Cartoon: Crackpots, Left vs Right

Posted on February 7, 2024 by Ampersand

This cartoon was drawn by Becky Hawkins! See if you can spot the little details she sneaked in (answers at the bottom).

“There are crackpots on the left, too!” is a pretty common sentiment – one of the many false equivalents that seem to dominate the country’s political discourse.  And it always annoys me because, yes, there are some people with ludicrous, conspiracy theory ideas on the left – but Democrats aren’t electing any of those people President.

Power matters. Even most professors have virtually no power compared to a President, a Congress member, or even someone like Tucker Carlson. But believing in ridiculous conspiracy theories is not only no barrier to success on the right – it’s practically required.

Last month, Trump endorsed the theory that the January 6th riot was a false flag:

Trump concurred with alarmist extraordinaire Candace Owens during her radio show that the riot may have been a false flag operation, citing the “reporting” done by acclaimed journalists Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan. “Right, it seems like that,” Trump affirmed. “And you have BLM and you had antifa people. I have very little doubt about that and they were antagonizing and they were agitating.”

This sort of thing is nothing new for Trump, who first rose to political prominence by promoting birtherism.

And Trump doesn’t stand alone. At least two elected GOP members of Congress support QAnon.

Greene and Boebert were among at least a dozen Republican congressional candidates who had endorsed or given credence to QAnon’s unfounded belief that Trump is the last line of defense against a cabal of child-molesting Democrats who seek to dominate world power.

Belief in other conspiracy theories – that Biden stole the election, that climate change is a hoax, etc. – is common among Republicans, including elected Republicans.

There are tens of millions of Democrats, and of Republicans, in the USA. With numbers that large, of course there will always be some people believing in ridiculous and impossible theories. But in a healthy party, those folks will be at the margins – not in the White House.

I had been playing around with lettering effects and decided to do a strip incorporating fancy lettering into the design. It was perfect for a “comparison” strip like this one, where dividing the strip in two with some enormous lettering makes visual sense.

The danger, of course, is that in a couple of years I might look back on this and wince; computer effects that seem neat and fresh when I use them for the first time often seem tacky later on. (So 2025 Barry, who is putting together the 2023/2024 reprint collection: What do you think? Let us know.)

I asked Becky where that flag in panel four came from. She replied, “I googled ‘tacky flag.’ …And didn’t feel like drawing the version where the Eagle pulls aside the Stars and Stripes to reveal Jesus with thorns and the words ‘faith over fear.'”

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon is dominated by a large title, going horizontally across the image, which says “CRACKPOTS LEFT vs RIGHT.” The title lettering divides the cartoon in two, with two panels above the lettering, and two panels below it.

PANEL 1

A woman with green hair and an undercut is typing furiously on her phone. She’s wearing a black collar with spikes, has a pierced nose, and tattoos. Her face is radiating anger. A word balloon coming from the phone shows what she’s typing.

PHONE: 9/11 was CLEARLY an INSIDE job. Bin Laden WORKED for the CIA! Controlled demolition! Insider trading! HALIBURTON! #911truth #insidejob #wakeup

PANEL 2

The same woman turns to talk to someone who is off-panel, her face and demeanor now calm as she looks away from her phone. We can now see that she’s behind the counter in a coffee shop.

OFF-PANEL CUSTOMER: Excuse me, can I get my coffee refilled?

BARISTA: Coming right up!

PANEL 3

We are looking at a blonde woman in extreme close-up as she types on her phone. Her face is so angry she looks like she’s about to have an embolism. A word balloon coming from her phone shows us what she’s typing.

PHONE: 1/6 was a FALSE FLAG op jointly run by ANTIFA & the FBI to DISTRACT us from HUNTER BIDEN’S LAPTOP!! #J6files #fakenews #wakeup

PANEL 4

The “camera” has pulled back and we can now see that the woman is wearing a conservative blue skirt-suit and matching high heels. She’s in an expensive looking office, leaning back in a large brown leather desk chair, and resting her feet on the desk. She’s talking to an off-panel assistant, and she’s now quite calm and maybe even a little bored.

OFF-CAMERA ASSISTANT: Pardon me, Congresswoman? Time for your FOX interview.

CONGRESSWOMAN: Coming!

CHICKEN FAT WATCH

“Chicken fat” means easily-overlooked and meaningless details in a cartoon the cartoonists put in, which maybe you (and they) find amusing. In this cartoon, all of the chicken fat was made up by Becky (yay Becky!).

Panel 1: Her tattoos include a Mickey Mouse silhouette with blood spattered across it a la the Watchmen symbol, and a donut shaped like an infinity symbol, which today I learned is a thing.

Panel 2: A chalkboard on the wall in the background says “All Coffee Are Beautiful,” arranged so that if you read the first letters downwards, they spell “ACAB.” Another chalkboard says “Daily Special – Salted Caramel – Pumpkin Spice – White Tears.” The IPAD they use as a register has a “Cool S” symbol on its face. (Today I learned that no one actually knows the origin of that symbol.)

Panel 4: Behind the congresswoman is a variation on the American flag, with a bald eagle in profile in front of the stripes, and a white cross in place of the stars. On her desk is a take-out coffee container with the “don’t tread on me” snake on it, and a coffee mug with “Liberal Tears” written on it.

Crackpots: Left vs Right | Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Conservative zaniness, right-wingers, etc. | 1 Comment  

Cartoon: Self-Medicating My ADHD

Posted on February 6, 2024 by Ampersand

This cartoon is drawn by Nadine Scholtes, who I’m beginning to suspect enjoys drawing cats.

The business with the cat in the foreground was my idea, except that in the script I had the cat napping in panel four, and Nadine thought that licking its own butt would be funnier, and she’s right. The posters in the background were also Naomi’s idea (more about them in the transcript).

This cartoon  is both less political and more autobiographical than most of my cartoons. ADHD – and mentally beating myself up for it – has been a huge part of my life for almost my entire life. Getting diagnosed was a big step forward for me.

So far nothing I’ve tried for ADHD has really worked, other than Wellbutrin. And even that only sort of works. It doesn’t increase my ability to focus on work or get anything done. It does, however, make me not hate myself for it.

And that sounds silly, but in fact just that has been an enormous improvement to my quality of life!

So this cartoon was written in memory of my pre-Wellbutrin life.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. Each panel shows the same character, from the same angle. A woman sits at a messy table, in front of an open laptop. On the table are some crumpled napkins, an open Chinese food takeout container, random papers, random mugs (one near her elbow, presumably her current mug, and a few more pushed to the back), and an orange cat with a white chin and belly. The cat is either a large kitten or a small adult.

The woman has a green shirt with darker green sleeves, round glasses, and brunette hair tied back.

PANEL 1

The woman leans on one hand, with a frustrated expression; her other hand is in a fist on the table.

WOMAN (thought): Aaargh! Why can’t I be productive? Stupid ADHD!

PANEL 2

A hatch opens up on top of her head, and her brain – complete with cartoony eyes, a smiling mouth, and stick arms – pops out and speaks cheerfully. The woman seems unsurprised by this, leaning back and folding her arms.

BRAIN: I have an idea – why not beat yourself up about it?

WOMAN: Really, brain? We’ve tried that for decades. And it’s never worked!

PANEL 3

The Brain cheerfully hands the woman a mallet; the woman reaches a hand up to take it. She’s looking cheerful now.

BRAIN: That’s because you haven’t been beating yourself hard enough. This time it’ll work.

WOMAN: Oh, okay.

PANEL 4

The woman AND her brain are now both covered with bruises and bumps from being beaten so much; the woman has cracked her glasses and is missing a tooth. Both of them are cheerful, and both their word balloons are shaky looking.

BRAIN: It’ll start working aaany second now.

WOMAN: Thanks, brain!

CHICKEN FAT WATCH

“Chicken fat” means easily-overlooked and meaningless details in a cartoon the cartoonists put in, which maybe you (and they) find amusing. In this cartoon, the chicken fat involves cats, both in the foreground and in the background.

In the foreground, in panel one, the cat is looking a bit anxiously at the woman as it moves towards the open Chinese food container.

In panel two, the cat is leaning over the container, and her head is almost entirely within the container.

In panel three, the cat is licking its lips, with a deeply satisfied expression and a little heart floating over its head.

In panel four, the cat is busily licking its own butthole.

In the background, there’s a cat motivational poster on the wall. What’s cool is, the poster changes every panel, in response to the events happening with the main character.

These gags were contributed by Nadine, and I’ll quote bits of her comments about the posters.

In panel one, the cat is turning to look, coughing and wall-eyed. A “computer is loading” icon is above its head “like the brain is stuck.” The caption says UUUHHHH…

In panel two, a new cat has an expression of huge surprise on its face, like it’s surprised by the brain popping out. Caption says “WHAT?!”

In panel three, yet another cat – a fluffy white cat wearing round glasses and a bow tie – is staring out. The caption says “GENIUS!” Naomi explains, “because the brain has a ‘genius’ idea.”

In panel four, we have the hang in there cat, “because never give up!”

Self-Medicating My ADHD | Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics | 4 Comments  

Cartoon: In My Day, Young Women Never Dressed Like That

Posted on February 1, 2024 by Ampersand

I love doing these history cartoons with Becky Hawkins – we both enjoy doing the research and I’m really proud of the results.  And I genuinely find it fascinating that so many things repeat and repeat over the centuries. I’m really pleased to end the year with this cartoon.

(It occurs to me, as I’m typing this paragraph, that I really should make a “history” topic on Leftycartoons.com so it’s possible for people to see all the history cartoons in a single link).

Becky writes:

I enjoy drawing Barry’s “eight kinds of asshole” scripts, historical outfits and likenesses, so this was a natural fit for me. It was scheduled for last month, but I was too busy and asked for a less-complicated script to draw. Unsurprisingly, December was also busy, which is why this cartoon is going up on New Year’s Eve!

Carrie Nation was the most fun figure to research. She was an ardent Prohibitionist after experiencing the effects of widespread alcoholism on her family and community. She started by standing outside of saloons and scolding the men who went in, to understandably little effect. She eventually pivoted to traveling with a hatchet and trying to hack down buildings that sold liquor. She raised bail funds by selling merch like this hat pin (click on the pic to see it big:

 

There’s a place in my heart for principled killjoys, in-jokey merch, and alcohol, so she’s a complicated figure for me. It would’ve been fun to draw her with a hatchet, as many newspapers did, but that would have distracted from this cartoon.

Also, FYI there’s a bar in Boston named after Carrie Nation that does drag brunch.

Dabbing one’s eyes with a handkerchief is up there with using a fork in terms of relatively common hand motions that I forget how to do as soon as I’m thinking about it. I’ve heard you enjoy gratuitous reference selfie(s):

Back t0 Barry: I mentioned research before; but in this case, the research was made very easy, because other people did it first. (Honestly, that’s usually the case.) Most of the quotes in this cartoon were found in a thread on Twitter by Paul Fairie, based on his book The Press Gallery, and in the article A Brief History Of Men Moaning About Women’s Clothes by Rosalind Jana.

TRANSCRIPT  OF CARTOON
This cartoon has nine panels. 
The center panel (what you might call the Paul Lynde panel) is taken up mostly by large red lettering on a scroll. The lettering says IN MY DAY, YOUNG WOMEN NEVER DRESSED LIKE THAT. Each of the remaining eight panels shows a single speaker.
 
PANEL 1
A middle-aged woman who looks like a successful politician – blue suit jacket over a red blouse, and slightly wavy hair that’s clearly been done by a professional – speaks at a podium, her hands on her hips. She has an annoyed, judgmental expression. 
WOMAN: I hate how young women today flaunt their bodies by wearing revealing clothing! Can’t they dress like we did?
 
PANEL 2
A blonde woman sits at a desk with a laptop open in front of her. There’s a nice but also kind of fussy lamp on the desk, her blonde hair is combed to the side without a strand out of place, and her red blouse is buttoned to the top button; she gives the impression of being extremely straight-laced.
WOMAN: “Women nowadays dress too sexy in see-through tops, bare mid-riffs, halters and tube tops.” –Chicago Tribune, July 2000
 
PANEL 3
A man in a brown suit and tie, carrying a newspaper rolled up under his arm, makes an angry, dismissive gesture as he speaks. His short hair and his brown fedora look 1950s.
MAN: “American women have too much of themselves showing — that would never do in Europe.” –Capital Times, 1954
 
PANEL 4
An older woman wearing a blue cloche hat and a brown coat with a thick fur collar is holding a hanky to her eye as she cries.
WOMAN: “Women dress too scantily! Lately the sights that meet the eye on streets makes self-respecting women feel ashamed!” –Evening Sun, 1934
 
PANEL 5
This is the center panel. It’s mostly filled by large red lettering on a scroll. The lettering says IN MY DAY, YOUNG WOMEN NEVER DRESSED LIKE THAT. 
The scroll has two young women leaning on it. The woman on the left wears a flapper dress with a sailor’s collar and a cloche, both mint green with pink highlights.
The woman on the right is extremely contemporary – a long coat with holes exposing her shoulders, a short skirt, bare midriff, cool clunky boots, and dyed green hair in an undercut.
 
PANEL 6
A white haired man with an impressively groomed white gray mustache raises a forefinger as he speaks, like a professor making a point. He’s lifting one eyebrow like Spock, but we know that he would never be as cool as Spock was, let alone as cool as Leonard Nimoy was.
“I condemn the scantily-clad, jazzing flapper. To whom a dance, a new hat, or a man with a car, are of more importance than the fate of nations.” –Dr. R. Murray-Leslie, 1920
 
PANEL 7
A cheerful-looking older woman squints. She’s wearing oval glasses, a blue bonnet, a short gray cape around her shoulders, and a blue long-sleeved blouse. One of her hands holds a Bible, while she’s pressing the fingers of the other hand into the center of her chest in an “oh dearie me” gesture. Other than her face and hands, not a millimeter of skin is exposed.
CARRIE NATION: “Women dress too gaily.  They should be more Modest and wear clothes something like what I’m wearing.” –Carrie Nation, 1901.
 
Panel 8
A middle-aged man wearing one of those gray curly wigs that upper-class aristocrats used to wear speaks with angry, wide-eyed fervor.  He’s wearing dark gray judge’s robes.
JOHN WESLEY: “Gay and costly apparel creates and inflames lust. It kindles a flame that will plunge you and your admirers into THE FLAMES OF HELL!” –John Wesley, 1786
 
Panel 9
A middle-aged man with a thick brown beard holds an open scroll and is reading it. He’s wearing brown robes and a light brown head wrapping, and looks extremely stern.
TERTULLIAN: “Make-up is fittingly called womanly disgrace. The care of hair and of those parts of the body that attract the eye is prostitution!” –Tertullian, 197 A.D. 

In My Day, Young Women Never Dressed Like That | Patreon

 

Posted in Cartooning & comics, misogyny, Sexism | 2 Comments  

Cartoon: Too Petty To Talk About

Posted on January 27, 2024 by Ampersand

Another comic drawn by Mr. R. E. Ryan!

In July 2023, Emily Yahr wrote an article in the Washington Post about the irony of Luke Comb’s cover of Tracy Chapman’s song “Fast Car” being a smash hit on the country charts, since when “Fast Car” originally came out, in 1988, a queer Black women would have had a great deal of trouble breaking into the country charts.

Yahr tweeted her article with a two-tweet thread:

As Luke Combs’s hit cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” dominates the country charts, it’s bringing up some complicated emotions in fans & singers who know that Chapman, as a queer Black woman, would have an almost zero chance at that achievement herself:

A recent study from @data_jada and @jadiehm shows that fewer than 0.5 percent of songs played on country radio in 2022 were by women of color and LGBTQ+ artists, and were largely excluded from radio playlists for most of the two decades prior.

Then, literally hundreds of right-wingers responded – ignoring that Yahr has specified “the country charts,” ignoring the second tweet entirely – by pretending Yahr was so ignorant that she thought “Fast Car” had never been a hit for Chapman.

Of course, Yahr never thought that – her article mentioned that the 1988 “Fast Car” reached number 6 on the Billboard Top 100. But right-wingers were having too much fun talking about what an idiot the female lefty writer was – what she actually wrote was irrelevant. (And honestly, probably almost none of them bothered reading the article.)

This was, even at the time, obviously the sort of flash-in-the-pan controversy that no one remembers three weeks later. I wrote a very short thread about it on Twitter.

One self-proclaimed leftist responded to me:

Let people enjoy their entertainment of choice w/o submitting it to a racial examination. Why isn’t Springsteen being played on hip hop stations? C’mon. Lefties have more important things to do than look for ‘racism’ everywhere.

I replied:

“Lefties have more important things to do…” But nothing more important to do than trying to discourage other lefties from talking about racism?

And that exchange was what inspired this cartoon.

I wouldn’t have bothered doing a cartoon if that was the only incident. But that person’s reaction – “lefties have more important things to do than” talking about [fill in some issue the speaker doesn’t care about, or is opposed to the social justice view on] – is one I’ve seen many times over the years, and it always bugs me. Because if what I’m talking about is too petty to be worth talking about, then isn’t you telling me you find it petty even pettier, and therefore even less worth talking about?

(Man, this is definitely getting too long to fit on one page of the reprint collection. I wonder what I’ll cut out? Oh, well, that’s future Barry’s problem.)

When I say I’ve seen it “over the years,” I mean that literally. I wrote a very long blog post dismissing the “pettiness” charge… back in 2006.

Someone named Chuck had responded to a list of “male privileges” I had compiled when I was in college. (The list is still circulating around online and given as a handout in Freshman gender studies courses, and honestly may be the most widely-read thing I’ve ever written.)

Chuck wrote:

We have women on this planet with REAL PROBLEMS and we’re going to fill our list with entries about our clothes and our weight issues?

My response to Chuck was too long for me to quote the whole thing here, but here’s part of it:

Chuck’s standards are unreasonable. Is there anyone who ignores all local issues so long as, somewhere in the world, someone is suffering worse? Pretty much anyone who isn’t concentrating full-time on the genocide and mass rapes going on in Darfur can legitimately be said to be using their time on something other than the most immediately pressing issue in the world today.

(Every time I see this critique of feminists, I’m struck by what hypocrites the critics are. I’ve never seen a “how dare feminists write about makeup” critic whose own writings didn’t include some less than earth-shaking concerns. Chuck, for example, has recently posted about the etymology of “y’all” and about what’s on the telly (he’s pissed that American Idol is so popular, and I can’t blame him). Since Chuck doesn’t write exclusively about immediate life-or-death matters, why does he think it’s fair to hold me to that standard?)

Not only is it an inevitable human condition that most people are interested in analyzing what happens in their daily lives, it’s probably a good thing. A feminist movement that considers day-to-day sexism too petty to ever discuss would be ivory-tower and snobby. A well-rounded feminism – like a well-rounded life – should include many concerns and many approaches. The demand that we ignore “petty” local issues is a demand that we stop acting like human beings.

Obviously, my cartoon doesn’t get into all that. (Maybe I should do another cartoon about pettiness?) It does, however, touch on the hypocrisy I wrote about – how the people condemning us for including what they consider unimportant issues, never subject their own views to the same scrutiny.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has six panels. All of them show different scenes, but all of them focus on the same character – a thirtyish, square-jawed guy with short light brown hair and a seemingly permanent scowl on his face. Let’s call him SCOW (short for scowl).

PANEL 1

Scow is sitting and typing at a computer in his apartment. He’s wearing an undershirt. In the background we can see city buildings and the sun high in a blue sky.

A word balloon shows us what Scow is typing.

SCOW: Why are you talking about racism in music? There are more important things!

PANEL 2

Scow is now sitting up in bed (he has a nice bedroom, with dark wood furniture and framed art on the wall), wearing red jammies and intently typing on his phone.

SCOW: Time spent talking about race could be spent talking about something important!

PANEL 3

Scow is apparently at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner – there’s a big turkey on the table. He’s wearing an argyle sweater vest and talking intently to the unfortunate 12-ish looking girl sitting next to him. (His mouth is full, and little bits of food are coming out.) The girl looks annoyed and is rolling her eyes.

SCOW: Who cares about race and casting? There are more crucial things to talk about!

PANEL 4

Scow is now back in his apartment – it looks like a living room – wearing VR googles and (presumably) talking to someone in VR. He’s waving his arms as he speaks.

SCOW: Why do they always make a white character Black when they remake movies? They’re obsessed with race!

PANEL 5

This is the same scene as panel 1 – Scow is sitting in his apartment typing on his computer. The window in the background now shows stars and a moon. Scow is leaning his head heavily on one hand, presumably because he’s exhausted but well into the “I can’t go to bed, somebody is wrong on the internet” zone.

SCOW: Don’t we have more important things to focus on?

PANEL 6

Scow and a friend are sitting on a park bench hanging out. Scow is talking to the friend; the friend is reading his book and seemingly paying no attention to Scow. (I mean, I’m assuming that the guy is Scow’s friend, because that’s what I said when I wrote the script, but nothing in the panel establishes that, maybe this is just some random stranger that Scow sat down next to and started ranting at, in which case, wince.)

SCOW: And these ridiculous people spend all their time talking about the same unimportant things!

SCOW: Over and over!

SCOW: They never stop!

Too Petty To Talk About | Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Race, racism and related issues, Racism | Leave a comment  

Cartoon: THEY MURDERED MY CHILDHOOD!

Posted on January 26, 2024 by Ampersand

This cartoon was drawn by the wonderful cartoonist Jenn Manley Lee. (The link goes to Jenn’s long-running science fiction slice-of-life comic, “Dicebox,” which I highly recommend).

Jenn writes:

I know there were a variety of reasons Barry asked me to illustrate this cartoon, from the chance to create a couple of thematic costume designs to giving a smack up the head to those idiots howling about a ruined childhood because something was created not specifically for them. (By the way, in the absence of time machines, the only way to ruin a person’s childhood is if they are still going through it.)

It was also fun to come up with a classic skimpy, bondage adjacent costume for the original heroine design —complete with high heels— while being mindful of aspects that could be reinterpreted into an updated and more practical design. I chose a “G” logo mark in order to unite them more clearly. That “G” could stand for Glory, Gladiator, Girl or, heck, even Gynephilic; I’m not choosy.

I also took pleasure in ignoring Barry’s “stage directions” in order to have the two versions grab coffee (or tea, tisane, hot cocoa, etc.) in order to discuss things further. Like civilized folk do.

Jenn is one of my oldest friends; she and I met in cartooning circles back in the 1980s, and we traded self-xeroxed minicomics. I think that many artists, when young, learn a lot more craft through competing and comparing and trading tips and shop talk with their young artist peers, and Jenn and I definitely did that for each other.

Jenn has a huge toolbox of cartooning techniques, and I think that shows even in this simple four-panel cartoon – her grasp of colors especially is far beyond my own. (Jenn has done coloring work for most major US comics publishers.)

Although Jenn and I have known each other forever, we’ve almost never collaborated. I asked her to draw this one because I thought she’d be great for the challenge of designing both the  sexified original and the 2020s “reboot” of a made-up character. In my script, I suggested a superhero themed character, but Jenn suggested a Roman themed character instead (with a bit of a “She-Ra” influence – Jenn and I both loved the recent-ish, controversial She-Ra redesign), and the results look great.

Jenn’s work has tended more towards action/genre comics, while my work has been more cartoony. I thought Jenn’s rough sketch for panel four didn’t have enough exaggeration in the poses, so with her permission I did a few sketches (based on the poses she’d already chosen) to suggest slightly bigger poses and bendier spines.

Jenn added a lot to the script – not by changing the words, but with what she did with staging and setting. (My script originally called for grotesque babies with adult heads for panel four, but Jenn wanted to change that and I think she was right). And lots of excellent details – the tapping on the window in panel three, the eye-rolling clerk in panel four – were Jenn’s.

Jenn named the comic book store “HEY KIDS! comics,” which I loved but there was just no way to avoid it being covered up by word balloons. But someone should get to see it! So, here you go:

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels.

The first three panels feature the same two women in each panel. Or maybe a woman and a teenager. They’re both dressed in stylized Roman soldier outfits. The older woman, on the left, is dressed in what the artist called a “bondage adjacent costume,” with straps and high heels and a skimpy one-piece made of brown leather. She’s wearing pteruges – you know, straps hanging down from her waist to sort of form a skirt.  She also has an amazing mane of red hair cleverly arranged to resemble a Roman Galea helmet.

The younger woman, on the right, is wearing a brown leather vest over a dark green bodysuit, flat boots, and a Roman Galea helmet. She has protective armor on her forearms and calves.

Both of them wear red capes and carry round shields and swords. The older woman’s shield features a stylized letter “G” in yellow on a red background; the same symbol, in the same colors, is on the younger woman’s belt. I’ll call the two characters “Original G” and “New G.”

PANEL 1

The two women are back-to-back and in a battle, fending off swords left and right. They’re in a building with pillars. In the background, we can see ancient buildings, an active volcano, and what I think is a dragon flying.

Despite all this, the two women are calmly and cheerfully chatting with each other. (I love that, and that was all Jenn.)

ORIGINAL G: Who are you? You look familiar…

NEW G: I’m you! A redesigned version of you, anyway.

PANEL 2

The two women are now at a little table in front of the display window of a modern comic book store. They’re both carrying coffee. Original G is sitting down, while New G is already seated, legs crossed at the ankles, looking relaxed.

ORIGINAL G: So does this mean I don’t exist anymore?

NEW G: Nope – there are thousands of toys and comics and animations with you that no one can take away! But now my version of you exists, too!

PANEL 3

Original G leans towards the display window, tapping on it like people tap on goldfish bowls. On the other side of the window, we can see action figures of both versions of G, displayed on pillars.

ORIGINAL G: I get it. This way, we can entertain different audiences, right?

NEW G: Exactly! Who could complain?

PANEL 4

We’re now looking at the cashier counter in a comic book store. A tired-looking cashier leans on one elbow, rolling her eyes. In front of the counter, two adult men are screaming in horror. One man, in a green shirt, is holding out a comic book with the “G” symbol on the front cover, wide eyes staring at it. The other man is actually sitting on the floor, hands tearing at his hair, legs kicking like an unhappy toddler, as he stares at an action figure of New G.

GREEN SHIRT: THEY MURDERED MY CHILDHOOD!

HAIR PULLER: THIS IS THE WORST ATROCITY OF ALL TIME!

They Murdered My Childhood! | Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Media, Popular (and unpopular) culture | 43 Comments  

Cartoon: The Union’s Demands Are Impossible!

Posted on January 24, 2024 by Ampersand

“Carmakers Say They Can’t Afford UAW Demands, While Paying CEOs $1 Billion” —Financial Post, October 13, 2023

“GM lavishes shareholders with cash weeks after saying it couldn’t afford workers’ demands”—CNN, November 29, 2023

During the recent (recent as I write this, in November 2023) auto workers strike, I saw many online prognosticators explain that it was impossible for the auto makers to agree to the UAW’s demands, as the expense would drive the companies our of business. You can’t get blood from a stone and all that.

Now the auto makers have agreed to the bulk of the union demands, and I will make a prediction: The companies will still be in business a year from now. We’ll check back in and see!

The night after I’d finished the linework for this cartoon, I was lying in bed and thought “I should set two of the panels at night, to make it clear that we’re looking at two separate scenes, not a single scene.” And I very clearly pictured the first panel, with the night sky visible behind the characters.

The next morning, I looked at the cartoon and saw that I’d completely misremembered the perspective I’d used in panel one – a perspective that makes it impossible that any sky would be seen at all. No matter; I just made panels three and four nighttime panels,

Looking at it now, I wonder if I didn’t overdo it – the change in color scheme is so striking that it might detract from the gag. But on the other hand, the challenge of figuring out nighttime colors (something that I very rarely do in these cartoons) ended up being a lot of fun. It’s always possible that a year from now I’ll look at the art and wince, but right now, I think it’s pretty attractive, and hoping it’ll be enjoyable for you folks to look at.

As for the gag – I have to admit, the right wing character in this cartoon, with her absolute shamelessness, amuses me a lot. It’s much more frustrating in real life, alas.

I thought this cartoon was finished, but then realized that I hadn’t show the phone screen glowing in the final panel. I initially shrugged and said “oh well, next time,” but it kept bugging me so I went back and added the glow.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

The entire strip features the same two characters walking and talking. The first character is a woman who keeps her black hair pulled into a bun; she has large round glasses and is carrying a smartphone. Let’s call her BUN. The second character has brown hair in a sort of pageboy with bangs, so we’ll call her BANGS.

PANEL 1

Bun and Bangs are walking on a suburban sidewalk. Bun is holding out her smartphone to show Bangs some story she’s just been reading; Bangs is reading something on her own cell phone. Bun is looking a little panicked.

BUN: Have you seen these striking auto workers’ demands? The raises they want are literally impossible!

BANGS: Actually, the news just said the car companies agreed to the union’s terms.

PANEL 2

A close up of Bun, holding up a forefinger and looking just a little smug and pleased as she makes a prediction. Behind her we can see a blue sky with fluffy white clouds.

BUN: Yeah? Well, just you wait—a year from now, all the auto companies will be out of business!

PANEL 3

A big caption at the top of panel 3 says ONE YEAAR LATER.

Time has passed, but Bun and Bangs look much the same, although they’re now in different clothing, and it’s now nighttime. They’re walking on top of a hill and talking. Both of them are cheerful in this panel.

BANGS: So last year you said auto companies would be out of business by now. Since that didn’t happen, have you rethought anything?

BUN: I never said that.

PANEL 4

Bangs is taken totally aback. Bun is looking at her smartphone and finding something new to panic about.

BANGS: What? But you—

BUN: Hey, fast food workers are on strike! A year from now, a Big Mac will definitely cost $40!

The Union’s Demands Are Impossible! | Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Union Issues | 3 Comments  

Cartoon: Only SOME Can Be Objective

Posted on January 20, 2024 by Ampersand
Scroll down for a transcript

Another cartoon drawn by Nadine Scholtes! As well as drawing this cartoon, Nadine made a crucial contribution to the script; she suggested making the final panel a thought balloon, an idea I immediately agreed to.

This cartoon was directly inspired by reporter Felicia Sonmez’s lawsuit against The Washington Post. From her complaint:

Defendant Barr stated that, by speaking out publicly, Ms. Sonmez had “taken a side on the issue” of sexual assault. He also told Ms. Sonmez she was “trying to have it both ways” by publicly disclosing her own assault and continuing to report on the topic. Defendant Ginsberg raised his voice and told Ms. Sonmez that it would present “the appearance of a conflict of interest” if she continued to report on Kavanaugh or any other issues related to sexual misconduct. […] Defendant Barr stated, “We don’t have reporters who make statements on issues they are covering. We don’t want the external perception that we have an advocate covering something she has experienced. He added, “The work you do intersects with what you experienced in your life.” Ms. Sonmez noted that this is no different from any other reporter in the newsroom.

Importantly, these concerns about conflict of interest didn’t always extend to Sonmez’s male colleagues:

Around the time that Ms. Sonmez was interviewing for her position at the Post, she was told about a male colleague who faced sexual misconduct accusations including sending an unsolicited photo of his underwear-covered crotch to a young woman. Defendant Baron never ordered that the reporter be banned from covering stories related to sexual misconduct or inappropriate behavior by men. Upon information and belief, none of the reporter’s editors said his writing on the topic would present a “conflict of interest” or questioned whether he was capable of objective reporting. He was given a prominent position, wrote more than a dozen stories that touched on these issues and continues to do so today.

But that’s hardly the only case I had in mind. In 2018, messages from a private discussion group for journalists – one that had no (out) trans members – were leaked. In one of these leaked messages, Jesse Singal – probably the most prominent reporter on trans issues in mainstream publications – wrote about “groupthink” among trans people, implying that not being trans makes Jesse Singal better at writing about trans issues.

But…trans people, like members of any other group, have their own prevalent forms of groupthink. Time and time again my reporting and research has conflicted with what [the biggest-name trans activists have] told me[.] On other issues, of course, I would trust trans people more than anyone else—who better to talk about the humiliation of living in a state with a ‘bathroom’ bill, or the difficulty of getting hormones, or other stuff that only trans people have to deal with? But overall, no, I don’t think trans people are more qualified to write about the tricky science stuff going on here than I am.

(Since writing that, Singal has apparently removed “the difficulty of getting hormones” from his list of topics that he thinks trans people might know more about than Jesse Singal.)

Ironically, the leaked messages displayed their own form of “groupthink,” as members of the forum rushed to agree that Singal’s reporting is perfect and the many, many criticisms of his work from trans people were, without exception, irrational and meritless.

I’ll mention one last example (although there are certainly more I could mention): in 2020, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette barred two Black staffers from reporting on Black Lives Matter. One of the staffers had tweeted a sarcastic comparison between “looters” and tailgaters; the other seems to have been excluded due to the “conflict of interest” of being Black.

Joshua Axelrod, a white reporter at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, tweeted about a looting suspect and referred to them with a vulgar slur. Though Axelrod was reprimanded by his editors, he was not prohibited from covering BLM content like Johnson and Santiago were, despite the obvious show of bias. […]

Tony Mosley, a host with National Public Radio (NPR), has argued that newsrooms who bar Black reporters from covering BLM are essentially saying that “white journalists just by default are neutral and objective and they can cover everything, but somehow [Black journalists] can’t cover [their] own communities.”

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has three panels – although the final panel is divided into two sub-panels, as we shall see.

PANEL 1

In a newsroom (we can see a desk, and framed front-page stories on the wall), an older reporter, who is white and male, is talking to a younger Black reporter. The older reporter is wearing an off-white shirt with a red necktie; the younger reporter is a bit more casually dressed in a gray polo shirt. Let’s call the older reporter “NECKTIE.”

Necktie has his arms folded behind his back, and a condescending expression.

NECKTIE: Percy, you can’t write about police violence. You’re not objective.

PANEL 2

We are looking at Necktie again. In the background, we can see a young male reporter, with a red shirt and glasses, and a younger female reporter, wearing a jacket over a light pink blouse, both sitting behind desks.

NECKTIE: Just like Joey can’t write about trans issues.

NECKTIE: And Alicia tweeted about being sexually assaulted. So she can’t write sex crime stories. Reporters must be objective!

PANEL 3

This panel is divided into two sub-panels. The first panel shows Alicia, having stood up, speaking critically to Necktie; Necktie has his arms folded and is grinning.

ALICIA: But by that standard, isn’t everyone “biased”?

NECKTIE: Not quite everyone.

A thought balloon leads from Necktie’s head to the second (and larger) sub-panel. This panel shows Necktie, now wearing a jacket, a crown, and a sash that has “cis white male” printed on it, standing on a little platform so he’s above the other three reporters. The other three reporters are enthusiastically cheering for Necktie, and Alicia is swooning a bit with little hearts in the air around her head.

Behind Necktie is an enormous lit-up sign – the kind with a border made of light bulbs. The sign says, in large letters, “ALWAYS OBJECTIVE.” Balloons and confetti and roses fall from above. The balloons have lettering, which say things like “upper class” “white” “cis” “male” “abled” “thin” and “straight.”

CHICKEN FAT WATCH

“Chicken fat” means easily-overlooked and meaningless details in a cartoon the cartoonists put in, which maybe you (and they) find amusing. In this case, the chicken fat can be found in the framed newspapers on the walls in the background.

In panel 1, there are two such newspapers, each partly blocked by foreground elements and by word balloons. Both of them are for a newspaper named “Background Tribune.”

The first is almost entirely blocked by Necktie standing in front of it. But since I wrote it, I know that it says “NO ONE CAN READ THIS! Virtually Entire Text Hidden By Drawings.”

The second article is less blocked, and says “KISSINGER DEAD. Sun Shines Bright, Babies And Unicorns Celebrating.” (Although I wrote the script for this cartoon years ago, I added in the chicken fat on November 29 2023, the day Henry Kissinger died.)

In panel 2, the newspapers on the wall are such tiny elements of the background that I doubt anyone will be able to read them online (although they might be legible in the eventual book collection). The first says “NO ONE CAN READ THIS! This Text Is Simply Too Tiny To Be Legible.” The second says “NO ONE CAN READ THIS ONE EITHER. This Gag Is The Same As The Other One.”

Only Some Can Be Objective | Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Media, Media criticism | 12 Comments  

So Much In Common

Posted on January 8, 2024 by Ampersand

Robert Wright writes:

But then I remembered a conversation I had a few years ago with a psychologist at Boston College named Liane  Young. She and some colleagues had done research on how Palestinians  and Israelis view their conflict and found that the two groups have  something in common: Both believe that people on their side of the fight are motivated more by love for one another than by hatred  of people on the other side, but that on the other side it’s the other  way around: there, people are motivated more by hatred of the enemy than by love of one another.

The Palestine/Israel Pulse, an annual survey of Israelis and Palestinians, also found some disturbing commonalities:

As  in previous surveys, levels of trust in the other side are very low:  86% of Palestinians and 85% of Israeli Jews believe the other side is  not trustworthy.

Each  side perceives itself as an exclusive victim (84% of Palestinians and  84% of Israeli Jews), while an overwhelming majority of Palestinians (90%) but only a smaller majority of Israeli Jews (63%) think this suffering grants them with a moral right to do anything they deem as  necessary for survival. A vast majority among both groups (93%) see  themselves as rightful owners of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan river. While a third of Israeli Jews are willing to  accept some ownership right of the Palestinians, only 7% of Palestinians  are willing to accept such idea about the Jews.

* * *

No issue depresses me more than the Israel-Palestine conflict. October seventh made me feel physically ill, and I couldn’t write new cartoons for a month after, because nothing else seemed as urgent but writing a cartoon about Israel and Gaza felt impossible.

Eventually, I forced myself to write a few cartoons about Israel and Gaza. The best of the scripts – this one – is actually a remake of a cartoon I did ages ago (15 years? 20?), Such An Easy Mistake To Make.

What Hamas did on October 7th was incomprehensibly awful. What Israel has done since is also incomprehensively awful. It’s a hideous situation.

I don’t think peace is impossible. But to even begin diplomatic steps towards real peace would require new governments on both sides of the conflict. That’s a big ask, and even if it happens, it would be lead not to peace but to yet more big asks which would be required before peace could happen. I like to bring some optimism into these notes accompanying the cartoons, but regarding Israel and Palestine, I find it very hard to feel hope.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. Each panel shows the same scene: Two women on a suburban or urban-but-not-the-core sidewalk. It looks like winter; the women are both wearing puffy jackets, and the trees are bare.

The woman on the left has black hair in a ponytail, is wearing a dark purple knit hat, a blue puffy coat, and dark pants. Let’s call her HAT.

The woman on the right has round glasses, reddish-brown hair, and is wearing a black puffy winter vest over a long-sleeve shirt, and a polka-dot skirt. Let’s call her SKIRT.

PANEL 1

Hat is holding her phone away from her face, as if she just finished a phone call. She’s got her back to Skirt, but is looking in skirt’s direction, and is slightly surprised to be addressed. Skirt is speaking to Hat with a sincere expression.

SKIRT: Excuse me… I overheard what you said on the phone, and I completely agree! This whole war comes down to the right to self-defense.

PANEL 2

Hat has turned towards Skirt. Both women have somewhat angry expressions, but the mood (I hope) isn’t yelling at each other, but a mutual griping session. Hat has lifted one hand in an “explaining my point” gesture, while Skirt has her arms akimbo.

HAT: Exactly! No other nation is expected to endure attack after attack without fighting back!

SKIRT: It’s unfortunate that some civilians die. But we’re not the ones who started it!

PANEL 3

They get more into their griping; hat is holding her hands in fists and leaning forward, and Skirt is waving her arms and leaning forward.

HAT: Right! They could end this anytime, but they don’t want to!

SKIRT: We’ve got no choice! We’re defending our right to exist!

PANEL 4

Hat turns a bit away as the conversation ends. Both of them look very pleased. The dialog this panel is all in thought balloons.

HAT (thought): So nice to meet another Israel supporter!

SKIRT (thought): So nice to meet another Hamas supporter!

CHICKEN FAT WATCH

In panel three, there’s a newspaper littering the ground. If you look super closely, the paper has the headline CARTOONIST LOSES PATRONS, and in smaller print, “Whoops! Says Drawing Man.” The newspaper’s photo shows a stickfigure man shrugging.

So Much In Common | Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, International issues, Palestine & Israel | 32 Comments  

Cartoon: Nonbinaries Don’t Care About Your Bullshit

Posted on January 7, 2024 by Ampersand

This cartoon is drawn by Nadine Scholtes.

People online who hate nonbinary people are strikingly bitter about it, and for no reason I can understand. “What’s wrong with these people?” they growl, and go on and on about how “narcissistic” they think nonbinaries are. Ask them for an example of how nonbinaries being more open these days has caused actual harm and they flounder.

Although I made up the name “Big Doug,” the tweets in this cartoon are taken almost word-for-word from real tweets – including pretentious sign-off line “that is all,” which is so cringeworthy I just had to use it here.

The non-binary folks I’ve met – many of whom are really young – are on the whole a cheerful and relaxed bunch, and their willingness to play around with their gender presentations is not only fun, it’s exactly the way I was hoping gender would go if you’d asked me thirty years ago. Gender presentation as a plaything, and a way of expressing creativity, is infinitely better than gender presentation as obligation or jail cell. 

I’m very happy with the art in this strip – and especially with the contrast between the desaturated colors of the first three panels (meant to reflect the emptiness of bitterly sneering at other people for their gender presentations) versus the much happier and more vivid colors in panel four. (And that cat-bag in panel four is so great!)

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. The first three panels show a man sitting on a sofa in front of his coffee table, and with a laptop on his, er, lap. Let’s call him “Big Doug.” He has his blonde hair combed back neatly, and is wearing a dark button-down shirt over blue jeans. A carton of take-out Chinese food, a soda, and a TV remote sit on the coffee table. His home, or what we can see of it, is large and nice, but also severely underdecorated (there are no pictures on the walls) and the lighting is desaturated and dull.

In each of the first three panels, the top of the panel is taken up by an image of the tweet Big Doug has just posted. (We can see on the tweets that “Big Doug” is the name he uses for his Twitter account.)

PANEL 1

Big Doug leans forward with an eager expression as he types on his laptop. Big Doug has just posted a tweet which says…

TWEET: There is no such thing as “non-binary.” It is a recent invention by people who want to identify as “Look at me.” That is all.

BIG DOUG: Hah! That’ll really piss the little freaks off!

PANEL 2

Big Doug leans back with his arms folded and an expression of someone who is happy with the job he’s done. He winks.

TWEET: Non-binary is the way ‘normies’ get to include themselves in the alphabet soup. That is all.

BIG DOUG: Maybe I “triggered” them and they’re too sad to reply. Ha! I bet the non-binaries are crying!

PANEL 3

A long shot shows Big Doug dwarfed by his high-ceilinged den. He looks puzzled.

TWEET: ‘Non-binary people must be respected.’ No, they do not. Reality must be respected, not delusions. That is all.

BIG DOUG (thought): Still nothing? Where are the non-binaries?

PANEL 4

We are outdoors; the sky is a bright blue with some small fluffy white clouds, and green trees frame the panel. Two young people are seated on a park bench, and a third, with pink hair peeking out from under a brown cap, leans over from behind the bench to show them something on their smartphone. All of them are dressed in bright colors (tending towards pastels in the case of one of them), and seem engaged and cheerful.

PINK HAIR: There’s a new k-pop dance. Wanna learn it?

PURPLE JACKET: Yes!

Nonbinaries Don’t Care About Your Bullshit | Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer issues | 2 Comments  

Cartoon: Generations

Posted on January 4, 2024 by Ampersand

This cartoon was drawn by the remarkable Nadine Scholtes.

I don’t believe in generations.

Or at least, I don’t believe in generational personalities. It’s like astrology; it’s fun to make huge sweeping generalizations about big groups of people. More than fun, it’s sort of a human instinct. And as harmful as this instinct is sometimes, it’s probably not too harmful when it comes to astrology. Or generations.

And now that I’ve typed that, I’m filling up with doubts. Surely going through huge events – like 9/11, or the Great Depression or the rise of the Internet – has an effect on people’s personalities?

Maybe. But on the other hand, it’s not there was only one generation around and being influenced when 9/11 happened. There are six living generations, as they’re generally measured, around at any moment, and all of them are potentially being changed by big events.

Plus, it’s not as if any of us have a mass mind. (Not until Lex Luthor succeeds in creating his massmindification device, anyway). So, sure, I went through a lot of stuff other folks of my age went through, but that doesn’t mean I have much at all in common with most of them. Honestly, I can’t even make conversation with most people my age. (Or any age.)

But one thing that is eternal is that a lot of folks in older generations – and, having had my fifty-fifth birthday just yesterday as I write this, I have to ruefully admit that I’m approaching “older generationhood” myself – will be absolutely convinced that the current young adult generation is ruder, stupider, and less capable than their own generation was.

It’s silly and wrong. But on the other hand, those young adults will have their chance to grow old and condescend to the youngsters, too, so in a way it all evens out.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. Each of the panels shows the same two characters; a doctor, who is a white man in his forties, and a patient, who looks to be in his sixties at least. We’re in a medical examination room; the patient is sitting on the examination table, while the doctor stands.

PANEL 1

The doctor is holding an otoscope (which is that thing they use to examine ears). (Did you know that thing’s called an otoscope? I didn’t, I had to google it). The patient is not yelling or anything, but he’s sort of ranting a little.

DOCTOR: Hold still while I look in your ear.

PATIENT: i bought a coffee and this young “barista” was so rude!

PANEL 2

The doctor, wielding the otoscope, is peering into the patient’s ear with an expression of concentration. The patient is warming up to his rant.

DOCTOR: Mm hmmm

PATIENT: i swear these millennials are the worst!

PANEL 3

The doctor has crossed the room and is putting the otoscope away in a drawer (which means I won’t have an excuse to repeat the word “otoscope” in the next panel, alas). He has kind of a bored expression. The patient looks very surprised by what the doctor is saying.

DOCTOR: Actually, sir, I’m a millennial. We’re old now.

PATIENT: Really?

PANEL 4

The doctor is now holding a clipboard. (Instead of an otoscope.) (Ha! Found an excuse!) The doctor is looking amused, while the patient looks affronted, with his arms crossed.

DOCTOR: Yup. We’re all picking on gen Z now. but in a few years we’ll switch to gen Alpha.

PATIENT: Dammit! Why didn’t I get the memo on this?

CHICKEN FAT

Chicken fat are meaningless details that cartoonists sometimes put into cartoons to amuse ourselves. In this case, there’s a framed poster on the wall in the background. In panel 1, the poster has a realistic image of a human heart, with the caption “YOUR HEART” and then in smaller lettering “is kinda gross looking.”

The poster isn’t in frame in panel two. In panel three, the poster shows a cartoon doctor (who looks like a Muppet to me) glaring out at us. The caption says “Please tell the doctor your self-diagnosis you found online. Doctors love that.”

In panel 4, the poster of the doctor is still there, but the caption has been replaced with a lot of tiny, tiny text. The tiny text says: “I can’t believe you’re reading this tiny print, it’s not at all interesting. Watch tv instead. I honestly feel a bit guilty putting this here because I’m totally wasting your time. It’s just meaningless background text. On the other hand, it’s not like you’d be curing cancer if you weren’t reading this. But that’s okay. You’re good as you are. Read tiny print if you want to.”

Generations | Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics | 3 Comments