Yes, this comic was inspired by evil non-genius Elon Musk. No one better epitomizes money cosplaying as competence.
He fell ass-backwards into big money, and our system protects big money. …Literally everything he touches gets fucked up, from self-driving cars to Twitter to the government, or almost anything at all; even PayPal—that’s why they fired him. He was so bad at it that his own staff revolted and insisted he be canned. Indeed, nearly everyone who has ever worked for him says he is a shitty leader who has no business running companies. But alas, like other rich people who fail upwards, Musk’s contracted severance package for being axed from (what was then) PayPal for incompetence launched his entire career as a moneybagged gunknozzle.
Musk hardly stands alone. Private Equity’s business model is for people who know nothing about an industry to buy out existing companies and often destroy them. Although with private equity, it’s often more like piracy than actual incompetence.
Why did Sears tank? Everyone knows that the 19th century business was an antique, incapable of mounting a challenge in the age of e-commerce. That was a great smokescreen for an old-fashioned bust out that saw corporate looters make off with hundreds of millions, leaving behind empty storefronts and emptier pension accounts for the workers who built the wealth the looters stole.
And of course, Donald “six bankruptcies” Trump is a tragic example of how inherited wealth (to the tune of $413 million) and a staggering ego can give an utter incompetent a rep as a business genius. Trump’s actual talents in are self-promotion and dodging taxes, not in creating value.
The challenge of drawing this cartoon was the factory setting, which is a zillion miles outside my comfort zone. I doubt I’ve ever drawn the interior of a factory before, and I wasn’t sure how to begin. I looked at photos of factories online and they seemed impossibly complex, and my attempts to streamline them just didn’t look good.
What finally got me over the “factories are too hard to draw! Waaaah!” wall was looking at the graphic novel Factory Summers by the brilliant cartoonist Guy Delisle. I didn’t directly copy Delisle’s drawings, but I took a lot of instruction from how he simplified factory interiors to make them work in comics.
Once I got started, it was fun. A factory setting in two-point perspective provides so many ways to fit in little visual gags.
I was worried about panel four. For the gag to work, readers definitely had to notice the burning factory disaster in the background, but a lot of readers kind of skip noticing the backgrounds. I asked Frank Young, who colored this cartoon, to make the conflagration in the distance impossible to miss, and I think Frank really delivered.
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon has four panels, plus a tiny “kicker” panel.
PANEL 1
Two workers in reflective vests and hard hats are on a factory floor when a man wearing a blazer over a t-shirt walks in, arms spread wide.
BLAZER: Greetings, workers! I just bought this weezotski factory.
WORKER: Oh, uh… Welcome! So you must have lots of experience with weezotskis?
PANEL 2
Grinning, Blazer keeps talking, looking very smug.
BLAZER: None! But success in an unrelated industry has made me freakishly wealthy! And that makes me a business genius who can run anything!
PANEL 3
Blazer puts his arm around the worker and makes a grand “envision the future!” gesture.
BLAZER: I’m gonna disrupt this company so hard! It’ll be amazing! You’ll see! (Not you personally. I’m firing you.)
PANEL 4
CAPTION: SIX MONTHS LATER
Blazer, still grinning, flees from a burning factory building.
BLAZER: Another business brilliantly saved!
KICKER PANEL
Blazer, looking smug, is talking to Barry the cartoonist.
BLAZER: Maybe I should run the government!
CHICKEN FAT WATCH
“Chicken fat” is long-obscure cartoonist talk for fun but unimportant details in the art.
Panel 1: A limp hand is sticking out a hole in the huge factory machine. A panel of the floor is missing, and a corpse in a funeral suit lies within. The box the worker is carrying is labeled “Caution: Irrelevant Prop.”
Panel 2: In the background, in supervisors windows, are Homer Simpson and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew.
Panel 3: An opening in the side of a big factory machine contains Brain, of “Pinky and the Brain.” A vent hose has a distressed face on it. In a window in a machine in the background, a grinning stoned person hands upside-down. The paper on the clipboard says “this text is way too small to be read, sorry”.
A sign says “URGENT: Always complete your shift and clean your area before fighting demonic forces.” Another says “WARNING: Studies show that most people’s largest deathbed regret is time not spent working.” A sign on a large red button says “NO. Do not press button. Nope.”
Panel 4: The dark cloud in the sky, if you rotate it 90 degrees to the right, is an enormous face in profile.
The tattoo storyline: In panel one, the worker has a tattoo of a snake on his right arm, and a tattoo of an apple on his left arm. In panel two, the snake tattoo has crossed to his left arm and is examining the apple. In panel 3, the apple has been eaten, and the snake – no longer merely a tattoo – is crawling out of a hole in a big factory machine.
You really nailed the stylistic “look” these business guys adopt. Expensive sneakers, the skinny pants, t-shirt, the whole “I’m a casual, laid-back dude” chic, then topped off by the inevitable blazer that signals “I’m cool and casual, but I’m also the boss around here.”
It’s the style of a 1990s standup comic. And these current-day business dudes have adopted the same arrogance and snark as ’90s comedians; you can hear it in interviews.
Thanks! I kind of regret
tingnot going with a three-piece suit – for communicating iconic “this is a rich dude” in a cartoon, expensive suits are the best – but as you said, a different approach was needed for this cartoon.