[Visual description:
Panel one: Dude wearing “Uncle Sam” hat and a Hawaiian shirt is walking alongside a cliff, with John Keynes, who has a big mustache.
HAT DUDE: Keynes, you are old-fashioned and useless. Modern economics has transcended you.
Panel 2: Hat Dude teeters on the edge of falling off the cliff.
HAT DUDE: Oh Dear! I am plummeting over a cliff! SAVE ME KEYNES!
Panel 3: Keynes has caught hat dude by the wrist and is pulling him to safety.
KEYNES: It’s okay… I’ve got you!
HAT DUDE: Thank you, Keynes!
Panel 4: The duo resumes their walk.
HAT DUDE: As I was saying, Keynes, you’re of no use at all! ]
A cartoon that was inspired by Paul Krugman’s article “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?” Click on the cartoon to see a bigger version.
That is funny, and true, and funny because it’s true.
I love Keynes’ expression in the first two frames. He’s all hurt in the first, and really startled in the second. Well done all around.
I love the design of the “modern economics” character – the Uncle Sam Hat + Hawaiian Shirt thing is adorable.
Munchkinized Keynes is cute too.
The “starting to fall” pose in the second panel is a little weird though, but that’s a really hard thing to make look convincing.
Hehehe
Please could you start putting text descriptions for images on this site, though?
Thanks everyone!
Queercripfemme, I’ve been going back and forth about that as a cartoonist. I think describing comics in words is like describing a symphony or a dance in words; in neither case is the blind or deaf person reading the words, actually going to be gaining the opportunity to meaningfully experience the art. OTOH, I understand that even imperfect accessibility is arguably more important than an artist’s fee-fees about cartooning as an art form.
SiF, the pose was supposed to be fake-looking and awkward in a neat/old fashioned/funny way. But it didn’t come across, clearly. Oh, well. And drawing Keynes was unexpectedly fun. :-)
Amp, probably including a straight copypasta of the text would be enough in most cases – this one in particular would preserve the humour well in text-form. It would allow those who are unable to see the comic to at least participate in the conversation, and would make your comics more search-aware.
My only problem with this approach is that some browsers would show the ALT text while loading the comic, and that could spoil the punchline before you can see it in it’s proper form.
Can you see how it’s kind of depressing for me to spend hours drawing, and then be told that the text alone does the job? :-P
Anyhow, I added a description for this one.
I’m not saying it’s the *same* – I mean, like I said, munchkin Keynes is adorable. The whole fun of comics is how many things you can layer into them, which is one of the things I love about your work – you obviously have a good time designing each throw-away character. It’s just that, unless you’re doing a sight gag, usually the straight script will tell the joke itself.
Big <3 for the chibi-Keynes.
Lovely.
No … the pictures are great and I agree not all the humour/cuteness can be transmitted in text – but something being slightly accessible is better than not-at-all accessible. Less like reading a text description of a symphony, more like reading the lyrics of a song – you miss the music but still can know what the song’s about. (Although I’m saying this from the perspective of someone who can see – so maybe it’s not my place to say what blind/partially sighted people do or don’t get from it.)
Anyway – hope I haven’t caused too much of a derail and thanks for the description.
I hope that after Hereville is published to great success, someone gets you to compile a book of your political cartoons because even though I enjoy Hereville, I tend to enjoy the political cartoons much more!
I’m with Silenced is Foo. As an avid webcomic reader I don’t know how many times I’ve been frustrated while trying to find some old comic.
Rubbish.
The basis of “stimulus spending”…
“If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.”
– John M Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 1936
More evidence of the failure of this crank theory:
http://michaelscomments.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/wow-back-to-10/