Cartoon: Next Best Thing

This cartoon is a collaboration with Kevin Moore. Kevin writes:

I really enjoyed putting in the chicken fat for this cartoon, something that in my previous work with Barry we had not explored much and that I think is a great innovation to Barry’s style. I’m an old MAD fan who at some point wanted to be Will Elder, Mort Drucker, or Sergio Aragones when he grew up, so this definitely scratched the itch. I try to add some to my own cartoons, but my weekly time crunch sometimes forbids it.

Also, having been a tween when Raiders came out, I naturally enjoyed the chance to draw Indy killing a Nazi. I wonder how he would handle ICE agents. Melt their faces off? Make them drink from the wrong goblet? I’d settle for public humiliation and ostracism.

It’s fun working with Kevin because he’s not afraid of adding things that aren’t in the script – like the use of the mirror in panel four, which does a wonderful job of making things visual.

An ICE agent pushed back against Nazi comparisons:

Hitting out at criticisms that have, for years, compared ICE agents to Nazis, the agent said: “To be called a Nazi, you know, a racist, you know, it’s just ignorant. It’s ignorant.”

“We don’t pick and choose groups of people based on race, color, religion.”

Meanwhile:

ICE Arrested And Detained A US Citizen For Hours Because He Looked Mexican | Techdirt

That’s one of many cases where ICE has clearly harassed and even arrested people for being Hispanic near ICE agents.

An article in The Stranger sums up some recent ICE headlines:

“ICE is out of control,” goes the headline at Slate. “Donald Trump’s ICE is tearing families apart,” goes the headline at the New Yorker. “ICE wants to deport the caregiver of a 6-year-old paraplegic boy,” goes the headline at Daily Kos. “ICE targets sanctuary cities, arrests 33 in Northwest,” goes the headline at NPR.

Reading these stories, we learn that ICE just arrested a 55-year-old chemistry professor in Lawrence, Kansas, who’s lived in this country for 31 years and has three children, all of whom are American citizens; according to the Washington Post, he was arrested on his front lawn in front of his children, and his wife was threatened with arrest if she tried to hug her husband goodbye. We learn that after ICE moved to deport a married man in Arizona who now has five children, one of whom has leukemia, the father was forced to take refuge in a church with his ailing son. We learn that ICE denied an appeal from an Ohio man who is a specially trained caregiver for a 6-year-old paraplegic boy who depends on his care. We learn that ICE ordered an HIV-positive gay man in Miami deported to Venezuela, a country in a state of economic collapse; since the man won’t be able to get the medications he needs to keep him alive, his deportation amounts to a death sentence.

And that was in 2018! In Trump’s second term, ICE has become even more brazenly lawless. We’ve all seen videos of ICE agents, sometimes in masks and plainclothes, abducting people off the streets – an image of fascism that would be an embarrassing cliche if it weren’t really happening.

The truth is, there is no past history of ICE being honorable; from it’s founding in the wake of 9/11, ICE has been an abusive agency that hates civil liberties and makes the country a worse place. Trump has merely given ICE the freedom to stop pretending to be anything else.

As for good people who happen to be ICE agents? By now, they all should have resigned.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels.

PANEL 1

A cheerful white man is driving while he talks on his cell phone.

MAN: I watched “Raisers of the Lost Ark” yesterday.

VOICE ON PHONE: Again?

PANEL 2

As the man talks, we see his giant thought balloon, which shows a Nazi looking in confusion upwards towards the giant bullet hole in his forehead, while in the background Indiana Jones is holding a smoking pistol.

MAN: I’m just fascinated by World War II movies… I wonder what I would have done if I’d been around back then.

PANEL 3

The man has parked in a parking lot, and is getting out of his car.

MAN: Anyway, gotta go. Just reached work.

VOICE ON PHONE: Have a good one!

PANEL 4

The man in in a locker room, straightening his collar in front of a mirror. The back of his jacket says ICE. In the mirror, his reflection is wearing a WW2 Nazi uniform.

MAN (thought): If I’d had the chance, I could’ve been a great Nazi.

CHICKEN FAT WATCH

“Chicken fat” is a anachronistic term for little unimportant but fun details cartoonists slip into the art.

PANEL 1 – A cardboard cut-out of Charlie Brown’s head is hanging from the rear view mirror. The man’s t-shirt has a design of a happy flower with a smiling face holding a smaller flower, which has a face with two little “x”s for eyes.

PANEL 2 – The cell phone’s screen says “TODD.” When I asked Kevin about that, he replied: “Yeah I thought it would be kinda funny. Todd is a funny name to me. Also if you have seen Breaking Bad, the name Todd has distinct creepy Nazi associations.”

PANEL 3 – The man’s t-shirt now shows Bob The Angry Flower. The two little stick-figures sticker on the back of the car shows a three-headed alien. A hand is sticking out of the trunk of the car next over. On the other side, a camel has been parked, and is eating hay from a feed bag. The license plate says “NOS4A2,” a reference to a novel Kevin’s currently reading.

PANEL 4- A poster on the wall shows two stick-figures lifting a third stick figure, which has obviously broken legs. The caption says “Safety First – Life With Your Legs.” Near the floor, someone in the wall is digging a hole in the wall with a small knife, while a second person in there watches.

The belt buckle on the Nazi uniform is an abstract caricature of Hitler.

I think that’s all of them – although Kevin may have snuck one in I missed.