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Help me make more cartoons like this one by supporting my Patreon<\/a>! A $1 or $2 pledge really helps.<\/span><\/p>\n ____________________________________________________________<\/p>\n Happy Halloween!<\/p>\n I totally swiped the “comedy is sacred” gag from Alexandra Erin<\/a>. (With her kind permission).<\/p>\n The inspiration for this cartoon is pretty obvious – the world is full of comedians, and often staggeringly successful<\/em> comedians, complaining that comedy is being killed by excessive political correctness (or “wokeness,” or “SJWs,” or whatever term they settle on this week). Examples include Dave Chappelle, Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Burr, Bill Maher, Kevin Hart, Todd Phillips, Chris Rock, and I’m sure many more.<\/p>\n Comedy isn’t dead – there’s amazing comedy on TV, in movies, and in a seemingly bottomless pile of Netflix stand-up specials, including specials by people complaining that it’s become impossible to do comedy nowadays.<\/p>\n They’re partly right. Some comedy does become harder to perform. (Aziz Ansari talked a lot about this in his <\/em>recent Netflix special). For example, the prospect of widespread condemnation would deter many comedians from doing openly antiblack or antisemitic bits nowadays. But is that a bad thing? Do we want a society that never moves on, never learns? To paraphrase Ansari, a culture that never looks back at it’s old humor and winces, is a society which hasn’t learned or grown.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Artwise, this is an unusual one for me. I started this one with an idea of comedians scattered across a floor, each one picked out by a spotlight. I really wasn’t clear on how to arrange them, so I drew all five figures the same size, head to toe, and then played around with different arrangements until I had a composition I thought worked. It’s not my usual approach, but I hope you enjoy the result!<\/p>\n In theory<\/em>, a cartoon like this is a real time-saver for me – just five figures, done! In theory. But in practice, knowing that I only had to draw five figures led me to lavish much more attention on drawing each figure, so no time actually was saved. Oh well.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n There were only three cartoons in October (so you were only charged for three!). I lost a bunch of time this month attending the Humboldt County Children’s Author Festival<\/a>. (For those of you who don’t know, I have a second career creating children’s graphic novels). This is a very neat festival – the organizers bring in 25 authors every other year, and they send us to three schools each, so in the end about 75 schools get an author visit.<\/p>\n Most of the schools are schools that otherwise would never have visiting authors. The first school I visited this year, required me being drive 50 minutes up a winding mountain road, to visit a two-room school where I talked to eight kids about creating comics.<\/p>\n It’s a privilege being invited to a festival like this, and it’s also very fun for me, both for the chance to visit kids in schools, and for the chance for me to talk with other authors.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Thank you so much for supporting these cartoons! \u00a0I really couldn’t do it without your support, and frankly the support of all y’all patrons has changed my life.<\/p>\n You’re seeing this cartoon a week or so before anyone else, but if you’re supporting at the $5 level or above, feel free to share it immediately.<\/p>\n Special thanks to $10 donor Jonah Wacholder, who is also thanked on the sidebar! Jonah, if you’d like me to email you a high-res copy of the cartoon, signed to you, for you to print out and hang, just let me know!<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON<\/strong><\/p>\n This cartoon has one large panel, plus an tiny extra “kicker” panel below the bottom of the cartoon. The panel shows five people – stand up comics – scattered across an abstract space. Each comedian is being picked out by a spotlight. All five of them have microphones, and all are speaking out, as if they’re talking to an audience. They speak in order from back to front (so each successive comedian is closer to the “camera” than the one before).<\/p>\n The first comedian is a man wearing a button-up shirt and dark jeans, and looks really angry.<\/p>\n FIRST COMEDIAN: If I can’t do rape jokes without getting hissed then comedy is dead! DEAD!<\/p>\n The second comedian is a man with a shaved head. He is wearing a black tee shirt and sitting on a stool, scowling.<\/p>\n SECOND COMEDIAN: Seinfeld won’t even do college campuses anymore. This is how life under Stalin felt!<\/p>\n The third comedian is older than the other comedians, with wide, frightened eyes. He’s wearing a vest and tie; his collar is unbuttoned and his tie is hanging down a bit, not flush against his neck. His tie has a floral pattern.<\/p>\n THIRD COMEDIAN: If I have to drop “women are irrational” and “Asians talk funny” from my set, all I’ll have left is “airline food” and “it’s too hard to program my VCR!”<\/p>\n The fourth comedian is a blonde woman wearing an open button-up sweater over a striped dress and black tights. She looks angry.<\/p>\n FOURTH COMEDIAN: Free speech means the world owes me a living without any $#%!ing criticism!<\/p>\n The fifth comedian has short-cropped hair, an annoyed expression, and a big sneer. He’s wearing a \u00a0tee shirt with a logo on it (most of the logo, whatever it is – well, it’s a big exclamation mark – is blocked by word balloons). He’s speaking straight to the reader.<\/p>\n FIFTH COMEDIAN: Comedy is sacred and the work I do is important to society!<\/p>\n FIFTH COMEDIAN: Anyhow, lighten up! They’re just jokes and they don’t mean anything!<\/p>\n TINY KICKER PANEL BELOW BOTTOM OF STRIP<\/strong><\/p>\n The fifth comedian is talking to Barry the cartoonist.<\/p>\n FIFTH COMEDIAN: At least I can still make fun of fatties without much pushback.<\/p>\n BARRY: We’re working on that.<\/p>\n This cartoon on Patreon<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ___________________________________________________________ Help me make more cartoons like this one by supporting my Patreon! A $1 or $2 pledge really helps. ____________________________________________________________ Happy Halloween! I totally swiped the “comedy is sacred” gag from Alexandra Erin. (With her kind permission). The inspiration … Continue reading
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