comics media, retailers and hardcore fans have been devoted to a narrow slice of content,” Walton said. “But a whole new generation has arisen outside of that market, supporting diverse content from diverse creators — and the Times list has reflected that huge mainstream demand when the comic industry’s own metrics have not. “Because comics are an art form and not a genre,” Walton continued, “the Times’s putting graphic books within the larger collection of ‘genre lists’ has drawn criticism from some people in the industry. Yet many felt the power of the bestseller list was worth the label.” “Sometimes we had qualms that the Times treated the comics medium like a genre,” said Peggy Burns, publisher of Drawn & Quarterly, a relatively small, independent outlet. But “when [we] made the New York Times Graphic Bestseller list … it felt like the Times really supported the underdogs.” Although all the comics publishers were troubled by the decision to cut the lists, said Calvin Reid at publishersweeky.com, “some publishers criticized their accuracy and were not especially worried that their elimination would hurt the category. “Ted Jones, CEO of IDW Publishing, one of the largest independent comics and graphic novel publishers in the country, said he was disappointed to see the list go, but: ‘We liked being able to say something was a NYT best-seller but I don't know that it ever really impacted sales.’ “Kurt Hassler, publishing director of Yen Press, a graphic novel and manga joint venture with the Hachette Book Group, said the Times’ methodology for compiling the lists was, ‘somewhat cryptic and never necessarily directly reflected what we saw in terms of actual, ground-level bestsellers through other channels and metrics of reporting. I can’t say it will have a negative impact on our actual sales as a consequence.’” Charles Kochman, editorial director of Abrams ComicArts, Abrams' graphic novel imprint, affirmed that comics publishers were concerned: “How can we, as publishers of comics and graphic novels, communicate the success of a book, both in-house and in the marketplace?” Kochman said he has reached out to other publishers, among them W.W. Norton, Scholastic, First Second, Fantagraphics and Oni Press, in a possible effort to approach the New York Times about reconsidering its decision. “If we have to compete against the [sales] numbers of fiction and nonfiction, it's only going to be the outlier titles that will hit the list,” Kochman said. “We can't compete with the numbers of, say, the self-help category or mass market airport fiction. Comics need to be measured against themselves, not the larger whole of books. Going forward, this decision is going to have a significant effect on how a graphic novel is considered a success.”
ODDS & ADDENDA Rejoice: the Denver Post, my hometown newsrag, stopped running daily editorial cartoons several months ago. They offered a couple a day at the website, but nothing in print. On Sundays, they offered three editoons in the Perspectives section. Then, suddenly, about two weeks ago, they started running editorial cartoons every day on the editorial page. I guess they lived and learnt: editoons are not only a powerful way to make a statement, they’re also popular with readers. ■ Marvel’s Runaways is being developed by Gossip Girl creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage for Hula. The series is based on the award-winning comic created by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona. ■ Black Lightning has found a home at the CW after a brief dalliance with Fox, which opted not to proceed with a pilot. The tv series is being produced by Greg Berlanti, who has also has a hand in Supergirl, Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Riverdale. The series is being written by the husband-and-wife duo of Mara Brock Akil and Salim Akil. One of DC’s first Black superheroes, Black Lightning was created by Tony Isabella and Trevor Von Eden. The television show would also mark the first major Black superhero for the CW’s lineup. No release date was revealed. ■ IDW is working with Ellen Pompeo’s Calamity Jane to co-produce “The Devil,” a big event limited tv series based on the novel The Devil: Britain’s Most Feared Underworld Taxman by Graham Johnson. The series focuses on Stephen French, a real-life criminal mastermind who outwitted and robbed rival crime lords in Liverpool during the emerging drug trade of the 1980s. Dave Dilley (Warrior) will write the pilot and executive produce. ■ Jake Tapper, CNN’s chief Washington correspondent and onetime cartoonist, has written a novel, The Hellfire Club, about shady politics, backroom deals, and crime “set smack dab in the ‘swamp’ he covers on a daily basis,” saith the Washington Post.
Fascinating Footnit. Much of the news retailed in the foregoing segment is culled from articles indexed at https://www.facebook.com/comicsresearchbibliography/, and eventually compiled into the Comics Research Bibliography, by Michael Rhode, which covers comic books, comic strips, animation, caricature, cartoons, bandes dessinees and related topics. It also provides links to numerous other sites that delve deeply into cartooning topics. For even more comics news, consult these four other sites: Mark Evanier’s povonline.com, Alan Gardner’s DailyCartoonist.com, Tom Spurgeon’s comicsreporter.com, and Michael Cavna at voices.washingtonpost.com./comic-riffs . For delving into the history of our beloved medium, you can’t go wrong by visiting Allan Holtz’s strippersguide.blogspot.com, where Allan regularly posts rare findings from his forays into the vast reaches of newspaper microfilm files hither and yon.
FURTHER ADO “A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.”—Chuckles the Clown And then a couple one-liners: How can a person draw a blank? Clones are people two. Don’t be a sexist. Broads hate that.
WORD OF THE YEAR The Oxford Dictionary people have, for some years, proffered a Word of the Year. WOTY (or, sometimes, WotY) denotes a word that has been overused to such an extent that it may become meaningless. A meaningless catch phrase. Or a word that has enjoyed increased popular usage due to some societal or cultural phenomenon. After much discussion, debate, and research, the Oxfordians announced by press release that the WotY for 2016 is post-truth – an adjective defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Post-truth is admittedly not a new word, but has taken on a much bigger role as fake news rivals verified news. Social media in particular feature post-truth news often and with greater chances of being shared. Other pretenders to the Word Expert Throne have other choices. At Merriam-Webster, the experts chose surreal, referencing a terror attack, a coup, and the U.S. election as triggers for search spikes for the term. The terror attack in Nice of a truck driver ploughing into a crowd of pedestrians enjoying a Bastille Day fireworks show certainly seems like something you would only see in a movie not real life, yet it was real. Hence, surreal. Ditto a coup in Turkey—not unheard of, but after many years, the apparently poorly organized coup did not seem real either. For some, Donald Trump winning the U.S. presidential election also appears to be unreal. For the increase in the use of the word and the resulting spike in searches on their site is what led to it being selected as WotY. Over at the Collins Dictionary HQ, brexit emerged as their choice for 2016 WotY. It won over hygge, the Danish term most similar to cozy and 'Mic drop —no shortage of literal and figurative version of it in 2016. Some of the terms might not be that well known though like sharenting —the sharing of your parenting efforts on social media and JOMO —the joy of missing out, the opposite of the more well-known FOMO which is the fear of missing out. Meanwhile, the American Dialect Society, another obscure group of self-proclaimed experts on language, weighed in with its 27th annual WotY vote, choosing dumpster fire for 2016. Defined as “an exceedingly disastrous or chaotic situation,” the term dumpster fire was selected as best representing the public discourse and preoccupations of the past year. Perhaps, but I don’t think “dumpster fire” has achieved the visibility of “post-truth” as newly prominent or notable in the past year— which I’d always supposed was the tongue-in-cheek reason for having WotY. But the ADS press release thinks otherwise: “As a metaphor for a situation that is out of control or poorly handled, dumpster fire came into prominence in 2016, very frequently in the context of the U.S. presidential campaign. It evokes an image of an uncontrolled blaze in a dumpster, a large trash receptacle that originated as a proprietary name. Dumpster was in commercial use beginning in the 1930s before becoming genericized. “The expression came to be used metaphorically, a rough equivalent of train wreck, chiefly on sports talk radio, before being circulated in wider use as a highly negative term for such events as the 2016 campaign season. On Twitter and other social media, the ‘trashcan’ and ‘fire’ emoji were combined to provide a visual representation.” “As 2016 unfolded, many people latched on to dumpster fire as a colorful, evocative expression to verbalize their feelings that the year was shaping up to be a catastrophic one,” said Ben Zimmer, chair of the New Words Committee. “In pessimistic times, dumpster fire served as a darkly humorous summation of how many viewed the year’s events.” Yeah, well—I’m not convinced. Post-truth is a better WotY. Dumpster fire is just political propaganda. And until reading the ADS report, I’d never heard of it; it has scarcely the ubiquitous aura of a true WotY. Other ADS nominees included some better options, I think: deplorables (basket of): epithet used by Clinton in speech about Trump supporters; cuck, cuckservative: derisive term for mainstream Republicans by alt-right; yuuuge: dialect pronunciation of huge used by Trump and Bernie Sanders [the best of the lot, I’d say]; small/tiny hands: jab at hand size implying other anatomical short comings. In a companion vote, a sibling organization, the American Name Society, voted “Aleppo” as Name of the Year for 2016 in its twelfth annual name-of-the-year contest. Last year, ADS nominated the singular “they,” the gender-neutral pronoun as WotY. They is already a common habit in American speech. An example: "Everyone wants their cat to succeed." Earlier, the so-called proper way to say it would have been, “Everyone wants his or her cat to succeed.” But what gave they new prominence was its usefulness as a way to refer to people who don't want to be called "he" or "she." "We know about singular they already — we use it everyday without thinking about it, so this is bringing it to the fore in a more conscious way, and also playing into emerging ideas about gender identity," said linguist Ben Zimmer, language columnist for the Wall Street Journal, who presided over the voting last year. Old-fashioned grammarians will be disappointed. But others will be shouting: YAAASSSSS! (intj. “expression of excitement, approval or strong agreement”). Zimmer said a win for singular they would also symbolize how mainstream culture has come to recognize and accept transgender and gender fluid people, some of whom reject traditional pronouns. "It encapsulates different trends that are going on in the language," he said. "It's a way of identifying something that's going on in the language which ties to issues of gender identity and speaks to other ways that people are using language to express themselves and present their identity.” Better than dumpster fire. Sigh.
Flat Earth News THE BRILLIANCE OF TRUMP Ever since the TrumpTwit won the Election, the gasbag class has been insulting our common sense by examining and thereby proclaiming the political acumen of this New York City blowhard. He is discussed as if he conceived and executed one of the most spectacular political upsets in electoral history. Really? Do they really think that he’s smart enough to conjure up such a thing? He’s not. He’s not smart enough. How do I know that? Just listen to him talk. He never uses words of more than 3 syllables, and only rarely one of them. If he knows no words of more than 3 syllables—or can’t use them in speech—then he’s incapable of complicated thought. And if he can’t think complex thoughts, he could never have conceived and executed the campaign that won him the White House. Not possible. A big vocabulary does not make you a smart person. But smart people have big vocabularies—vocabularies with many words in them, many of those with more than 3 syllables. Without this mental equipment, smart people wouldn’t sound very smart—and they wouldn’t be very smart. Trump knows this. Remember when he told us that he knew lots of words? Good words, he said? He wanted to be sure that we all realized that he was a smart person—with good words. For Trump—as for thee and me—vocabulary is a sign of intelligence. And his vocabulary, despite his claim, isn’t very large or very sophisticated. Not capable, in other words, of nuanced thought. Trump is not a dummy, exactly. But his mind is the mind of a fourth-grader, not that of a brilliant political operative. So if his political success is not the result of a brilliant mind that was able to discern the essential discontent of the working class American and appeal to it in terms it could understand, then how did the Trumpet achieve his success? Let’s begin with his business career. His highly touted success as a businessman is due to one single factor: he had a lot of money. And he has the personality of a schoolyard bully. In any business setting, he can “negotiate” the best deal for himself quite simply: when he walks into the room, he has more money than anyone else, and he tells everyone there that if they want to do business with him and get to use some of his money, they must do what he tells them to do. That’s how he negotiates. That’s how he wins. His uncanny appeal to a certain class of voter? He is, as I’ve said repeatedly, the barstool bullshitter. He’s the braggart sitting at the end of the bar so full of himself (because of all those successful “deals” he bullied his way into) that he can’t keep quiet. He fills the air with his bullshit. And the longer he keeps this up, the more likely it is that he’ll say something every now and then that others in the bar agree with. “Yeah—that’s right!” they exclaim, and that only encourages him to plunge ahead with more bullshit. Like a lot of fundamentally simple-minded and insecure people, the Trumpet resents the elites. He resents them because they’re smarter than he is, and he senses that they look down on him and think him incapable of complicated thought, of understanding the complexities of modern life. He’s right, of course. And so are they. And he resents them for it. He expressed his resentment as an attack on the Washington Establishment, and millions of Americans who are also fundamentally simple-minded and insecure and therefore resented smarter people for (1) looking down on them as somehow incapable and (2) having had more success at achieving the American Dream than they have had—all these people saw in Trump a kindred soul. They also could not help seeing a very rich man (because he kept telling him he was), but it was their psychological kinship that won them over to him, not his money or his business success. And so they voted for him as a way of cheering him on. And now we have an insecure fourth-grader in the White House throwing his weight around to attract the attention (and, he hopes, the regard) he craves. Not a brilliant political operative at all.
HERE ARE IMAGES
of the Trumpet from the covers of recent issues of the New Republic and The
New Yorker. As if to support my thesis, neither portrays him as a brilliant
political operative. I almost missed the key visual element in Hou Soo Ming’s New Republic cover: I was so disappointed that the face of his Statue of Liberty didn’t look quite pouty enough that I didn’t notice until several minutes later that Ming’s Trump/Liberty was lifting something other than a torch in his/her right hand. The cover of The New Yorker for March 6 is a variation on the magazine’s anniversary cover, depicted on the far right. The magazine’s first issue on February 21, 1925 was covered by cartoonist Rea Irvin, “art director without a title,” who drew the supercilious dandy, subsequently christened Eustace Tilley, inspecting a passing butterfly. And the last weekly issue in February every year since has repeated Irvin’s drawing—until, that is, Tina Brown’s editorship in the 1990s, when variations began to appear. The first of these was Robert Crumb’s slacker youth, who appeared in profile in exactly the same pose as Irvin’s dandy. After that, there were other variations, but Irvin’s Eustace Tilley re-appeared more often than not. (For the history of Eustace Tilley and some of the variations, visit Harv’s Hindsight for March 2015.) This year, Barry Blitt, the magazine’s favorite cover artist, produced another in the variation tradition: in the center of our cover array, Blitt puts Vladimir Putin in the Eustace Tilley role with Trump playing the butterfly. This issue of the magazine includes a long investigative piece on Trump-Putin, so Blitt’s picture, saith art director Francoise Mouly, is “a perfect storm” of an image, representing both the magazine’s interior prose and the anniversary Eustace Tilley cover tradition. “But the one who has been most reliable in letting us plan such a cover,” Mouly continued, talking to Michael Cavna at Comic Riffs, “is President Trump, who has remained unwavering in his admiration for a dictator who—among much else—is notorious for the way he makes pesky journalists disappear.” Blitt’s picture seems to trivialize Trump, turning him into an inconsequential insect, fluttering around the object of his admiration, who, in turn, is mildly interested in this colorful passerby. That’s fine as it stands. But Blitt’s Putin is also assuming the pose of the original Eustace Tilley, an elegant emblem of insouciant detachment, a would-be sophisticated man-about-town who is actually so vapidly empty-headed as to find a fluttering insect an object worthy of minute inspection. Just as Irvin’s vapid boulevardier ridiculed the wannabe sophisticated citizenry of New York, so does Blitt’s homage to Eustace Tilley ridicule Putin, portraying him to be as trifling an entity as Eustace. The comparison implies that Putin is a harmless dandy, thus downplaying the Russian dictator as an international threat. I doubt that the article inside treats Putin in this fashion. Blitt’s drawing, then, while a clever imitation of Irvin’s, effectively undercuts the seriousness of the issue’s main article. Yes, Putin may regard Trump as Eustace Tilley regarded the butterfly—as an inconsequential albeit mildly interesting phenomenon. But Putin is not the ineffectual dandy of Rea Irvin’s original concoction. As ridicule of Trump, Blitt’s cover works; but ridicule of Putin doesn’t work. The cover is not, therefore, a perfect storm at all. It’s nearly a perfect sabotage.
FUNNYBOOK FAN FARE Four-color Frolics An admirable first issue must, above all else, contain such matter as will compel a reader to buy the second issue. At the same time, while provoking curiosity through mysteriousness, a good first issue must avoid being so mysterious as to be cryptic or incomprehensible. And, thirdly, it should introduce the title’s principals, preferably in a way that makes us care about them. Fourth, a first issue should include a complete “episode”—that is, something should happen, a crisis of some kind, which is resolved by the end of the issue, without, at the same time, detracting from the cliffhanger aspect of the effort that will compel us to buy the next issue. A completed episode displays decisive action or attitude, telling us that the book’s creators can manage their medium.
THE TITLE
CHARACTER doesn’t show up much in the first issue of Dynamite Entertainment’s Will
Eisner’s The Spirit, “A Mystery Tale by Francesco Francavilla.” But
Francavilla, who wrote, drew and lettered the book, keeps us engaged through
sheer storytelling ability and bravura rendering. The tale begins with
Commission Dolan and his team at a crime scene, investigating a death (no
wounds, no traces of foul play). When Dolan leaves, he finds the Spirit in the back
seat of his car; and the Spirit departs when they decide the case isn’t
momentous enough to warrant his attention. This episode is expertly handled in both breakdowns and pictures: the breakdowns dribble information out a little at a time—no hurry—conveying in this desultory manner the dull work of investigatory routine. Panel composition changes but little from panel to panel, underscoring the monotony. Then the Spirit shows up and departs. It’s night and it’s raining, two atmospheric elements that Eisner always exploited for dramatic effect, and Francavilla does the same, drenching the scene and its players in shadow and rain. The Spirit climbs into Ebony White’s taxi, and Ebony takes him home, then goes to join his cousin Vince, who’s just been released from prison. Apart from his name, Ebony bears absolutely no resemblance to Eisner’s crude 1940s-style racial stereotype. Vince wants to go straight, but his old cohorts show up and force him to help out on a robbery. They’re pursued by the police, and when Vince is afoot, he’s attacked by an unknown needle-wielding assailant and left lying in the alley being rained on. That’s the cliff-hanger that ends this issue. In between the opening crime scene and the cliff-hanger, the body of the dead man is removed from the morgue by unknown persons. Francavilla handles the change of narrative sequence deftly, showing two vehicles passing in the night—Vince and the bank robbers in a car going in the opposite direction by an oncoming truck signed “Crematorium.” The truck drivers pick up the dead body—but why? And just then, that narrative is interrupted by a scene with the Spirit watching the tv news that’s all about a “new” Central City energy source that may threaten public safety. How will these three threads be brought together? Get Nos. 2 ff and find out. Francavilla keeps the raining pouring down and the night draped in shadow throughout. His story doesn’t give us a clear picture of the Spirit, but his command of the medium strongly suggests that when the narrative shifts, as it must, to Eisner’s iconic hero, Francavilla will do him proud. I’ll be back.
THE FEW No.1, written by Sean Lewis and drawn by Hayden Sherman, is a parade of stunning drawing technique that, alas, sometimes obscures rather than clarifies the story. Sherman’s technique is fascinating—brittle fineline accented with black spots and gray tints and, occasionally, splashes of red (blood). But it’s difficult to tell one character from another in some passages—partly due to Sherman’s sketchy manner, partly due to the costuming, which hides faces. The
book opens with a spectacular sequence showing the lead character, a woman
named Edan Hale, running through a leafless forest in winter, the black tree
trunks in startling contrast to otherwise white pages. She is carrying an
infant in her arms. During the ensuing pages—a more generous allotment of pages than usual in a comic book these days—she’s always carrying the child. She’s stopped by some marauding officials who might be soldiers of the current regime. She is also a soldier of sorts, a palace agent. But that aspect of her role isn’t evident in the story: we learn about it in the text post-script. In a flashback, we see a father (or mother?) giving Hale the baby. Back to the present, Hale escapes the soldiers and runs some more. She’s taken in by a man and his son, who, it develops, are part of some sort of underground resistance. She joins them, still carrying the child. They set off to —run a revolution? Join rebels? There are occasional encounters in the book between motocycle riders (outlaw gangs?) and others. Soldiers? Agents? Dunno. It’s difficult to say much about a completed episode. There are a few, but since the identities of the participants aren’t clear, we can’t say that the episodes reveal much about the creators’ competence. Their competence is revealed almost entirely by Sherman’s breathtaking art. And his pictures carry much of the story; Lewis keeps his verbiage to a bare minimum. Dunno that I’ll return to this title. Once the action leaves the snowy forests, the art is less intriguing. And the action is bound to eventually go somewhere else.
Riffling Pages. The first issue of the “new” Bullseye is much too bloody for me with Bullseye killing or maiming people at the rate of two or three a page. Guillermo Sanna’s pictures are distinctive if a little cluttered with unpredictable black splotches, but even his expertise isn’t enough to overcome my revulsion at witnessing the “hero” of a book being an unabashed sadistic killer. Peter Hogan’s Resident Alien from Dark Horse offers in each succeeding story arc a gripping tale, ably (albeit not at all spectacularly) drawn by Steve Parkhouse. I come back to this series with every fresh outing. And it’s the story that pulls me back, not the artwork. The resident alien of the title is from another planet who has become shipwrecked on Earth. He takes on the appearance of a human being— in bodily form at least. His head and face are still that of an alien, but because he can make humans see him as he wishes to be seen, only we, the readers, see his alien appearance. Well, not quite. Some few “gifted” humans also see his strange facial appearance. And they wonder. One of them, a woman, may even be attracted to the alien. Romance in the offing? Various authorities are becoming aware of the alien’s existence, and they—perhaps to be joined by those who see the alien as he is—are poised to investigate. Meanwhile, the alien takes on the role of the town doctor. And he also helps the local police solve crimes, applying some of his unique alien abilities. Altogether, nicely suspenseful.
QUOTES & MOTS ABOUT POLITICIANS From Curmudgeon compiled by Jon Winokur Being a politician is like being a football coach: you have to be smart enough to understand the game, but dumb enough to think it’s important.—Eugene McCarthy I looked up the word “politics” in the dictionary, and it’s actually a combination of two words: “poli,” which means “many,” and “tics,” which means “bloodsuckers.”—Jay Leno Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.—Henry Kissinger Politicians and diapers should be changed frequently, and for the same reason.—Mark Twain My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference.—Harry Truman As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can’t drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against ’em anyway, you don’t belong in office.—Molly Ivins
EDITOONERY The Mock in Democracy WITH THE LUDICROUS PERFORMANCE of his February 16 “press conference,” the TrumpTwit demonstrated beyond question that he is not sane. Bill Maher called it “a 77-minute brain fart.” It was that. And it was undeniably entertaining: the tv reality show star knows how to entertain with bombast and bluster. But he also revealed himself to be not sane. Not that he’s insane. Not the opposite of sane. He’s just not sane, not connected sufficiently with what most of us call “reality.” Writing in the Denver Post, Dan Recht, an attorney and former chair of the ACLU of Colorado, described the TrumpTwit’s “not sane” state by beginning with his, Recht’s, understanding of “sane”: “accepting that certain manifestations of reality are irrefutable.” It rained on the Trumpet while he was delivering his Inauguration Address; but he believes the sun was shining brightly. That’s what he says. Repeatedly. He’s denying reality. The TrumpTwit believes that whatever it occurs to him to say is The Truth—factual reality. If he says it, it’s true. It may not have been true before he says it, but once he says it, it’s true. His saying it makes it true. But it often isn’t. He believes it to be true. But believing something isn’t the same as connecting it with reality. “And that,” says Recht, “—the actual, subjective disconnect from reality—is what I define as not sane.” And Recht goes further. The TrumpTwit suffers from an actual psychological condition known as “narcissistic personality disorder.” And he cites the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders criteria for narcissistic personality discorder, which include these features: ■ Having an exaggerated sense of self-importance. ■ Exaggerating your achievements and talents ■ Being preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate ■ Requiring constant admiration ■ Having a sense of entitlement ■ Taking advantage of others to get what you want ■ Behaving in an arrogant or haughty manner Recht also offers the Mayo Clinic’s website description of the condition—: “If you have narcissistic personality disorder, you may come across as conceited, boastful or pretentious. You often monopolize conversations. You may belittle or look down on people you perceive as inferior ... You may insist on having ‘the best’ of everything—for instance, the best car, athletic club or medical care.” Recht allows that “assigning serious and debilitating psychological conditions to Presidents is nothing new.” Scholars at the Pew Research Center have ranked each of the Presidents according to their level of narcissism. But no other narcissist “who occupied our nation’s highest office has ever repeatedly made statements that are so unmistakably counterfactual, and, when challenged to authenticate or substantiate such statements, simply abided by his prior assertion without producing any ‘proof.’” Go back, now, and re-read the list of criteria. Virtually all of them the TrumpTwit manifested during his press conference. Except maybe “requiring constant admiration,” but the Trumpet displayed this aspect of his disorder that weekend when he abandon his duties as the nation’s chief executive to go to Florida to appear at a campaign-style Trump-worshiping “rally” where he found, as he usually does at such events, ample evidence of his being admired unreservedly. It was just what his adulation-starved ego needed after his White House encounter with the press corps during which he mistook skepticism for outright hostility. The press conference demonstrated the TrumpTwit’s inability to be “presidential.” He was, as Greg Dobbs said in the Denver Post, “petulant, pugnacious, petty and impetuous ... for whom the truth is a lie and a lie is the truth.” Celebrating the Trumpet’s month in office, Dobbs said: “After 30 days, we already know our President confuses his ego-fed feelings for facts. And still goes vindictively ballistic over small slights. And loves to shake things up without knowing where the pieces will fall. If we find ourselves in a real crisis and must rely on this President’s word and judgment, how will we know that this time he’s got it right?” We won’t. In the TrumpTwit’s favorite phrase, he’s a disaster. And the press conference revealed him for all to see. He “replaced adult seriousness with schoolyard taunts and Jerry Springer entertainment,” as the Denver Post’s editorial page editor Chuck Plunkett said. “Against that feathers-flying commotion, Trump managed to pass off lies when the truth stands before him. Such as—his administration is running like a fine-tuned machine. ... Trump is difficult to cover objectively because he doesn’t try to win with objective arguments. He believes he can call the moon the sun by simply asserting that he is the most-loved and most-successful president of all time. This is a man who conflates winning an argument with getting attention.” The press conference revealed as few other episodes have the quality of the TrumpTwit. He denies the White House is in a constant state of chaotic turmoil. I don’t think he’s lying about this, or even misrepresenting: to him, chaotic turmoil is the normal condition of his workplace. He thinks chaos signals fine-tuned operation. And that brings us to the cover of Time magazine for February 27/March 6, a creation of Tim O’Brien. We
can tell just how disastrous the TrumpTwit’s administration is when the
nation’s foremost weekly newsmagazine turns its cover into a comical political
cartoon. It is undoubtedly a historic moment in magazine publication: never
before has Time held the Prez of the U.S. up to ridicule and scornful
laughter. Next to O’Brien’s hysterical portrait is Peter Kuper’s “Ceci n’est pas une comic,” an invocation of Rene Magritte’s famous “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” otherwise entitled “The Treachery of Images.” Said Magritte: “The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture 'This is a pipe', I'd have been lying!” The picture is not a pipe. It is a picture of a pipe. Once that rationale is established in the first panel of Kuper’s cartoon, we realize that the next panel’s picture of pollution is not pollution: it is only the picture of pollution. By the same token, the last panel’s picture is not a fascist: it is the picture of a fascist. And so Kuper gets away with calling the TrumpTwit a fascist. And he may well be. Or have ambitions in that direction. And Kuper isn’t the only cartoonist to believe in the TrumpTwit’s fascistic behavior.
SO HOW BAD IS
TRUMP? Bad enough—and so ripe an opportunity for ridicule and alarm—that Pat
Oliphant has come out of retirement to poke fun at him. Oliphant’s first two cartoons employ Steve Bannon, the Trumpet’s chief strategist, to make a point. In the first, the Trumpster is wearing stormtrooper duds, and Bannon, oozing seedy back alley menace and sycophancy, is giving his leader the classic “Heil” salute; ditto the diminutive pig talking to Punk the penguin in the corner. The second of Oliphant’s return ’toons displays Oliphant’s disgust at the way the knit-haired Trump treated Australia (Oliphant’s nation of birth). Again, the hayseed hooligan Bannon is the faithful albeit unkempt and smarmy-looking follower. Finally at the lower right is Oliphant’s most recent effort in which, outraged by the infantile behavior of our current Prez, the cartoonist abandons all pretext at blending words and picture and resorts to simple name-calling separately in each realm, verbal and visual. Doofus indeed. At the lower left is Clay Bennett’s insight into the White House and into the so-called mind of the Trumpet. Here, word and picture blend for a meaning neither has alone without the other. The somber dignity of the place is sabotaged by Trump’s cynical observation. How
disastrous was the now-infamous press conference? It was bad enough. And in our
next visual aid, we get the assessment of several editoonists. Clay Bennett starts us off at the upper left. He gives us an image of the Trumpet prone on a psychologist’s couch. He’s not in that position because he’s tired: he’s arrayed in that way because he is behaving as if the press corps is his psychiatrist to whom he whines about all the disturbing fictional phantoms of his imagination. Next around the clock, Clay Jones offers another vivid image of how the press conference appeared to any objective observer. It was a faux trapeze act in which the fatuous Trumpet swung from the chandelier over the heads of his audience, reciting nonsense phrases. Entertaining, yes; but Presidential? Rob Rogers at the lower right deploys the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year as “a metaphor for a situation that is out of control or poorly handled.” And in the dumpster with the Trumpster is the garbage of his press conference—lies, media-bashing, and ego indulgence. Finally, Jim Morin turns the Trumpet’s verbal metaphor into a visual one, a picture of the fine-turned machine the TrumpTwit and his dirty-faced cohort Bannon are driving down the road even as its wheels are falling off in all directions. I assume that’s Kellyanne Conway in the back, along for the ride with no other purpose in view. Exactly. Those who voted for Trump say they wanted a change. Fair enough. But I don’t think they expected change in the guise of chaos. And we wouldn’t have to put up with it any longer, if—... As The New Yorker pointed out in its February 27 issue, “Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution allows for the removal of a President who can no longer discharge his duties. ... “After a month in office, Donald Trump has already proved himself unable to discharge his duties. The disability isn’t laziness or inattention. It expresses itself in paranoid rants, non-stop feuds carried out in public, and impulsive acts that can only damage his government and himself. “Last week, at a White House press conference, the President behaved like the unhinged leader of an unstable and barely democratic republic. He rambled for nearly an hour and a half, on script and off; he flung insults at reporters; he announced that he was having fun; and he congratulated himself so many times and in such preposterous terms (“this Administration is running like a fine-tuned machine”) that the White House press corps could only stare in amazement.” Incompetent he may be, but, as The New Yorker’s George Packer went on, Section 4 is not likely to ever be invoked with the current Prez. “Republican leaders have opted instead for unconstrained power. They need Trump to pass their agenda of rewriting the tax code in favor of the rich and of gutting regulations that protect the public and the planet—an agenda that a majority of Americans never supported—so they are looking the other way. ... Trump can go on being Trump ‘as long as we’re able to get things done,’ saith Senator John Cornyn.
IT GOES WITHOUT
SAYING (but we say it anyhow), some voters—Democrats particularly—weren’t at
all happy with the results of the Election, as we see in our next display. Nate Beeler creates a perfectly ludicrous situation to celebrate the Inauguration—an irate Democrat flinging a rock at the annoying tweeter in the tree. The picture conveys both the futility of any kind of resistance and the irritation aroused by the Trumpet’s constant twitter. David Fitzsimmons at the right compares modern presidential politics with those of history’s first American Prez, who legend tells us couldn’t tell a lie. Logically, neither George Washington or “Honest” Abe Lincoln could ever make it to an Inauguration today. The guy giving the Father of Our Country a return ticket to Mount Vernon is wearing a campaign pin boosting “GW”—George Dubya Bush, no doubt. Keven Kallaugher (“Kal”), who cartoons for Britain’s The Economist as well as for the Sunday Baltimore Sun, resorts to the comic strip format, which permits him to assemble the stage, plank by plank, for a switcheroo surprise punchline. The Trumpet doesn’t know what he’s doing either. And then Keith Knight gets the final word in this exhibit—and the last laugh (until we get to the next visual aid). Nothing happened over the last 30 days that wasn’t Trump if you believe the visual testimony of the nation’s editorial cartoonists. Except the death of Mary Tyler Moore. That’s all. Everything else was Trump—and for understandable reasons: seldom, if, indeed, ever, have editoonists had such a delicacy of a target, whose cockamamie aspect and every utterance beg to be ridiculed. In short, Trump is a cartoon character—the cartoon Prez—exactly what appeals irresistibly to cartoonists. And so Trump and his Trumperies dominate editoonery. The
bluebirdy emblem of Twitter flits through many of the last month’s cartoons—the
TrumpTwit’s everpresent companion, solace and bullhorn. Next around the clock, Jim Morin’s image reminds us that the Trumpet is, before anything else, the star of a reality tv show. But now, instead of apprentices, he’s surrounded by clownish amateurs. And then Jack Ohman returns to Trump’s first day-after-the-Inauguration public appearance at CIA headquarters, where he stood in front of the Agency’s “wall of fame,” the star-studded reminder of those who secretly gave their lives in the service of their country. In that context, what Trump had to say was, as many observed, so trivial as to denigrate the memorial. And what Ohman has him say in the cartoon is not so much different from what he said in real life in front of the roomful of CIA agents and staff. Shameful. And also, of course, sad. In
our next visual aid, we find editoonists tackling the ever-present issue of the
Trumpet’s conflicts of interest and governing hypocrisy. Davies does much the same thing but much more blatantly: the chart on the wall declares the Trumpet’s single preoccupation. We don’t need to sift through the rationale as we do with Toles. And at the lower left, Lalo Alcaraz puts up a roadside sign that warns us what to be cautious about down the highway. All true, of course—although the legality of Melania’s early modeling career in the U.S. before she had the appropriate papers is still in question. Steve
Bannon looks like the unsavory anarchist bomb-thrower he is as both Tom
Toles and Mike Luckovich attest visually in our next exhibit, his
mop of disheveled hair as distinctive as the Trumpet’s knit-head. Toles makes Bannon the “power behind the throne” and reveals the throne to be a toilet, strenuously suggesting the product of the exercise of Prez power. (Bannon is “working on a white paper,” quips the miniature Toles, the role of white paper immediately at hand.) Luckovich shows Trump and Bannnon at a tea party (an allusion, doubtless, to the looming presence of that faction in the Trumpet’s base), perched on (supported by) those three symbolic monkeys that see, hear, and speak no evil about the TrumpTwit’s antics—the culprits being the Congressional leadership, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, presiding officer of the Senate Mike Pence, and the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. Next around the clock, Toles returns with another alimentary image that again reveals his assessment of the results of the Trumpet’s labors. The Grandstanding Obstructionist Pachyderm is charged with sweeping up after its leader. At the lower left, we’ve posted a somewhat dated Clay Bennett cartoon, chosen because it deploys kindred imagery. Produced during the campaign, it contrasts the scandalous behaviors of Hillary and of the Trumpet: Hillary’s e-mail scandal is a mere dribble compared to the overflowing toilet of Trumpery.
THE SENATE’S
ROLE in approving the TrumpTwit’s appointments is briefly examined in our next
display. And from the conservative perspective, Gary Varvel offers another kind of chestnut by making the Democrats into wolf-criers whose worn-out warnings have been so frequently deployed as to render them ineffectual—in this case, on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the Supreme Court vacancy that Bronco Bama hoped Merrick Garland might fill. At the lower right, Glenn McCoy reveals the real fear behind Democrat objection to approving Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education: she’s opposed to unionizing faculty, and teachers unions have always been foundational to the Democrat Party. Approving DeVos is effectively signing the death warrant for teachers unions—or so McCoy would have us believe. Finally, Nick Anderson offers a highly comical image of Mitch McConnell’s distress that prompted him to shut down Elizabeth Warren’s objection to the approval of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. Ostensibly, McConnell was invoking an ancient Senate rule that prohibits senators from saying nasty things about their senatorial colleagues. There are two offenses to common sense in this maneuver. First, the letter Warren was reading from is already part of the official record of the Senate: it was read into the record at a committee hearing years ago when Sessions was up for approval for another position, so the sin of the reading of the letter impugning the reputation of a senator had already been committed (without consequences). Where were McConnell’s vapors then? Second, if a senator cannot say anything uncomplimentary about another member of the chamber, how can we hope for anything approaching honesty in hearings about senatorial nominees for appointed positions in government? Are all senators pure and above reproach, their characters undeserving of impugning? We may as well not have hearings. Just smile and nod and let nominees walk down the hall to their new offices. In
our next visual aid, we turn to congressional behavior in general. Next around the clock, Jim Morin offers as blatant an explanation of the relationship between Congress and the White House as we’re likely to get. It’s an image of a devil’s bargain, he says, and he gives the parties to it horns appropriate to their roles. Below Morin, Pat Bagley portrays the relationship from a slightly different angle, emphasizing the advantage that Congress enjoys by letting the TrumpTwit have his way with the facts. It isn’t just the facts that the Trumpet gets to destroy in this bargain: as Morin has established, all objections to Trumpery are put on “hold” for the duration. At the lower left, Joel Pett gets a few minutes with one of his favorite targets. Cartooning for Kentucky’s Lexington Herald-Leader, Pett often takes aim at his state’s senior U.S. Senator, deploying his perfectly doughy caricature of McConnell. Here, Pett uses the multi-panel format to slowly unveil McConnell’s enduring motivation—to maintain himself as the Senate majority leader. After
a short stop at the church/state issue, we move next into the repeal and
replace Obamacare effort in Congress. Next around the clock, Anderson provides a marvelously laughable image of the giggling manical Pachyderm enacting the “repeal” by deliriously leaping off a cliff, wearing a tiny beanie with a whirling blade as the only “replacement” at hand—replacement in name only, in other words. The elephant is so maniacally delighted to repeal that he overlooks entirely the impracticality of his replace to keep him from plummeting to earth in a heap. Gary Varvel captures the difficulty of repeal with his metaphor of Obamacare as a precariously balanced house of cards. Pull out one, and the whole edifice is likely to collapse. And Republicon congresspersons are now—suddenly, after voting over 60 times to repeal—realizing that repealing without replacement (easy to vote for when they knew Obama would veto it, even if it passed the Senate) is inadvisable in the extreme. And yet they can’t agree on what the replacement should be. Some of the GOP is cooling on the idea of repealing before a replacement is in hand. And reportedly Trump is coming to share that view. But he has no alternative in mind either. Then Matt Bors finishes this discussion with a picture that supplies an entirely different interpretation of the Trumpet’s claim that under the new healthcare plan “everyone will be covered.”
THE TRUMPET’S
IMMIGRATION POLICY is examined in our next visual aid. Sean Delonas’s image
dramatizes the illogic of the TrumpTwit’s immigration order. None of the seven
nation’s being denied entry have supplied any terrorists on U.S. soil, but
Saudi Arabia, which is one of the countries exempt from the order, was home to
several of the 9/11 airborne terrorists. Saudi Arabia, like others on the
exempt list, is also a place where Trump reportedly has investments or
financial interests. Bill Bramhall expresses his opinion of Trump’s immigration policy with a metaphor that shows the Chief Executive pissing on the flame of freedom that used to burn brightly on the torch in the State of Liberty’s hand. Symbolically, the flame has been extinguished. Bramhall, incidentally, was among those who very early opposed Trump on the grounds of his attitudes about people from other countries. His cartoon on the issue made the cover of the Daily News, December 9, 2015, as we see just below the smouldering torch. The metaphor of the cover image has Liberty not only deprived of the torch but beheaded. Dead indeed. At the lower left, Nick Anderson’s visual metaphor for the Trumpet’s wall—extended, now, by the immigration executive order, to all U.S. borders, not just the one on the Mexican side—includes a demonstration of the way an alien might gain entrance— with a key in the shape of a cross. Christians can get in. At this writing (February 25), we don’t know how the latest version of Trump’s immigration executive order will escape being blocked by court decision, but as Elizabeth Drew pointed out, the previous catastrophe—rushed into effect without consulting any of the implementing agencies—could well “violate a law that bars discrimination in issuing visas because of a person’s nationality or place of residence. It could also violate a legal prohibition on discrimination against immigrants on religious grounds (the very foundation of this country and enshrined in the First Amendment).” (Drew also criticizes the Trumpkins for not mentioning Jews in the annual message commemorating the Holocaust, which message, Drew said, “was redolent of the anti-Semitic views expressed in Breitbart News, previously edited by Bannon, and it was a form of Holocaust denial.” I read the whole thing and don’t find redolence or denial in evidence. Maybe Drew is a little extreme. But then maybe I’m just not sensitive enough on the issue; see Cartoons Unintentionally Spark Outrage down the scroll.) “Extreme vetting,” by the way—the action to be perfected during the temporary closing of the borders to Muslims —is something Trump thinks he invented, the term “extreme” in particular. It’s based, no doubt, upon various kinds of “extremes” in our culture, extreme sports, for instance. He’s very proud of this concoction: it’s one of the biggest words in his fourth-grader’s vocabulary. Trump foreign policy is next on our agenda, but before sampling that, we consider the Trumpet’s over-all attitude about his country. Clay Bennett’s opening image nails the essential character of it: for Trump, “America” is all “ME,” colored, fittingly, by the crayon labeled “Trump.” Next, David Fitzsimmons gives us a hysterical image of the TrumpTwit at work on his foreign policy. The verbiage floating around jumps from one topic to another, incomplete thoughts all and thereby illustrative of the short-attention span of the Boy Prez. And also suggesting how proud he is of having accomplished—well, nearly nothing except to make the leaders of other nations angry. With his feet, Trump is rolling the world off a cliff while wearing military headgear. He’s also wearing a straight-jacket, indicating the extent of his sanity. And a small bat is flying out of his belfry. Fun stuff and executed in Fitz’s joyfully design-driven manner. Nate Beeler’s image of the Trumpet’s wall combined with Trump’s utterance vividly depicts the folly of the Wall: it prevents those on either side from talking to each other, a recipe for unfriendliness between neighbors. And then at the lower left, Matt Davies’ metaphor of foreign diplomacy as a intricately crafted symphonic enterprise is contrasted with the way Trump plays the music—with a gigantic spoon and a reverberating tin pot. Wonderful. Even more wonderful: Trump is giving two sensitive international negotiating assignments to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mexico and the Israeli-Palestinian mess. And Kushner hasn’t a single minute’s experience in this kind of work.
AND WHAT WOULD
A REVIEW of the Trumpet Month be without a stop to ponder his relationship with
the news media, an increasingly sour standoff. The image of Trump in the baby carriage also reminds us of what an infantile personality Trump is. Rob Rogers stresses the impossibility of the news media’s task. So numerous have the Trumpet’s blasts been that there’s scarcely time to investigate and determine the legitimacy of one outburst before the next one roars in. And Milt Priggee (whose drawings I love) gives us a picture of Trump playing the press like a violin. Baiting the press, taunting it, as he did during his February 16 press conference, merely goads journalists on—to do what the TrumpTwit wants them to do: to give him more inches and hours of free publicity. Pat Bagley must’ve had fun drawing a naked pudgy Trump for the next cartoon. The nakedness suggests babyhood, but the setup invokes the “emperor’s new clothes” legend. And in the situation Bagley sets up, Trump sets his rabid followers to beat up on the “lying press” (the only entity that tells us the Prez is naked) for telling the truth. Our
next visual aid explores the news media and the ways Trump plays it. Bill Schorr offers a stunning visual image of the world as created by a delusional Prez and his mouthpiece, Twitter. All by itself there, so isolated from the rest of reality that it may as well be floating in space. Then John Cole conjures up a word-play picture-play cartoon about TrumpTwit’s use of Twitter. In case you can’t read Trump’s tweet, it goes: “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally [for Clinton].” Arranging his pictures in coordination with the words “Voter ... Fraud,” Cole makes Trump the fraud and leaves the voter to vote at the polling place. By this configuration, Cole contends that there is no voter fraud except Trump’s. Finally,
by way of ending the agony of this month’s sermon on how editorial cartoons
accomplish their work through imagery and verbiage, let me sum it all up by
presenting the Prez-view perspectives of three editoonists. David Fitzsimmons with a highly decorative design shows the Trumpet at the wheel of the national vehicle while his passenger, Miss Liberty herself, is doubtful of the destination or their manner of getting there, but she buckles herself in nonetheless for the forthcoming nightmare ride. Then Ted Rall imagines what many Trump foes fear—a Trump fascist administration. But Rall shows that the Trumpkins are so inept they won’t be able to pull it off. We hope. Finally, to end this episode, one of many salutes to the passing of Mary Tyler Moore, Joe Heller’s. He, like all the rest, deploys her smile.
BRONCO BAMA
passed from the national stage without much excitement on editooners’
drawingboards. I was hoping someone would do a grand and glorious farewell,
but—nope. In fact, I found only a half-dozen good-byes, from which I culled the
quartet at hand. Matt Wuerker, who leans left, has an even sharper tongue, depicting Obama and John Kerry so tangled up in their “tongue lashings” that they can’t move. To Wuerker, they’re all talk and no action. Rob Rogers is a little kinder, charitably recalling for us what may be history’s verdict on the Obama years—that he was frustrated at every turn by a Republicon Congress that would do nothing he wanted just because it was Obama who wanted it. Sad. My favorite on this display is, of course, Nick Anderson’s, which compares Obama’s hat—his accomplishments—to the Trumpet’s cap, which, in comparison, ain’t so much. But then, at the time Obama left, the TrumpTwit hadn’t done much except wear his cap. Meanwhile, in France, where it looks like a far-right candidate might win the presidential election in May, an online petition is circulating that calls for Obama to run for president of that country. I found no cartoon that captures my own attitude about Bronco Bama. But in the New Republic for January/February, Nikhil Pal Singh, part of a panel assessing Obama’s achievements (or none) said this: “Obama’s ability to preside over a mostly scandal-free administration, to restore dignity to the highest elected office to exist as a public person who treats his intimates with respect and care, and to conduct an often intellectually elevated, wise, and sometimes humorous discourse on public affairs, far outstrips the low bar set by his predecessors.” And here’s Elizabeth Bruenig: “Obama restored a sense of dignity to the presidency, and he maintained his composure through sone extremely difficult years, often providing a sense of security and trust when no other institutions did so.” He was a President who deployed his intellect as well as his conscience and emotions and his sense of history in the service of his country. When I think of Obama, I think of the word “grace.” In demeanor and precept and with grace—amazing grace— he elevated the office of President.
WE’VE OBSERVED in past outings that newspaper comic strips, once innocent of any political commentary, have abandoned that tendency altogether and have joined in the fray so jubilantly celebrated among editoonists. And that jubilation has been more and more evident once we embarked upon the Sea Change of Trumpery. The comic strip culprits are the predictable ones, strips that had already established political tics and tropes— Stephan Pastis’ Pearls Before Swine, Darrin Bell’s Candorville, Scott Stantis’ Prickly City, Keith Knight’s The Knight Life, and Lalo Alcaraz’s La Cucaracha—and I’ve pulled recent specimens from each to post near here.
As a rule, comic strips don’t deploy visual metaphors in making their messages, so all of these stand alone as verbal enterprises without any elucidation from your friendly neighborhood guide. (Moi.) But I’m happy to point out that Stantis, whose posture is conservative, uses a visual metaphor for the Trumpet that reveals his opinion of the new Prez— a skunk with knit hair. And it probably goes without saying that the Peanuts strip on the second page of this exhibit was not drawn to celebrate Trump’s inaugural. Snoopy became the head beagle long before Trump even thought of being Leader of the Free World. But the people selecting “classic Peanuts” for revival probably had one eye on the contemporary scene when choosing strips for the weeks just after the TrumpTwit officially took office. Or so I’d like to think. Especially the impeachment part. The last page’s photographs have almost nothing to do with comic strips. They are, however, virtual caricatures of their subjects, so I seized upon them as a way of concluding the sermon in this opus. The tiny thumbnail caricature of Trump signaling his Number One-ness I clipped from Time, too delicious to let slip into history unmarked.
POLITICS IN THE FUNNIES As we’ve already seen in the preceding department, newspaper comic strips no longer eschew political comment in aiming for the reader’s funnybone. President Trump is enacting a “running war with the media,” and he might well next hurl his scorn at the funny pages. As Cy Musiker observes at kqed.org, “comic strip artists have authored some of the sharpest political commentary directed against the President and his policies.” And one of the cartoonists with the sharpest pen is Darrin Bell, who draws an editorial cartoon and two daily comic strips for syndicated distribution. In one of the strips, Candorville, Bell frequently mocks the Prez as well as his predecessors, and he often explores race and gender issues. Says Bell: “I gave him the benefit of the doubt, until he launched his campaign by calling Mexican illegal immigrants ‘rapists’ and ‘murderers,’ and it only got worse from there.” Near here, we’ve posted a sampling of Candoville commentary. 
“Bell is both African American and Jewish,” says Musiker, “— an identity that he says makes him one of the first people in the room to recognize Trump’s bigotry.” “Or maybe it’s more accurate to say I’m the last one in the room who has the luxury of ignoring it,” Bell says. “And Donald Trump’s actions have been screaming bigotry long before he insisted the first black president produce not only his birth certificate, but his college transcripts and his college application. Trump’s actions have been screaming bigotry ever since his company denied housing to minorities in the 1970s.” Candorville, which debuted October 19, 2003 and now appears in more than 100 newspapers nationwide, features a multi-racial cast, headed by Bell’s alter-ego, Lemont Brown, an African American single dad and deeply committed Trekkie and science nerd. Brown is also a freelance reporter, giving Bell the chance to comment on Trump’s antipathy for journalists. “Lemont felt that being insulted by Trump was a rite of passage,” Bell says. “He wasn’t actually a real journalist until he made it happen. But after he was forcibly ejected by his underwear from a press conference, Trump hasn’t so much as called him a ‘loser’ once.” Brown spends a lot of time hanging out with his friends from childhood, Susan Garcia, an ad executive, and Clyde, a street hustler. In one of the most memorable strips, Clyde talks about getting back at a Trump supporter who calls him the “N” word. “I had my most cynical character live out exactly how I thought I would deal with that kind of harassment if it were to happen to me,” Bell says. “And as I often do with Clyde, I used it as an opportunity to challenge readers’ preconceptions about people who look like Clyde.” The history of American newspaper comics has been, until recently, remarkably free of political satire. Harold Gray in Little Orphan Annie criticized FDR’s assault on individual independence with social welfare programs, Al Capp lambasted the establishment in his Li’l Abner, and Walt Kelly jabbed politicians in Pogo. But until Garry Trudeau turned his Doonesbury into overt political satire, most satire in the funnies was social rather than political. And in Trudeau’s wake came Keith Knight, another African American cartoonist, who often makes racial issues his business in one of his three productions—The Knight Life, K Chronicles, and the more political (th)ink. Bell says his debt isn’t just to these pioneers. He cites as another inspiration the neglected work of Jay Jackson, who produced the strip Bungleton Green for the Chicago Defender and other African American newspapers in the 1930s. “I feel like we all owe a debt to Honoré Daumier, to Mark Twain, to the court jester, to Aristophanes,” Bell told Musiker. “We actually all owe a debt to the very first hairy person who drew a funny picture on a cave wall about a mammoth-hunt gone wrong.” “As well as seeing cartooning as one of the oldest art forms,” adds Musiker, “Bell also considers it to have a long future.” “Thirty-two thousand years from now, long after all of us are completely forgotten, political satire will still be there,” Bell says. “Because humanity will always, always produce smart-asses.” Smart asses who deserve to be beaten.
THE FROTH ESTATE The Alleged “News” Institution According to a recent poll, people now trust Trump more than they trust the news media—by 45% to 42%. So when he gangs up on the news media, he’s joining the multitudes. And yet—: Speaking before the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 24, the TrumpTwit panned newsstories that rely on anonymous sources, saying that reporters shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name. I’ve often said that sources that are dubbed “anonymous” because they “aren’t authorized to speak” on the subject they’re quoted on are unreliable sources: if they go around snitching and stabbing people in the back, how can we trust what they say? But the Trump White House went their boss one better: two hours before Trump’s statement on anonymous sources, White House officials would not discuss aspects of the Priebus-FBI relationship unless given anonymity. And yet—: The Trumpet told his base a couple weeks ago that any poll with negative results about him should be regarded as fake news (“and he really did say that,” quoth Chuck Plunkett, editorial page editor of the Denver Post). And yet—: Gallup found that dissatisfaction with government has leaped back to the top of the list of American concerns.
PERSIFLAGE AND FURBELOWS From 2011 to 2015, after Republicans gained control of many state governments, legislators introduced 395 bills in forty-nine states desgined to make it more difficult to vote, and half the states, nearly all under Republican control, adopted such restrictions. —David Cole in The New York Review
NEWSPAPER COMICS PAGE VIGIL The Bump and Grind of Daily Stripping MORE AND MORE FREQUENTLY these days, I see newspaper comic strips in which the jokes are founded in the strip’s being conscious that it is a comic strip. Comic strips never used to do this. They all diligently maintained their existential function as separate distinct universes within ours. Nobody broke the fourth wall. No one in the strip talked about being in a comic strip. That would destroy an essential verisimilitude. Now no one cares anymore about that, and so self-consciousness is breaking out all over the front range. This
is fun stuff for aficionados like moi, but appreciating the comedy doesn’t
usually require any special inside knowledge. Our first example, Jim Davis’ Garfield, is not so much an instance of self-consciousness as it is an example of exploiting the medium. “Only in the comics” we might say. In any event, this one gets us in the mood for the next few. In Pearls Before Swine, Stephen Pastis just spilled ink. And to appreciate this uproariousness, we have to know that comic strips are drawn in ink. Duh. In Mutts, Patrick McDonnell reveals that Mooch realizes he’s in a comic strip. So does Mother Goose in Mike Peters’ strip. Not only is she in a comic strip, but she’s drawn in one. And then in the next Goose and Grimm, the joke hinges upon our remembering that a typeset copyright notice usually appears, running sideways up the side of one of the panels. It appears in the previous Peters’ strip—in the last panel, in white lettering that is barely legible. But it ain’t in the strip at hand. Does that mean this installment of Mother Goose and Grimm is not copyrighted? So we can steal it with impunity and pass it off as our own creation? Probably not. For legal copyrighting purposes, the opening speech balloon is probably adequate. And, finally, veering decisively off-topic, we uncover a secret of Monet’s: he couldn’t draw hands so he painted gardens. Learning how to draw hands is one of the last lessons in cartooning. I’m sure I went through the agonies, but the thing I remember about hands is the problem of having something for them to do if the narrative didn’t require a character to hold something or slug someone. I finally decided it was okay to have a hand just dangle there, at the end of the sleeve, without having a specific assignment.
POLITICS HAVE
BEEN SEEPING into the erstwhile comical pablum newspaper funnies for years now,
so we ought not to be surprised to find allusions to the TrumpTwit swirling
around. We’ve put Zits next on the scroll for Historic reasons: this is the first time I can recall that Jim Borgman has drawn Jerry Scott’s teenager with nicely combed hair, slicked down almost. A historic moment to savor. Then in Adam@Home Rob Harrell launches into a two-week expedition into Adam’s long-lost childhood. Adam falls down and conks his noggin, rendering him unconscious and sending him into a regressive interlude, which lasts for two weeks. As
we could have predicted, the young Adam of old Adam’s “dream” has some of old
Adam’s traits—an irrational addiction to coffee, for example. And Harrell gets
more than a couple days’ gags out of it. After a week, as we see on the next
visual aid, Harrell awakens Adam, bringing him back into his “real” world with
his wife Laura. This is a clever dodge, and if the history of comic strips is any guide (and it is, just barely), we may expect Harrell to pull this stunt again. Meanwhile, fully conscious again in the next week, Adam gets to be an official coffee taster, indulging himself to such an extent that he has the shakes all day long. Adam was created by Brian Basset July 9, 1984, but it is produced these days—and has been since February 23, 2009—by Harrell; dunno why my local paper continues the erroneous byline. Probably for the same reason it continues to label the strip by its inaugural name, Adam. More than a decade after the strip’s launch, Basset acknowledged in 1998 the home-bound Internet career of his protagonist by re-naming the strip Adam@Home.
RETURNING FOR
THE NONCE to our examination of strips that betray a humorous self-awareness,
we have a short
GOSSIP & GARRULITIES Name-Dropping & Tale-Bearing In his syndicated column, Chris Hume said (tongue in cheek)—: Before the dust had even cleared, the GOP replaced the ACA (Affordable Care Act) with its very own health plan known as YOYO (You’re On Your Own). YOYO will go into effect midnight tonight. ... “But what if I can’t afford to save up for a YOYO account?” asked truck driver Bruce Braxton. In fact, the GOP has a big-hearted plan for poor people. It is known as PHART or Pray Hard and Receive Treatment. “What happens if I still get sick and die?” asked Bruce Braxton. “Then you obviously weren’t praying hard enough,” explained Senator Powers.
CIVILIZATION’S LAST OUTPOST One of a kind beats everything. —Dennis Miller adv.
Champion Liar. Not. By Bill Palmer, dailynewsbin.com The trendy knock on Hillary Clinton, even among those who acknowledge that she’s the most capable and knowledgeable of the 2016 candidates for President, is the accusation that she’s just not honest. Her opponents keep insisting that she can’t be trusted, that she’s not telling the truth, and that there is therefore no telling what she might do while in office. But whenever fact checkers look at what Clinton and her opponents are saying during this election cycle, she rates out as the most honest of the bunch. It may come as a surprise considering how often her opponents have tried to ding her for honesty issues. But according to campaign-long data from respected fact checking entity PolitFact, the picture looks very different. These sites only evaluate controversial or contentious claims made by each candidate, so if for instance they rate a candidate’s statements as being “true” half the time, it doesn’t mean the candidate is lying the other half the time. It’s more accurately an indicator of what percentage of the time a candidate turns out to have been telling the truth when he or she is specifically accused of lying. PolitiFact has rated 24% of Hillary Clinton‘s contentious claims as receiving a perfect “True” score, which may not sound impressive until you consider that just 15% of Bernie Sanders’ contentious claims have rated out as “True.” There are two other passable categories, “Mostly True” and “Half True.” If you add up the numbers from the top three boxes, Clinton comes out at 72% and Sanders comes out at 70%, which are both robust scores. In the bottom two boxes, just 14% of Clinton’s challenged statements have rated out as “False” or “Pants on Fire” while Sanders has fallen into those bottom two boxes 15% of the time. Again, lest you get jaded, it doesn’t mean that either candidate is lying 14% or 15% of the time they open their mouths. This is merely a percentage of the most highly contested claims they’ve each made during this election. In other words, whenever Clinton or Sanders has been accused of lying, most of the time it turns out they were actually telling the truth. Objectively speaking, these are the two most honest candidates in the race, with Clinton receiving the slight numerical edge. Now for contrast, let’s take a look at the numbers for the top 2016 Republican candidates. It turns out Donald Trump’s statements have only rated out as being fully “True” a mere 3% of the time. In fact he rates out as “False” or “Pants on Fire” an astounding 61% of the time. Ted Cruz is nearly as dishonest, rated “True” just 6% of the time, and “False” or “Pants on Fire” 36% of the time. So what does this tell us? The factual bottom line is that Hillary Clinton is the most honest candidate in the 2016 election. Bernie Sanders is a close second, making them the two most comparatively “honest” politicians in the race. In contrast, Donald Trump rates out as nearly a pathological liar, and Cruz doesn’t do much better. So much for the notion that Clinton is the one who can’t be trusted. This false perception is largely a function of her longtime status as the clear frontrunner and expected winner, causing the other candidates to take the most shots at her honesty out of desperation. But as the above numbers irrefutably spell out, when the others accuse Hillary of lying, it most often turns out they’re the ones who are lying.
In Another Report on Falsehood Galore—: PolitiFact has named Donald Trump the winner of its annual “Lie of the Year” competition — and it's not even close. The fact-checking website has rated 76 percent of Trump’s statements “mostly false,” “false" or “pants on fire,” out of 77 statements checked. "No other politician has as many statements rated so far down on the dial," PolitiFact observes. Trump is often criticized for statements that have little to no basis in fact. For example, no video has been found showing "thousands" of Muslim-Americans celebrating the 9/11 attacks, as the Republican presidential candidate claimed repeatedly. “In considering our annual Lie of the Year, we found our only real contenders were Trump’s — his various statements also led our Readers’ Poll,” PolitiFact staff members write. “But it was hard to single one out from the others. So we have rolled them into one big trophy.”
HARPER’S INDEX ◆ Amount invested by the Obama Administration in training former coal workers to operate drones: $2,200,000. ◆ Amount the United States will spend to train giant African rats to detect illegal shipments of plants and wildlife: $100,000 ◆ Minimum number of individuals whom Donald Trump has directly insulted on Twitter since he declared his candidacy: 160 ◆ Number of floors by which the Trump World Tower’s advertised height exceeds its actual height: 19 ◆ Minimum number of countries in which Trump has business interests: 25 ◆ Rank of corrupt government officials among Americans’ greatest fears: 1 ◆ Of climate change: 17
CARTOONS UNINTENTIONALLY SPARK OUTRAGE Well, Humor Always Has an Edge and Always Has a Victim, The Butt of the Joke, But... Syndicated
editoonist Glenn McCoy (of so conservative a persuasion that I usually
can’t understand him) decided to strike a blow for personal liberty and against
prejudice, and to this purpose, he drew a cartoon that visually echoed one of
the most famous of Norman Rockwell’s paintings, which we see in the
adjoining display atop McCoy’s recreation. Rockwell’s 1964 painting depicts U.S. marshals escorting a black girl named Ruby Bridges to integrate New Orleans’ William Frantz Public School in 1960. The group walks by a wall with the n-word scrawled on it and the remnants of tomatoes thrown by protesters. McCoy’s picture shows the Trumpet’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos walking by a similar wall with “conservative” in place of the n-word. “It was inspired by protesters blocking DeVos from entering a public school in Washington, D.C., last week after she was narrowly confirmed by the Senate,” explained Alex Sundby at cbsnews.com. But the comparison, like many of McCoy’s cartoons, is a trifle on the extreme side. An adult billionaire white political operative (DeVos) is scarcely in the same class as a fairly defenseless 6-year old black child being victimized by racial bigotry. In his conservative rage haze, McCoy would like us to make the two incidents equivalent. And certainly ordinary good manners should have allowed DeVos to enter the school she sought to enter. But, as McCoy demonstrates, these are times of extreme opinions. The other extreme can be found in the uproar the cartoon aroused on social media. Chelsea Clinton posted a picture of Rockwell’s painting to her Twitter account after posting “What?! What?!” in reaction to McCoy’s cartoon. Stung by the criticism, McCoy apologized "if anyone was offended," saying he believed he was “speaking out against hate.” Not the other way around. Said McCoy, reported by Shannon Clash at nbcnews.com: "My cartoon was about how, in this day and age, decades beyond the civil rights protests, it's sad that people are still being denied the right to speak freely or do their jobs or enter public buildings because others disagree with who they are or how they think. I’m surprised that [some] see ‘hate’ in this cartoon when I thought I was speaking out against hate. “It’s a woman passively walking while being protected from angry protesters,” he continued. “Isn’t that what went down the other day when DeVos visited a school to do her job? You may disagree with her on issues but I didn’t see any hate coming from her. I did, however, see hate going in the other direction, which is what made me think of the Rockwell image. That was the only comparison I was making. The level of toxicity in today’s political climate has reached ridiculous levels.” Indeed. But the comparison by which he sought to make his point is seriously flawed: you can’t reasonably compare a persecuted child of racial minority with a billionaire white woman.
THE THIRD PICTURE at the upper right in our visual aid is a gag cartoon by Harry Bliss, whose work sometimes appears in The New Yorker. This cartoon, however, was distributed to newspapers by Bliss’s syndicate, the Tribune Content Agency. And when it appeared, innocently seeking to provoke risibles, in the Boston Globe, indignant readers reacted. Here are two of the letters (in italics)—: The February 10 Bliss cartoon depicts a Jew unable to ward off a vampire using the Star of David (sometimes called the “Shield of David”). The trope is that vampires fear crosses because they are a symbol of God. The cartoon seems to imply that the Shield of David is not a true symbol of God, or that Jews and their symbols are less godly than Christians and their symbols, or that Jews are too stupid to know they are supposed to use a Christian symbol to ward off pagan vampires. Perhaps Harry Bliss is not thinking about the wave of anti-Semitism inspired by our new President and his strategists, but printing this comic helps normalize a hateful agenda. I am deeply disturbed and disappointed that the Globe would sanction publishing such an offensive cartoon. — Richard Berenson, Newton The second letter (selected from, I assume, many)—: I found the publication of the Bliss cartoon on February 10 to be terribly insulting. The cartoon shows, in the foreground, a bearded character with glasses, holding a Jewish star on a string up to Count Dracula. He states, “Seymour! It’s not working!” Now, what the heck does that imply — that only Christians can fend off Dracula with a cross? That Jews are blood suckers, in league with Dracula, and, of course, the Star of David won’t work? Can you imagine if the character were wearing a turban and holding a crescent moon and star? That would be decried as hate speech. I would like to know why that cartoon is considered humorous. —Robert A. Greenstein, Waban Bliss wrote apologetically—: I’m saddened to hear my cartoon offended readers. It’s never my intention. I am Jewish. My Aunt Greta survived the Nazis by hiding in a forest in Czechoslovakia as a 7-year-old girl. This notion that my depiction of the Star of David (which I wear around my neck as I write this) in my cartoon was intended to cash in on any right-wing agenda is disturbing at best. The Jewish people, my people, have always had the gift of intelligent, mirthful introspection. It is this sincere, absurd, and often irreverent humorous tradition that I and countless other Jewish comics (Jon Stewart, Mel Brooks, Richard Lewis, etc.) lovingly explore in our art and craft. Indeed, I see this very tradition as a much-needed elixir to the devastating injustices we have faced for centuries; it is essential to our way of life as survivors. Count Dracula is a myth, pure entertainment based on ideas of the supernatural. Thus, the very premise of the gag is absurd. I assumed this fact would be enough of a suspension of disbelief for most readers, but it seems I was mistaken. I cannot control how my art is interpreted. I continue to learn, and learning is good. Again, I’m sorry this drawing was seen by some as something so far removed from its source. Interestingly, my cousin, David Codell, a Harvard graduate who served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was thrilled to see the cartoon in the Los Angeles Times, and I’m sending David the original drawing to hang in his law offices. David’s father was named Seymour. — Harry Bliss
IN OTHER WORDS, the joke of the cartoon was that the Jew holding the Star of David is mistaken about how you can ward off vampires. Only crosses work. Stars don’t. That’s absurd, of course, as Bliss well knew. His mistake, however, was in assuming in this day and age of rising anti-Semitism that other Jews would share his sense of the absurd. Instead, they saw an anti-Semitic message. Jews have been protesting real (and sometimes imagined) anti-Semitic imagery and messages for decades—at least since the monstrously evil extent of the Holocaust became known. No one in his/her right mind would fault them for manifesting their ire and alarm. At the same time, anyone working in the public sphere like Bliss should be wary of doing anything even remotely Jewish that might arouse the vigilant spirit that is always on the alert. But that is not to say Jews are without a sense of humor about themselves and their Jewishness. As Bliss points out, scores of famous comedians have harvested laughs by laughing at themselves and the stereotypes that abound about Jews.
More Non-Existant Anti-Semitism SPEAKING OF IMAGINED anti-Semitism brings us to the Daily Bruin, the campus newspaper at the University of California, Los Angeles. The cartoon at the bottom right of our exhibit at hand was published in February 13's issue of the Daily Bruin as a student cartoonist’s commentary on an Israeli law passed earlier in February that allows Israel to seize lands privately owned by Palestinians in the West Bank and redistribute them to Jewish settlements at the state’s discretion, according to the Washington Post, cited by Madeleine Lee at the bottomline.as.ucsb.edu. When the landowners are known, they are entitled to compensation. The cartoon immediately incited protests by right-thinking humanists like David Cooperman, a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi, a historically Jewish fraternity, who wrote: “I absolutely welcome a healthy criticism of Israel, even on this issue, but what makes this anti-Semitic is in fact the presence of the ten commandments and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a yamaka with the extended big nose. These are tropes that basically tie Jewishness with this political issue.” Well, no. Netanyahu’s nose is no bigger than a decent caricature of him requires. The yamaka may be more than is necessary, but it helps identify him. Moreover, Jews and/or Jewishness is not the target of the cartoon’s message. Israeli policy with respect to the settlements is. And if Jews and/or Jewishness is not the target, how can this cartoon be anti-Semitic? But dozens of students echored Cooperman’s sentiment, reported Lee. “Many, like first year student Elora Cohen, who shared her history of battling anti-Semitism while growing up in France, were fearful that instances of anti-Semitism may be normalized in the future.” “Anti-Semitism begins with visual images like this one, and then becomes institutionalized if society continues to say that images like this are okay,” said Cohen, who emphasized the nature of Judaism as a global religious identity, not a political one. On Facebook and in letters to the editor, most critics of the cartoon argued that by involving the sacred Tablets of the Law, the cartoonist had crossed the line from anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism. Danny Siegel, president of UCLA’s Undergraduate Student Association Council, declared in a statement: “As a Jewish student at UCLA, I am disgusted by the anti-Semitic claim in my school newspaper that the Israeli government is purposefully using my Jewish faith to justify policy matters.” In another expression of hyper-sensitivity, a statement by the Anti-Defamation League denounced the cartoon as “deeply offensive… and impugning core Jewish beliefs.” The Ten Commandments (need I point out?) are Christian as well as Jewish, and since Christian as well as Jewish “core” beliefs are thereby impugned, the cartoon can scarcely to condemned as anti-Semitic on that basis. But once someone starts blowing the whistle on anti-Semitism, it’s hard to stop an orchestra from tuning up. Within two days, over 50 individuals left disapproving reviews on the Daily Bruin’s public Facebook page in response to the illustration. (Sounds like a lot, but more than 30,000 undergraduates matriculate on the campus of UCLA; another 13,000 are graduate students.) The cartoon was soon removed from the Daily Bruin’s website, Tanner Walters, editor-in-chief of the Daily Bruin, rather than defend the cartoon by explaining how it was not anti-Semitic instead claimed a lapse of editorial judgment. “This was a mistake that should have been caught at any point in the process, and it didn’t get caught.” In a subsequent letter of apology, the paper promised to reach out to local religious leaders “to help our staff understand the historical context behind these kinds of hurtful images.” The cartoonist, Felipe Bris Abejon, is an undergraduate student in political science, who last year served as education and resources director of the UCLA chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, or SJP, a strongly anti-Zionist national student group. A suspicious circumstance at best, suggesting that his Palestinian sentiments must’ve inspired an “anti-Semitic” cartoon. In a letter to the Daily Bruin, the SJP board at UCLA condemned the cartoon and stated that Abejon is currently not an SPJ member. But what of his presumed pro-Palestinian posture? In his own defense, Abejon said what his editor at the Daily Bruin should have said: “I stand by what the cartoon represents. I also stand against anti-Semitism and intolerance against the Jewish people. I apologize to anyone who has been offended, but I still stand behind what this cartoon says politically.” And so does the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, which issued a statement to the Daily Bruin on February 17; herewith—:
American cartoonists drawing about the activities of religious groups have often depicted members of those groups betraying the tenets of their faiths. Cartoonists have drawn cartoons with Jesus dragging an electric chair up Calvary Hill to protest the death penalty. To protest terrorist attacks, they have drawn cartoons with Muslims committing acts of violence in the name of their “religion of peace.” Depicting Benjamin Netanyahu (in, by the way, an excellent caricature) breaking one of the Ten Commandments is not anti-Semitic. The depiction is anti-Netanyahu’s settlement policy. You can say the cartoonist is wrong in his opinion but not anti-Semitic for having held that opinion—one shared by many. American cartoonists are not alone in defending this cartoon. According to Israeli cartoonist, and member of Cartooning for Peace, a partner of the AAEC, Michel Kichka: "Felipe Bris Abejon’s cartoon is not an anti-Semitic drawing. Using the Tables of the Law, a world-famous icon from the Old Testament, is a right choice for a cartoonist who seeks to achieve a strong effect using a universal image. While I don’t agree with the punch line, it doesn’t make Abejon an anti-Semitic cartoonist—just someone who doesn’t like the politics of the Israeli government and its prime minister.” Before the Daily Bruin gives all religions blanket protection from criticism for irreligious actions, we suggest you invite some working cartoonists to address free speech and graphic art. We can provide images that have provoked outraged reactions and then sparked deep discussion of a variety of controversies. Cartoons can be the start of discussion, not the end, but only if people have a chance to see them. We believe the Daily Bruin should do its part and publish tough opinions, whether written or drawn, on all sides of controversial issues. UCLA students are strong enough and smart enough to see controversial images and judge them for themselves. Sincerely, The Board of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, Ann Telnaes, President
THAT SAYS IT ALL, pretty much, as far as I’m concerned—thanks to AAEC’s pastprez Signe Wilkinson, who drafted the letter, and to the Association’s international liaison Patrick Chappatte, who brought in the statement from Israeli cartoonist Michel Kichka. It’s a shame when any cartoon depiction of a Jew prompts outraged cries of anti-Semitism. We live in times requiring sensitivity on such matters. But not hyper-sensitivity. Not every depiction of a Jew is anti-Semitic. Not every cartoon about the complex and dispiriting politics involving Israel and its neighbors is anti-Semitic. We need clear heads not clogged minds, and looking for anti-Semitism on every possible street corner won’t clear the mind. But that doesn’t mean we should abandon vigilance. Anti-Semitism is on the rise, particularly, according to report, on college campuses. We have the TrumpTwit to thank: his “America First” slogan coupled to anti-immigrant attitudes about people who are “different” has had the effect, apparently, of relaxing inhibitions about prejudices among those who still, after all this time, harbor anti-other and anti-Semitic beliefs.
PEEVES & PRATFALLS Because members of the President’s family are accompanied everywhere by Secret Service, when Eric Trump jetted to Uruguay in early January for a Trump Organization promotional trip, U.S. taxpayers paid nearly $100,000 for Secret Service and embassy staff hotel rooms. And so we paid to support business operations that ultimately help to enrich the Prez himself. Contrary to some expectations, I don’t think we can avoid this if we have a Prez who has members of his family running a business, whether he’s divested himself of the business or not.
BOOK MARQUEE Previews and Proclamations of Coming Attractions This department works like a visit to the bookstore. When you browse in a bookstore, you don’t critique books. You don’t even read books: you pick up one, riffle its pages, and stop here and there to look at whatever has momentarily attracted your eye. You may read the first page or glance through the table of contents. And that’s about what you’ll see here, beginning with—:
Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse, Vols. 6-9: April 1940 - October 1948 By Various; edited by David Gerstein and Gary Groth 270-286 8.5x10-inch landscape pages, b/w comic strips plus color features; Fantagraphics hardcovers, $35 THIS SERIES OF REPRINTS should carry the title “Floyd Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse” since these stories by the legendary Disney cartoonist Gottfredson are the reason for the series. He plotted and wrote and penciled the stories in Volume 6 (and in the preceding volumes), then, beginning with Volume 7, he collaborated with Bill Walsh on the writing but still pencilled the tales. Bill Wright did most of the inking, joined, eventually, by others, including another legend, Dick Moores (who graduated, eventually, to Gasoline Alley, which he both wrote and drew). Each volume reprints the classic newspaper strip continuities in chronological order, three strips to a page. Reproduction, using Disney negatives and proof sheets, is excellent. Each volume begins with an introductory essay, and every story is introduced with an appreciative page of notes—all by knowledgeable aficionados. At the end of each book is a section entitled “The Gottfredson Archives,” short essays and miscellaneous art. Gerstein is “an animation and comics researcher, writer, and editor, working extensively with the Walt Disney company and its licensees,” and it is he who has rounded up and assembled most of the material in these books. Some
of the stories are cops-and-robbers stuff; others are rollicking adventure
tales—some exotic, others more mundane. Mickey is usually joined by Goofy, and
Minnie is never far away. Some of the adventures involve another encounter with
the ever-menacing Pegleg Pete (who loses his pegleg in 1943); in 1947, the
other-worldly Eega Beva I’m not a big fan of the earliest Mickey Mouse strips. My affection embraces the years when Mickey still wore short red pants, which he does through Volumes 6 and 7; in Volume 8, he starts wearing long pants. When Mickey started wearing long pants, the dimensions of the character changed: his body was slightly larger. The other key element in the strips I like best concerns his ears. In the early years, Mickey’s ears were rigid circles; in later years, starting in 1942, they were often ovals, as you can see in the sample page near here.
Mary Astor’s Purple Diary: The Great American Sex Scandal of 1936 By Edward Sorel 168 6x9-inch pages, text w/color illos; 2016 Liveright Publishing/W.W. Norton, hardcover, $25.95 THE DUST JACKET gets us going by taking us back to 1965 when “up-and-coming” Sorel “was living in a $97-a-month railroad flat on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Resolved to fix up the place, he began pulling up the linoleum on his kitchen floor” and found issues of the city’s sleaze-mongering tabloids, the Daily News and the Mirror, under the linoleum. The paper’s were “ablaze with a scandalous 1936 child custody trial taking place in Hollywood and staring the actress Mary Astor.” Astor at the time was “enough of a star to make headlines when it came out that George S. Kaufman, then the most successful playwright on Broadway and a married man to boot, had been her lover. The scandal revolved around Mary’s diary, which her ex-husband, Dr. Franklyn Thorpe, had found when they were still together. Its incriminating contents had forced Mary to give up custody of their daughter in order to obtain a divorce. “By 1936, she had decided to challenge the arrangement, even though Thorpe planned to use the diary to prove she was an unfit mother. Mary, he claimed, had not only kept a tally of all her extramarital affairs but graded them—and he’d already alerted the press.” Sorel was fascinated and spent the next 50 years learning all he could about the scandal. The result is this slim volume, decorated 50 illustrations like those posted near here. He recounts various aspects of Mary Astor’s life, those involving men mostly—including John Barrymore, “who seduced her on the set of a movie and convinced her parents to allow her to be alone with him for private ‘acting lessons.’” The diary, which Sorel quotes, is aflame with Astor’s raptures about Kaufman, who was “a perfect fit” and insatiable (they managed four couplings in one night). Prompted by events in Astor’s life, Sorel sometimes wanders off the subject to tell us what was happening in his life—marriages, career, and so forth. Despite the appeal of the salacious diary, the attraction of this volume for me is in Sorel’s pictures.
The Best of Archie Comics: 75 Years, 75 Stories—Commemorative Edition By Various (70 Names Listed) 640 5x7.5-inch pages, color; 2015 Archie Publications paperback, $14.99 THIS TIDY PACKAGE offers a 75-year overview of the birth and growth of “America’s Favorite Teenager.” Stories are arranged in 5-year incremental chapters in the order of their initial publication, and some of the stories feature other Archie Comics characters—Li’l Jinx, Josie and the Pussycats, Sabrina, Katy Keene (“the pin-up queen”), as well as Little Archie and tales from the other Archie titles, Betty & Veronica, Jughead, etc. The indicia page credits John Goldwater with the creation of Archie but also mentions Bob Montana as the one who created the “likenesses” of the characters. (More likely, Montana did it all but certainly Goldwater had far less to do with it than his legacy claims; for all the sordid details, visit Harv’s Hindsight for the summer of 2001, “John Goldwater, the Comics Code, and Archie.”) Text
introductions to each chapter trace the history of Archie, noting the arrival
of the radio program and the debut
“Riverdale” Television’s New Archie WE DON’T, as a rule, review movies or tv here, but this tv version of the perennial forever Archie and his gang is so wildly deviant from the traditional four-color incarnation that I can’t help myself. I wasn’t going to watch “Riverdale”: just another Archie, I thought. But then, in a moment of weakness, I succumbed to temptation and watched the debut showing. And I’m glad I did. Daniel Fienberg at Hollywood Reporter has it right when he says: “The CW’s new drama series ‘Riverdale’ is a crazed dare of a tv show, and while it may defy conventional qualitative norms when it comes to things like narrative coherence and character consistency, it is utterly committed to the strange thing it’s doing. Adapted for tv by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (‘Glee’), ‘Riverdale’ is not your father’s Archie story. ... [It has] shifted from innocent small-town shenanigans to shocking character deaths, risque explorations of sexuality and even dalliances with the undead.” The show is “full of recognizable Archie elements, but the familiar character names and some of their superficial traits have been funneled into a creepy murder mystery with shadings of incest, inappropriate student-teacher relations and corruption that would make the original Riverdale gang blush.” All the usual gang is there, but they’ve been twisted and bent slightly out-of-shape. Archie is a hunk with six-pack abs who works in his father’s construction business during summers, during the latest of which he is seduced on the Fourth of July by his music teacher, Ms. Grundy—who is not an ugly old maid but a ravishingly sexy babe. Although they both seemingly regret the fireworks of their holiday indiscretion, they are fated to be together: Archie wants help with his “music”—his writing of song lyrics, apparently. And she wants—. Veronica Lodge is still the rich kid, but not quite as snooty: she and her mother, a stunning Hermione Lodge, have come to Riverdale to escape the scandal of her father’s embezzling money in New York. Hermione tries unsuccessfully to seduce Archie’s father (who has split from Archie’s mother), while Veronica tells her new best friend Betty that she wants to improve herself and be a better Veronica. Betty is still Betty—perfect. And in love with Archie, whom she has known all her life. Archie admits he loves Betty in return, but not in the happily-ever-after way: he’s not good enough for her, he tells her. He describes Betty as not just his friend but his “best friend” when Veronica, poised to get him to kiss her, wants to know what the Archie-Betty relationship is. Betty’s mother is a sour control-freak, and Jughead, who is seemingly the voice-over narrator of this venture, is a sardonic would-be novelist whom Archie has somehow wronged. Cheryl Blossom is the resident bitch, whom everyone pities because her twin brother, Jason—after treating Betty’s sister Polly badly—drowns in a boating mishap. But Cheryl scarcely deserves our pity: she’s such a bitch that she earns only our scornful disdain. At the end of the first airing, the Lodge butler delivers a satchel to Veronica, and when she opens it, she discovers it’s full of cash—just what she and her mother need to remedy their present paupery. And then an innocent passerby discovers Jason’s water-logged body which has a bullet hole in the head. Didn’t drown after all. Casting is excellent. All the characters look like they’re supposed to look—or better. Jughead doesn’t have a long, pointy nose, but I don’t miss it. Maybe it’s just me, but the pleasure I found in watching this show derives in good measure from the tension that’s created between what I remember of Archie and his gang in the funnybooks and what they’ve become in this tv version. Maybe I’m as perverse as the show’s treatment of the iconic characters is, but I can’t wait to see what freshly crazed violence Aguirre-Sacasa will perform next time on this erstwhile wholesome crowd. Well, just a smidgeon of future events: Betty blows the whistle on Archie’s affair with Ms. Grundy and she leaves town (but not before Betty gets her pistol); Hermione Lodge gets involved with thugs of the Southside Serpent motorcycle gang (one of whom is Jughead’s father); Cheryl gets nastier and nastier; Kevin starts an affair with a Serpent— in short, every aspect of the traditional Archie milieu is turned on its head, and few, if any, noble values remain entact. In Opus 364, Next Time: Warner Bros contracts with Archie for more.
Black History in Its Own Words Assembled and illustrated by Ronald Wimberly 88 8x8-inch pages, b/w and color; 2017 Image hardcover, $16.99 THIRTY-NINE African-American luminaries are quoted on the Black history of America and illustrated by Wimberly. Full-page illustrations face opposite page short annotations about the place or role of the luminary in the history.
The next year, he did 12 more. And then he added another 15 for 2017 and went to press with this collection. Included are Angela Davis, George Herriman, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kanye West, Zadie Smith, Ice Cube, Dave Chappelle, James Baldwin, Spike Lee and more. Here are some of my favorites.
Jim
Davis’ Garfield: The Original Daily and Sunday Art Archive All the artwork will be shot in color in order to show blue and red pencilings, white outs, and production details unseen in the published strips.
PERSIFLAGE & BADINAGE Koom Kankesan interviewed Alan Moore about free will in his Joycean novel Jerusalem, believing that free will would be very important to Moore despite his beliefs otherwise. Moore responded: “I can really only refer you to the builder’s response to Phillip Doddridge’s question about whether human beings ever truly possessed free will: ‘No. Did you miss it?’ ... The characters in Jerusalem who are concerned about the mysteries of space and time would have all their questions answered if someone informed them that, in actual reality, they were all characters acting their predetermined roles in an unusually big and complex narrative. But then, as a writer, I’m probably predetermined to perceive the universe in terms of my own profession. At the end of the day, your guess is probably as good as mine.”
BOOK REVIEWS Critiques & Crotchets
The Life and Legend of Wallace Wood, Volume 1 Edited by Bhob Stewart and J. Michael Catron; Essays by Various 256 10x12-inch pages, b/w and color; 2017 Fantagraphics hardcover, $39.99 WE GET A NEW BOOK ABOUT WOOD every year or so, and this one is this year’s. But much of this book is not, strictly speaking, “new”: many of the essays and much of the illustrative material appeared in Against the Grain: Mad Artist Wallace Wood, Bhob Stewart’s 2003 book for Two Murrows (328 8.5x11-inch pages; b/w with one section of color). The present incarnation, however, is better than its predecessor: the pages are larger so the artwork is often (but not always) larger, color images appear throughout, and the glossy stock of Life and Legend results usually in sharper reproduction. And there are some new essays—an interview by Mark Evanier about Wood’s work on Marvel’s Daredevil and his relationship with Stan Lee, for instance—and two interviews (with Al Williamson and John Severin). The essays, almost two dozen of them, are by comics historians and knowledgeable afficionados and by a few of Wood’s friends and co-workers; the latter (particularly those by Steward and Ralph Reese) are essentially memoirs in which the writers recall their working with Wood and the conditions of their mutual labors with insights about the various passions and demons that drove Wood. Stewart’s essay, among the longest in the book, comes at the beginning and is the most biographical of the lot, tracing Wood’s career from his youthful drawings through his earliest work after arriving in New York, his collaborations with Harry Harrison and Joe Orlando, and his work for EC Comics, which established him as the premier science fiction artist in comics. He was also a pioneering self-publisher and a forerunner of underground comix. For most of the rest of his career, Wood operated out of a studio where he was assisted by young wannabe artists, and some of the essayists, comic book artists themselves, learned their craft under Wood’s guidance. Judging from their testimony, Wood worked constantly, every day, all day, until exhausted. No time off. Probably led two of his three wives to divorce him. While the essays each focus on a particular time in Wood’s life, there is overlap and some back-and-forth, so this volume, like Against the Grain, could be improved with the addition of a timeline of Wood’s life and career. A chronology of dates and events would properly orient the content of the essays, which are often without much dating. Here’s a try:
1927 - Born, Menahga, Minnesota; June 17 1940s - After 1944 highschool graduation, went to Chicago, lived with older brother Glenn and worked at R.R. Donnelly, the midwest’s major printing firm - Enlisted in the Merchant Marines at the end of World War II - Enlisted in the paratroops, spring 1946; discharged, July 1948
1948 - Fall, arrived in New York, briefly attended Cartoonists and Illustrators School (now the School of Visual Arts) 1949 - Met John Severin, who brought him to the attention of Will Eisner, for whom Wood worked briefly (lettering and some backgrounds); also lettered Terry and the Pirates for George Wunder - Late, met Tatjana Weintraub - Miscellaneous comic book work, mostly for Fox, starting with 10-page story, “The Tip Off Woman” in Women Outlaws, No. 4 (cover-dated January 1949) - Collaborated with Harry Harrison on comic book work
1950 - Collaborated with Joe Orlando - Began doing work for EC Comics and Avon - Married Tatjana, August 28; first of three wives 1950s - EC Comics work, all titles but developed spectacular technique in science fiction; he and Orlando reportedly convinced publisher William Gaines to start sf titles 1952 - While doing massive amounts of work for EC, also drew that fall Eisner’s weekly newspaper supplement, Outer Space Spirit 1957 - Until 1964, no four-color work; illustrated sf stories for Galaxy Science Fiction - Also did a few gag cartoons for men’s magazines Dude, Gent and Nugget - Trump, ran only two issues, starting January; did 6 pages in No.1 - Humbug, August - October 1958, 11 issues; did only a self-portrait in No.1 1958 - Inked the first eight months of Sky Masters of the Space Force by Jack Kirby
1960s - Did art and stories for many comic book publishers, starting in 1964 - Trading and humor cards for Topps Chewing Gum; roughs for Mars Attacks 1964 - Did Daredevil at Marvel, developing the character’s distinctive red costume 1965 - Developed and produced T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents for Tower; first issue, November - Tower put out of business when DC and/or Marvel pressured its distributor 1966 - Produced witzend, precursor of underground comix and self-publishing 1967 - Did NEA’s annual Christmas strip, Bucky’s Christmas Caper, starring Bucky Ruckus - For Paul Krassner’s Realist No.74, created The Disneyland Memorial Orgy, a memorable scatalogical rendering of beloved Disney characters doing drugs and fucking 1968 - Developed Sally Forth and Canon for Overseas Weekly
1970s - Continued doing work for several publishers, inking mostly - Suffered from kidney failure and other ailments 1970 - Tried out for Prince Valiant; Foster published his try-out page on November 15 1978 - Suffered a stroke, losing vision in his left eye 1980 - And 1981, did two issues of a pornographic comic book, Gang Bang, for which he produced sexually explicit lampoons of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Terry and the Pirates, Prince Valiant, Superman and Wonder Woman, Flash Gordon and Tarzan - Did covers for Screw magazine 1981 - November 2, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head
THE ESSAYS, while informative and, often, insightful, sometimes wander off to discuss aspects of Wood’s work not in evidence—i.e., pages of artwork not reproduced in the book. And sometimes the evidence is not sufficient. In raving about the incredible detail with which Wood began investing his art as he worked on EC titles (“beautiful clutter,” says Larry Stark), Bill Mason talks about the stories “Custer’s Last Stand” and “War of 1812,” but the spectacular pages he raves about are reproduced the size of postage stamps. (Mason is also enthralled by comparisons of Wood to Vaslav Nijinsky, the Russian ballet dancer.) But there are moments of astonishing revelation. Ralph Reese, describing his function as an assistant, says: “Wood had a very extensive system of files—pictures cut from magazines on almost every conceivable subject. ... He would do a basic layout for a page and then leave it up to me to find ‘swipe’ [pictures from those files] for whatever was possible. I would dig up as much stuff as I could that seemed to fit and then show it to him for his approval, then trace it into place and size using the overhead projector. One thing that always amazed me was his ability to redraw these disparate elements in the process of inking so that the finished product always came out looking like Wood.” In Against the Grain, Wood is quoted citing what was apparently a favorite axiom: “Never draw anything you can copy; never copy anything you can trace; never trace anything you can cut out and paste in.” Some of the illustrations in the book are reproduced too small. Many comic book covers are reproduced in color throughout, but they are too small to make out much detail—a shame in a book about such an artist as Wood, noted for his detail work. Some of the illustrations are reproductions of original art. For my taste, the early chapter has too much of Wood’s juvenile artwork. That offers insight into how early his talent emerged, but the display of such material—no matter how good, it’s still amateurish compared to his mature work—uses space in the book that could have been devoted to more spectacular efforts, which are now either entirely missing or represented by diminutive reproductions. The chapter on his career in the early sixties doing sf illustration is brimming with artwork—all very good, some in brilliant color, many full-page reproductions. The book advertises and then destroys Wood’s dislike of being called “Wally.” Reese says Woody told him he didn’t like that nickname. But he signed several letters, which are reproduced in other Wood books, “Wally Wood.” And a plaque over his desk in one of his studios reads as follows: “There is only one Wally Wood, and I’m him.” Reproduction of the artwork in this volume is superior to that in Against the Grain; and there’s plenty of art in color. The second volume in this Fantagraphics production promises to continue in the same vein as this one—memoirs of those who knew Wood, essays by those who admired his work, and samples of the work. In addition, the book will feature visual tributers from Robert Crumb, Dan Clowes, Michael T. Gilbert, Al Feldstein, Dave Sim, Michael Cho, Drew Friedman, and Marie Severin. Useful and pleasurable as this book is, another book, published in 2012 as an exhibition catalogue, Woodwork: Wallace Wood, 1927-1981, is on a somewhat grander scale (342 9x13-inch pages, all on glossy paper), and most of the illustration is reproduced from original art. It and a couple of other Wood books are reviewed in Opus 312. Wood’s self-publishing adventure, witzend, published the work of up-and-comers and already-made-its as well as Wood. Contributors were not paid but they could do whatever they wanted, which resulted in some genuinely off-beat stuff. I encountered the magazine in the summer of 1967 when I was living in Greenwich Village, attending New York University. Someone showed me a copy of No.2. Many years later—during Wood’s sad last days, I’m sure, when he was doing porn for Gang Bang—Wood offered memberships in some sort of club for a pittance, and if you sent in the money, you got a certificate of membership and an original Wood drawing of a toothsome naked Wooden lady. Naturally, I sent in. Accompanying the nude drawing (which, alas, I’ve misplaced) was a note from Wood, asking what I thought about pornographic cartoons. I answered that cartoons could not be pornographic: they were either funny or not funny, the latter being a contradiction in terms. I’ve misplaced the note, too. We close with a smattering of Woodwork from various places, suggestive of the content of the book at hand—and of my abiding interest in the curvaceous gender, a fixation I shared with Wood.
Here you’ll find Wood’s Prince Valiant try-out, the Disneyland Memorial Orgy, a couple almost porn cartoons (but since cartoons cannot be pornographic, these are just funny), a few of his covers, and a couple rare items. Enjoy.
READ AND RELISH Frederick Douglass, born into slavery, self-educated, then a scholar and a revolutionary lauded across the globe, wrote: “The whole of humanity ... is ever greater than a part. Men only know themselves by knowing others, and contact is essential to this knowledge ... all are needed to temper, modify, round, and complete the whole man and the whole nation.” Man lives in community, in society, and thrives no where else. In society, we find all our values. (I say that.—RCH) When asked once how to keep the nation on a path toward justice and equality for all, Douglass answered: “Agitate, agitate, agitate.”
A-GAGGING WE SHALL GO Single Panel Magazine Cartooning How to Stay Sane as a Cartoonist in Trumpland David Sipress, New
Yorker cartoonist, said at newyorker.com early this month that the cartoon
we see nearby at the upper left is “the most published, republished, tweeted,
retweeted, liked, shared or stolen and reprinted without my permission. The cartoon, however apt it seems today, was produced years ago. “I’m not sure when,” Sipress said, “but it dates from the Clinton administration, but I have no memory of what event or series of events inspired it. But every time the news gets particularly dire, the cartoon pops up all over the place. “Its appearances on social media have spiked during the past year, and never more so that in the aftermath of National Patriotic Devotion Day—aka, the Inauguration of Donald Trump.” Another of Sipress’s cartoons with the turmoil of daily news as its inspiration appears at the upper right in the adjacent display. Sipress confesses to no little anxiety himself about the events of the day. “I thought that writing down the worst things could perhaps diminish their power to mess with my mental health,” he said, “—but the opposite has happened. ... I’m left dazed and confused—muddled about the best target for my outrage. Even understanding that sowing confusion and chaos with this scattershot approach is a conscious Trump strategy doesn’t help to clear the head.” Everybody is frightened, Sipress observes: “Everyone feels helpless and depressed. And they all agree that the best way to stop feeling those things is to do something.” He did something: he joined the Women’s March in New York City on January 21, “and that raised my spirits enormously. So I’ll attend every demonstration I can. I will send postcards, make calls, sign petitions, and—who knows?—maybe get arrested. But most important, I’ll continue to employ my personal self-care remedy for news-induced psychosis: drawing cartoons—cartoons about what’s going on out in the world and what’s going on in my head.” Finally, he admits, “I’ve even begun practicing meditation” (as depicted in the next cartoon around the clock). The fourth cartoon on display is not Sipress’s. It’s Dick Odden’s, and it’s here because it is deliciously comical. No words. Just a picture. Which would seem to violate my customary axiom about good cartoons being a blend of the verbal and the visual. But genuinely funny pictures that don’t need words. They’re not quite cartoons but they make us laugh as if they were.
BEEFS & BOFFOS Chuck Plunkett, editorial page editor at the Denver Post, illuminated the Trumpet—: A rooster is a perfect metaphor for those who put on airs and show their butts. ... A rooster is flamboyant in his finery, strutting around like a gunslinger in his spurs, and laughably thin-skinned. You rile up a rooster, you are presented with a spectacle to behold. He makes a big thing of it. He jumps up, flapping his iridescent wings and puffs up like a big show. All his fine plumage splays out as he beats his wings and stirs up chicken-yard dust and astonishment. But all you have to do is stand your ground. Maybe act like you’re going to kick. And that big ole crazy-acting rooster runs away. That’s what the rule of law is for, and it’s amazing how fast the good ole U.S.A.’s principles revealed our President’s true colors.* Because, as it turns out, no matter how vicious a rooster appears, in his heart and soul, he is just a chicken.
* Plunkett’s reference was to Trump’s attack on the courts when they don’t rule his way. In so doing, Trump revealed his disdain for the rule of law—in this case, the Constitution (law) that separates branches of government to prevent one from dominating the others.
ONWARD, THE SPREADING PUNDITRY The Thing of It Is ...
Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017 THE FINAL DIGNITY OF HILLARY CLINTON By Patricia Murphy, Roll Call
Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not necessarily represent the views of MSN or Microsoft. I can’t remember how many times in the last three months I have typed “the final indignity of Hillary Clinton.” Even for a woman who has been in the spotlight for decades, she seems to have had more than her fair share. Had she not run for the Senate as first lady, it’s possible that Clinton’s final indignity would have been her husband’s betrayals, literally in the Oval Office, after she had supported him for years. But after a failed impeachment against him and a New York listening tour for her, “Mrs. Clinton” became “Sen. Clinton” and she was on her way to a political career of her own. Clinton likely would have had as many terms in the Senate as she wanted, but a decision to run for president herself exposed her to a professional low she never could have anticipated — losing the Democratic primary to a talented, but untested, Senate freshman named Barack Obama. For a woman who had waited for decades to take “her turn” to run, losing to a young man embracing “the fierce urgency of now” might have been her final indignity. But that talented freshman won the White House and tapped Clinton as his Secretary of State, giving her both a position of honor and a platform to launch her next bid for president. Had she resisted the urge to run again, and the chance to make history that went along with it, she could have retired into private life as a wealthy and legitimately historic woman, all the same. But Hillary Clinton did run for president again, and in so doing, put herself on a path for a series of humiliations that many would find impossible to move past. One of those moments came when Anthony Weiner, her closest aide’s husband, was caught texting half-naked pictures of himself to underage women, complete with photos of his own toddler. The episode not only reminded voters of Huma Abedin’s messy marital problems, but of Clinton’s decades earlier. More importantly, it led the FBI to reopen its then-closed investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server, days before the election, all because of Weiner’s texts. That moment sent her campaign reeling, and might have been Clinton’s final indignity, until Election Day. After a lifetime almost entirely focused on gathering experience, she was beaten by a man proud that he had none. And not only did Trump defeat her, he did it clapping along to chants of “Lock her up” at his rallies. At one debate, he looked her in the eye and said, “You should be in jail.” That same debate unfolded with four of the women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault in the 1990s, sitting squarely in the front row, placed there by Trump and staring at her as the debate dragged on. Was Election Day her final indignity? Not even close. Maybe that came on a day shortly after the election when an eager supporter Tweeted out a photo of herself with Clinton in the forest near her Chappaqua home. As Trump was assembling his cabinet and taking calls of congratulations, the photo revealed a make-up free Clinton literally walking alone in the woods. Other indignities followed as Inauguration Day approached. About a month after the Election, Clinton returned to the Capitol for Harry Reid’s retirement party, where Democrats were still in shock at the election’s outcome. “This is not exactly the speech at the Capitol I hoped to be giving after the election,” she joked. But maybe, Hillary Clinton’s final indignity came today, as she and Bill Clinton arrived at Capitol for the inauguration of a man she had beaten in the popular vote by millions, but lost the presidency to nonetheless. Other Democrats had stayed away, but she was there, in a cream pantsuit, with a smile on her face. As Clinton made her way to her seat on the platform, chants of “Lock her up!” rang out from a pocket of the crowd below. She smiled and waved. Minutes later, when she extended her hand to an arriving Mike Pence, he turned away in a flurry of well-wishers without reaching back. She smiled and turned back to Bill. When Donald Trump took the oath and then gave his inaugural address without thanking her, Hillary Clinton visibly held her head high. Even while First Lady Michelle Obama struggled to pretend to enjoy the occasion, Hillary Clinton was there, back from defeat and playing her role. And that really is the lesson and legacy of Hillary Clinton. There will never be a final indignity for her or anyone who insists on reaching for a goal that’s not assured or trying for a prize that’s not guaranteed. There will never be a final indignity for people who are passionate, and thus disappointed, or people who are human and thus make mistakes, sometimes really big ones. But Hillary Clinton shows America again and again that it’s returning from the failure that matters. It’s keeping your pride — even when people or events could have understandably taken it from you — that counts. A First Lady had never been a senator, but she became one. A woman had never been president, but Hillary Clinton tried to become the president, again and again. And on Friday, as she went to the Capitol to show Democrats and Republicans alike that the election is over, that she is moving forward, and that the nation must, too. And that will be Hillary Clinton’s final, and lasting, dignity.
AND WHAT IS HILLARY DOING THESE DAYS? Among other things (walking in the woods), she’s going to the theater. For Broadway audiences, she’s become a familiar sight, says Michael Paulson of the New York Times — “and another reason to applaud. In many ways she is the typical Broadway audience member: a woman of a certain age, affluent and highly educated, living in suburban New York. But there’s one big difference: she was almost President of the United States.” In the weeks since the election, Hillary Clinton has gone to four Broadway shows, Paulson notes, “ — often enough that industry wags joke about making her a Tony voter. And she’s even been spotted at theater district haunts — last week, just before seeing a revival of ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ she had dinner at Orso with Kate McKinnon, the ‘Saturday Night Live’ cast member who memorably portrayed her during the campaign. “At each theater appearance, Mrs. Clinton is greeted as a vanquished hero — standing ovations, selfies, shouted adulation. “The reception, of course, is in striking contrast with that received by Mike Pence, then the vice president-elect, when he attended ‘Hamilton’ in November. He was greeted by a smattering of boos and then addressed from the stage by an actor who said cast members were ‘alarmed and anxious’ about the incoming administration.”
MOTS & QUOTES Abraham Lincoln was a licensed bartender, a wrestler who lost only one of 300 matches (posthumously honored in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame) and hated the nickname “Abe.”
CORRECTION Biographical Sketches of Cartoonists & Illustrators in the Swann Collection of the Library of Congress - Errata sheet for first edition, first printing (2012)
Delete the entry for T.E. Coles.
Insert instead—:
CLAUDE ELDRIDGE TOLES (“Hugh Morris”) 1875-1901
American cartoonist, who was born and grew up in Elmira, New York and worked as a cartoonist for the Elmira Telegram in 1893 after starting his working career as a clerk. Editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post in 1894. His work appeared in the Texas Sandwich a humorous periodical, as well as the Canadian magazine Toronto Saturday Night. He returned home in 1895 to recover from pneumonia. Cartoonist who worked for the New York Herald as a freelance cartoonist in 1896. In 1898, he went to Baltimore to work for the International Syndicate which distributed his work nationally. He joined the Baltimore Sketch Club while there. His work was distributed to the Philadelphia Press between 1899 and 1901. He soon rose to the position of art director. He created The Reverend Fiddle D.D. for the New York Journal in 1898. He also contributed cartoons to Puck and Judge. He drew under his own name and several aliases, including Hugh Morris. At the time of his death, he had formed the Baltimore Illustration Syndicate. He died of Bright’s Disease – kidney failure – on December 16, 1901 in Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, New York, while visiting his in-laws. He was buried in Elmira, New York. Editorial cartoonist Tom Toles is not related.
Info from: “Guide to the SFACA Collection: Newspaper Comic Strips, series II: comic strips – Philadelphia Press,” Ohio State University, http://cartoons.osu.edu/finding_aids/sfaca/philadelphia_press.html , 10/04/2011 {See Swann Collection}; “Claude Eldridge Toles Collection (1875-1901), http://charleywag.wordpress.com/ , 06/11/2013; “News of Yore: The Life and Times of C.E. Toles,” Stripper’s Guide Blog, entry for March 3, 2012, http://strippersguide.blogspot.com/2012_02_26_archive.html , 06/11/2013: “Wellknown Cartoonist Dead,” Westfield (N.Y.) Republican, December 18, 1901, p. 2; Mike Rhode, “Claude E. Toles exhibit at the Cosmos Club,” ComicsDC Blog, entry for October 25, 2016, http://comicsdc.blogspot.com/2016/10/claude-e-toles-exhibit-at-cosmos-club.html , 10/25/2016
Pithy Pronouncements We’re either alone in the universe or we’re not. Either possibility is terrifying.—Anon
WE’RE ALL BROTHERS, AND WE’RE ONLY PASSIN’ THROUGH Sometimes happy, sometimes blue, But I’m so glad I ran into you--- Tell the people that you saw me, passin’ through
Jack Mendelsohn, 1926 - 2017 Jack Mendelsohn died January 25 from lung cancer. “A cartoonist Zelig,” said Dan Nadel at tcj.com, “Mendelsohn seems to have touched down at nearly every comics and animation hotspot in the second half of the twentieth century. But his greatest achievement was a quirky comic strip called Jacky’s Diary that ran from 1959 to 1961. The fictional drawn diary of ‘Jacky Mendelsohn, age 32 1/2,’ the strip is told entirely in a faux-children’s prose and picture style, to brilliant effect.” Mark Evanier records some of the essentials (in italics)—: Jack was born November 8, 1926. His father was an agent for many cartoonists and newspaper columnists including the legendary Winsor McCay, and Jack, growing up in Brooklyn, watched cartoons avidly and filled notebooks with his cartoons. In his teen years, he lived next door to two men who became famous cartoonists. On one side was David Levine, soon to be among America's great caricaturists. On the other side was Norman Maurer, who was already making what then seemed like vast sums of money drawing comic books. Three or four decades later in Hollywood, Jack would replace Norman as the story editor of the “Richie Rich” cartoon show for Hanna-Barbera. Being around so much cartooning determined Jack's future. He did some assistant work on comic books for the Jerry Iger shop in 1942 while still in high school. Then he quit high school to join in the Navy and fight in World War II…though even in the service, he dabbled in silly pictures. When he got out, he began selling gag cartoons to magazines and scripts to comic books. His earliest known comic book work was for DC's More Fun Comics in 1946 and Animal Antics in 1947. He worked for dozens of publishers, mostly writing but occasionally drawing teen comics and funny animal titles. Among the “name” comic books he did over the years were Nancy and Sluggo, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Miss Peach, Beetle Bailey and Felix the Cat. He also wrote the Felix the Cat newspaper strip for a time and ghosted for other strips. Mendelsohn was—and still is—a writer by trade, said Nadel. In 1959 he knew he couldn’t sell a comic strip based on his limited abilities as a draftsman, so “I thought if I could do a comic strip as seen through the eyes of a child and drawn in that crude style, I could use my writing to do an ‘endaround,’ bypassing the skills I lacked as an artist.” Jacky's Diary started January 11, 1959, said Evanier. Drawn in a childlike art style by Jack and signed "by Jacky Mendelsohn, Age 32½" (or whatever age he was each year of its run), it was enormously popular for a time. Jack called it the fastest sale in the history of newspaper strips. He submitted it one afternoon to King Features Syndicate and they bought it on the spot. The run was recently collected in a hardcover book from IDW Publishing [happily reviewed at Opus 322]. Nadel analyzes the humor in Jacky’s Diary: “It depends on the dissonance between ‘young’ Jacky’s perception and adult reality. Therefore, in Mendelsohn’s masterful comic book version of his strip (only one issue of which was produced), Jacky writes in ‘A Visit to the Circus’ that ‘The reason lions raw so much is on a count of they feed them raw meat.’ And, writing about a tightrope walker: ‘A man came out & walked on a clothes-line. He must of been real poor, on a count of he didn’t own any clothes. So he did it in his under-where.’ “The prose is closely observed and often very funny, right down to the comical misspellings and malapropisms. ‘I made the most use of every panel,’ Mendelsohn said. ‘ I always saw every inch as precious—every inch had to be justified.’ Jacky’s Diary was also clearly meant for adults. Mendelsohn noted that he ‘never at any time considered Jacky a children’s strip. On the contrary, I considered it very adult with the use of wordplay, puns, and satirical observations . . . I don’t think the average child would have fully appreciated what I was doing.’” But despite a lot of promotion, a one-shot comic book version, and even two animated shorts, Jacky’s Diary was cancelled December 31, 1961—a Sunday-only comic strip at its level of popularity was simply too expensive for the syndicate to continue. Nadel continues: “From there Mendelsohn moved into television, writing for Jay Ward’s studio, as well as for animated versions of Beetle Bailey and Krazy Kat, as well as Scooby Doo. “In 1968 he was one of writers for the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. At the end of the decade Mendelsohn began writing for live-action television with Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, and then became the head writer of Three’s Company and The Carol Burnett Show. In later years he found success once again in animation, as story editor for The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. ... At the time of his passing he’d completed a new Jacky’s Diary book-length story, though I don’t know if publication had been confirmed.” Evanier takes up the story (in italics): Around 1966, he moved from New York to Los Angeles to work for Hanna-Barbera and contributed to most of their shows for the next decade or so including Abbott & Costello, Scooby Doo, The Flintstones Comedy Hour and Hong Kong Phooey. He snuck over to Jay Ward's studio and wrote George of the Jungle, Super Chicken and many of the Cap'n Crunch commercials. He went over to Filmation and wrote Shazam! and Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down? and he created and wrote The Groovy Goolies. He also for an independent studio wrote Hey, Hey, Hey, It's Fat Albert!, the first animation of Bill Cosby's character. Somewhere amidst all this animation work, Jack segued into writing for live-action, prime-time tv shows. The list included Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, The Carol Burnett Show, Three's Company, Van Dyke and Company, Chico and the Man and The Love Boat. His later animation credits included Richie Rich, Muppet Babies, Dennis the Menace, Beverly Hills Teens, Camp Candy, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin and a huge number of episodes of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He story-edited most of these shows, as well. He was nominated for three Emmy awards. In 2005, the Writers Guild of America presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in animation. And in 2014, he appeared at the Comic-Con International in San Diego to accept the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. “Jack was a very sweet, very funny man who had a glorious career in comic books, a glorious career in newspaper strips, a glorious career in animation and a glorious career writing for live-action TV shows,” Evanier finished. “He was one of my favorite people ... a very dear, compassionate man who loved writing and cartoons and creativity. I was aware of his work and a fan of it well before I met him. When I met him, he became one of my closest friends within a matter of minutes. That was the kind of guy Jack was. He had a wonderful career (and a wonderful wife, Carole) and he sure deserved both.”
Herb Galewitz, 1929 -2017 Galewitz was a
literary agent who represented best-selling children's book characters Curious
George and Little Orphan Annie during the 1970s, and he also edited numerous
books reprinting newspaper comic strips of the great cartoon era, including The Celebrated Cases of Dick Tracy 1931- 51, Toonerville Trolley, The Gumps,
Great Comics Syndicated by the Daily News-Chicago Tribune, and Classic
Spot Illustrations from the Twenties and Thirties by James Montgomery Flagg,
Gluyas During retirement, he edited several quotation books, including ones on Friendship, Love and Jewish Wit and Wisdom. His long association with Curious George began when he produced the record "Curious George Takes a Job" in the late 1960s. His other record titles included "Pinocchio", "You're A Good Man Charlie Brown" and"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Galewitz sold thousands of used books from his home to people all over the world, specializing in humor titles. Galewitz served in the U.S. Army from 1950-53 as a medic in Fort Benning, Ga.
Dan Spiegle, 1920 - 2017 By Mark Evanier Dan Spiegle left us January 28 at the age of 96. He was born in Cosmopolis, Washington on December 12. He drew a lot in high school and then in the Navy, where among other duties, he painted insignias on airplanes. Following his discharge in 1946, he attended Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, thanks to the G.I. Bill. Funny story how he got his first real job doing comic art. He answered an ad in the Los Angeles Times from someone looking for an artist to draw a newspaper comic strip. The address was that of Capitol Records and it turned out the strip was Bozo the Clown. Years later, Dan could have handled that with ease but at the time, he was more of a serious illustrator so he told the man he met with there that the project was not for him. The man looked at Dan's samples anyway, noted some fine drawings of horses and said to him — approximately — "My cousin works for William ‘Hopalong Cassidy’ Boyd and they're looking for someone to draw a newspaper strip. Why don't you go see him?" The office of the popular cowboy star was only a few blocks away. Dan went directly there and Mr. Boyd, aka "Hopalong" happened to be there and he liked how Dan drew horses, too. Before the day was out, Dan had the job of drawing a Hopalong Cassidy newspaper strip, which he did January 2, 1950 - January 1, 1956. [According to Spiegle, recounting this experience in TwoMorrows’ Dan Spiegle: A Life in Comic Art, Boyd may not have been planning a comic strip, but when he saw Spiegle’s horses, he decided to do one: “He agreed a comic strip would just about cover the market as he already had Hoppy toys of all kinds, clothes, games, and had his own television show. After he’d been at the Hoppy job for a while, Spiegle started using Craftint Doubletone, a chemically-treated paper that could produce two gray tones, dark and light, when brushed with a special developer. Before long, the strip looked like b/w photograph so expert did Spiegle become at using the paper. Only Roy Crane on Buz Sawyer and Leslie Turner on Captain Easy achieved similar effects.—RCH] A strip like that would have been a full-time job for anyone else, but Dan was very fast so around 1951, he took samples of the strip to the Los Angeles office of Western Printing and Lithography, which produced the Dell Comics line. He walked in, showed his work and walked out with a comic book to draw. He drew for Western for about the next thirty years as the company segued from Dell to Gold Key Comics and only stopped when the firm did. His work there included dozens of different adaptations of tv westerns, including a long and acclaimed stint on Maverick. He drew many of their adaptations of Disney movies and the best-selling comic book, Space Family Robinson, which has recently been reprinted in fancy hardcover volumes. He was also the artist for years on Korak, Son of Tarzan. His editor for much of this period was a man named Chase Craig, who was also my editor (and mentor) for many years. I once asked Chase, "Of all the hundreds of artists you've employed, who was the most reliable?" Without pausing to think, he replied, "Dan Spiegle." Then he added, "It's always on time and it's always wonderful." (A moment later, he added, "…and Mike Royer.") My own association with Dan started one day in '72 when Chase asked me if I would take over writing the Scooby Doo comic book. I wasn't a huge fan of the tv show and started to decline when Chase mentioned that Dan Spiegle was now drawing it. That made all the difference. I had been a fan of Dan's art for years. ... Scooby Doo was not really in Dan's wheelhouse at the time but that comic needed an artist and Chase, because Western was cutting back on adventure-type comics, needed an assignment to keep work on Dan's drawing board. So Dan was attempting to learn a broader, funnier art style and through no help from me, he "got it" about the time I began writing the comic. We became friends and frequent collaborators. We worked together for around a dozen different companies doing Scooby Doo for two or three other publishers, Blackhawk for DC and Crossfire for Eclipse. Neither of us made a lot of dough off Crossfire but it was Dan's favorite project and mine, as well. The way we worked together was very simple. I'd write a script. I'd send it to Dan. He would draw it, usually having his daughter Carrie do the lettering. He would send it to me. I would make the few corrections necessary and send it off to be printed. Couldn't have been more harmonious and easy. And the few corrections usually were that Dan would draw some scene so clearly that I would realize some of my dialogue was unnecessary and I'd remove or change it. At least once, I removed all the word balloons and captions I'd written for one page because Dan's artwork simply didn't need my silly words telling you what you were looking at. Other companies grabbed him when I couldn't keep him busy. He worked for DC, Marvel, Dark Horse and many other publishers. Editors and writers would tell me how much they envied me being able to work as often as I did with Dan and his artistry was much admired by other artists. Gil Kane would say that Dan was the best comic artist ever when it came to "spatial relationships," meaning that in each panel, the figures and items were placed in perfect proportion to each other, perfectly setting the scene. When I visited Alex Toth, he insisted I always bring him the latest pages I'd receive from Dan so he could study them. Alex clearly envied the organic nature of Dan's work—how natural his staging was and how well he handled light and shadow. And I want to underscore that Dan was one of the nicest men I've ever met. We never had an argument of any kind. Not one. I'll tell you two quick stories about how devoted this man was to his artwork. We did a lot of Hanna-Barbera comics for overseas markets — work that has never been published in this country. Occasionally, the page format changed due to the needs of some foreign publisher. For one six-page story, I told Dan to draw the pages 11" by 15" instead of the 10" by 15" page layout we usually used. Dan accidentally drew it 10" by 15". It was the only mistake he ever made on anything we did together, and he was deeply apologetic when I went the pages back to him and asked him to adjust them. Anyone else would have just pasted on a half-inch on either side and extended what he'd already drawn. Either that or they'd cut panels out and repast so they didn't have to draw the whole thing again. Dan redrew the whole thing again on the proper size of paper. I thought that was extraordinary. But then I realized something else. Anyone else would have traced or copied what he did the first time. Dan had changed every single panel to a new angle. I asked him why he did that and he explained, "Just to keep my interest up. It would have been too boring to draw it the same way twice." Soon after that, we had to do a batch of comic book stories for a publisher in South America. The publisher had been publishing terrible, badly-drawn comics and Hanna-Barbera had insisted they better their product by paying to have us do some of the material. The pay was low so I told Dan and the others working on these stories to knock them out fast, not to put in a lot of detail. Even rushed, simplified art by my crew would be better than what the South American published had been running and better than he was paying for. When Dan's art came in, it looked just like what he did on the regular, decently-paying art. I thought he'd made a mistake and confused which scripts were supposed to be done with all possible shortcuts so I called him. It turned out he hadn't been confused. He said, "I drew it the way you wanted it, but I didn't like it and couldn't hand in something that looked like that. So I redid it so it pleased me." At my insistence, he sent me the simpler version. It was fine. The publisher would have been happy with it. But the point is it didn't please the guy who did it. How can you not love an artist like that? I think Dan Spiegle was one of the greatest comic book artists who ever lived and inarguably one of the nicest people I've ever met. As you may glean from what I’ve said, I really, really loved this person: loved his artwork in comic books I read long before I ever imagined I'd know him and work with him. Loved the guy who did that artwork and not just because he was a joy to collaborate with and he made my scripts look good and my job, when I was an editor, as simple as it could possibly be. [Now here are a couple Spiegle drawings.]
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