POV Comics

We're living in politically fractious times when everyone's struggling to get their opinions heard. How about getting them seen and read by visualizing your point of view in compelling comics?

My course Battle Lines Drawn: Creating Political Comics is again being offered this fall by the School of Visual Arts Continuing Education. It begins on Wednesday, September 18th at 6:30 pm –– here's the listing. The class will highlight some great political cartoons and intense controversies, before guiding students through the creation of their own pointed comics.

Here are two panels from the accompanying strip that I created for the class (see more in previous posts) –– it deals with the fallout from religious satire, one of the hot topics we'll be exploring.

08/16/19

D-Day

With the 75th Anniversary of D-Day getting the media attention it richly deserves, I dug up these illustrations of the two great Allied leaders that I did for the Wall Street Journal. The first was about the cottage publishing industry that had grown up to praise, and lightly pillory, Winston Churchill. The second was a drawing of FDR for an editorial by Peggy Noonan. She tended to be fond of invoking Roosevelt to compare him with modern leaders, usually to their disadvantage. In this case, it was Obama in his shadow. I suppose it worked as a metaphor because Ms. Noonan won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2017, a year that included some columns that I was fortunate enough to illustrate.

My father served in the army during WWII, and was lucky enough to avoid combat as a Technical Sergeant who followed the troops, working on early calculators to provide payroll. These rudimentary business machines were the forerunners of the modern computer, and his experience led directly to a career as a programmer in cyber prehistory. It was one of countless ways that this conflict remade the world. They also serve who only sit and tabulate. A sincere salute to all who sacrificed what they could.

06/06/19

Dead Parody Joke

My course Battle Lines Drawn: Creating Political Comics at the School of Visual Arts begins on Wednesday, June 25th at 7pm –– here's the listing. The first half of the class will highlight some great political cartoons and their attendant controversies, before guiding students through the creation of their own pointed political comics.

Here's another page from the accompanying strip that I created for the class (see more in previous posts) –– it illustrates the differences between parody and satire in the eyes of the law. Both brands of humor are frequent targets in the culture wars.

05/15/19

In Like Flynt

My course Battle Lines Drawn: Creating Political Comics will be offered again at the School of Visual Arts this Summer beginning June 5 on Wednesdays at 7pm –– here's the listing. In conjunction with the curriculum that's designed to guide students through creating comics that reflect their own unique political perspectives, I put together a comic strip that touches on some of the subjects that are unavoidable when you're depicting contoversial topics. Here's another page that highlights some of the key First Amendment court battles, and the likely and unlikely heroes of that struggle.

I'll be at SVA's table H250 at MoCCA on Sunday, April 7 from 12 noon to 1 pm to discuss my course. Please stop by.

04/05/19

In Memoriam 2018

The ubiquitous self-congratulatory awards show celebrating the artistic achievements of the previous year always seems to come with an In Memoriam tribute. Reflecting on the notable deaths of 2018 had me rummaging through my files for some appropriate work. I'd already posted images below for the passing of Kofi Annan, John McCain and George HW Bush, but found additional, more elaborate, illustrations and include them here. There's also a George and Barbara twofer from when they left the White House after the loss to Bill Clinton in 1992 –– it's valedictory nature seemed particularly apt. Along with a Tom Wolfe and an Anthony Bourdain excerpted from larger groupings with peers both real and idealized. Plus a straightforward portrait of Stan the Man who departed for the furthest reaches of the MCU.

I was a little surprised that I coudn't find an Aretha Franklin or a Burt Reynolds –– it feels like I must have drawn a face that I'd seen so many times. So imagine Yo Yo Ma solemnly backing Josh Groban as he warbles Tears in Heaven and shed a tear.01/29/19

Battle Lines Drawn: Creating Political Action Comics

My new course for the School of Visual Arts entitled Battle Lines Drawn: Creating Political Action Comics is scheduled to begin January 30, 2019. Here's a link.

The aim of the course is to guide students through the process of expressing their strongest political views in sequential form. Class time will include concise lectures on the history of political illustration and some of the controveries artists have had to face. The bulk of the schedule will be filled with sketching and sharing smart ideas that will culminate in a final project of a multi-page comic strip. Learning to translate concepts into visual metaphors will be the ultimate goal, a skill essential to all forms of illustration and cartooning.

The book Inx: Battle Lines will serve as a source of inspiration for the kind of creative thinking that makes graphic satire pop. There's more about the course in a post below.

01/09/19

Follow my work in the New Year at inxart.com. Cheers!

A Thousand Pointless Lights

The laudatory tone of the reporting in the wake of the death of George HW Bush is probably due in equal measure to his long and mostly graceful post-Presidency as it is to the sorry example set by the current occupant of that office. It's increasingly easy to portray pre-2016 American history nostalgically when contrasted with the meanness and chaos of the day. Bush displayed a well-earned self-effacement when he regularly showed up in the news portrayed as a devoted husband and patriarch, but any examination of his political legacy would reveal a record of mediocrity at best, mendacity at worst.

He was the quintessential Country Club Republican straight outta' New Haven whose wildcatting days in the Texas oilfields did little to scuff his well-polished Oxfords or provide much empathy for those less prosperous. He had an illustrious war record and a dedication to public service, but his strategic embrace of Ronald Reagan exposed his ideological emptiness. Reagnism was the first full flowering of the rightwing war on the New Deal and those less fortunate who were felt to have unfairly benefited from…well, fairness.

As the Gipper's successor he seemed to stand for absolutely nothing except a fading status quo and the repeal of the inheritance tax. Meanwhile, simmering racism was exploited to cultivate the non-millionaires his shrinking party would need to extend their power. His 1988 campaign featured the infamous Willy Horton ad and he made a mockery of affirmative action by giving the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas. Of course he would have been horrified by Trump's crudeness and ill manners, but the Reaganism he championed laid the foundation for virtualy every brutal idea that animates the so-called base today. And then there was his son.

Here are three drawings I did of Poppy during his reign. In the first he's putting away some of the toys in his war chest after helpfully signing the second of two disarmament pacts with Moscow. It features a controlled toothbrush splatter technique which creates a texture I still like. The second sends up his ambition to be known as the 'education president.' Finally the Invisible Man reveals his insubstantiality as a leader. I believe we should honor those who have served in the White House when they pass away out of a sense of institutional respect, but the judgment of history is one burden of the office that sadly survives them.
12/02/18

Battle Lines Drawn

I've put together a class at the School of Visual Arts called Battle Lines Drawn: Creating Political Action Comics, a title that is hopefully both a bit clever and self-explanantory. Here's a link to the Spring 2019 Class.

Crafting the curriculum for this has been a fascinating exercise as I'm combining concise lectures on the history of political cartooning and the societal pressures that have been brought to bear on it, along with instruction that will guide students through the creation of their own political comics. I've learned a lot by revisiting the masters and the controversies that have surrounded the form, and feel fired up about promoting this pure, but challenging expression of our First Amendment rights. Following a promo below are the first two pages from a strip I've done that encapsulates some of the origin story and the emerging themes that current day practitioners still grapple with.

10/10/18

Village Voice RIP

One of the first art directors I showed my portfolio to after graduating Parsons School of Design was George Delmerico at The Village Voice. My stuff was raw and angry and a
good fit for the ugly mood in New York in the 80s with a plague spreading through the city and Reagan in the White House. I was a regular throughout the decade contributing illustrations on politics, culture and entertainment. It was a time when even the frugal Voice would buy me two tickets to a Broadway musical (the eccentric, but compelling The Gospel at Colonnus) as research for a job. Subsequent supportive and smart art directors included Michael Grossman and Wes Anderson along with committed assistants like Melanie Pitts and Jennifer Gilman.

Roughly a year after suspending the paper's print edition, and sixty-three years after its debut, the publishers have finally pulled the plug. In its day it was an essential journal particularly for fringe downtown populations that have increasingly moved into the mainstream. Nostalgia is cheap, but it was a time that saw an embrace of expressionism and a punkish attitude in illustration which definitely shaped my work, so allow me a philosophical sigh.

Below are a few pieces I did over the years. The first is about terrorists manipulating their hostages, and was done in pen and ink with fairly dense washes that were suitably noirish when printed on the pulpy page. The third one was done in a similar technique and accompanied a review of Warehouse: Songs and Stories, an album by Husker Dü.

The other two are pen and ink drawings –– the first a phallic bust of French philosopher Michel Foucault (with some Zipatone leaves), the last a nuclear scarecrow in the stick-like form of Nancy Reagan (with some gouache and grease pencil.)

09/03/18

Lowering McCain

In salute to John McCain, here's an image from inxart.com. Despite his many flaws, McCain easily towered over the current crop of legislators crawling around the Capitol. He obviously tried to embody his own best notion of what it was to be a patriot and he had both an awareness of history and a biting sense of humor. One could, and did, disagree with his political views, but it wasn't hard to grant him a sense of respect.

Until 2008, that is, when his choice of a profoundly unqualified running mate in the presidential race severely dinked his reputation. The other two illustrations below date from that campaign, and respectfully avoid depicting she-who-must-not-be-named. His magnificent thumbs-down on the Senate Obamacare vote last year went a long way to restoring his image as a principled maverick. The notion rarely crossed my mind during his thirty-five years in Congress, but he will be sorely missed.

Oh, and this parody 2008 Campaign Ad.

08/31/18

Kofi Break

The death of Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations on August 18, had me looking back through the numerous strips I did for the Earth Times during his tenure. Entitled Kozmology, it focused on global development and the machinations of the typically well-intentioned, but often inept UN, and ran for more than ten years with the kind support of publisher and editor Pranay Gupte.

Despite the organization's noble aims, my focus was on satirizing the bloat, naivete and cynicism endemic to such an unwieldy bureaucracy. Annan was appointed at a time of regional conflicts that saw the expansion of peace-keeping operations to unprecedented levels. Genocidal failures in places like Kosovo and Rwanda dogged his reputation after he was elected in 1997. His predecessor, the dour Boutros Boutros-Ghali (the diplomat so nice they named him twice), failed to win reelection, and the charming Annan was greeted as a reformer. He was the last high-profile Secretary General –– a low-key, but charismatic leader who served a decade.

The catastrophe of 9/11 combined with the disaster that was the Bush Administration and its response to the attack had the effect of ultimately marginalizing the UN. Despite Annan's best efforts, he could not dissuade Cheney, Wolfowitz et al. from invading Iraq –– which he acknowledged as his biggest regret. Ban Ki-moon, who followed him in office, left far less of an impression, and I doubt few Americans could name the current boss, António Guterres.

I've included a few panels below from 2001. The first was published a month after 9/11 when it was difficult to know what tone to strike as many insisted the tragedy would mark the death of irony. Irony rose like a Phoenix. Shashi Tharoor was Annan's Director of Communications and an Indian politician whose post-UN career has been marked by a bizarre scandal involving his wife's death.

The second three-panel sequence introduced a two-pager about Annan's winning the Nobel Prize that same year. Here he is informed by spokesman Fred Eckhardt that he would have to share the honor with the whole, big messy family. The third is a single-panel strip on a scandal in 2005 that involved unaccounted funds and a payout to his son.

Despite the bite of these drawings, I did admire Kofi Annan, and I believe the recent dimunition of the institution he tried to remake is not a good thing for the US or the world. I was lucky enough to meet him at a UN function and was pleased that he was aware of the strip and took the ribbing good-naturedly. His only request was that I make him 'more pretty.' Another reasonable appeal from a decent man that would go unheeded.

08/20/18

Nast Appeal

It's fun to do an out-and-out parody at times, and who better to most sincerely flatter through imitation than the Granddaddy of Political Cartoons, Thomas Nast. His devastating series of takedowns of Tammany Hall's Boss Tweed was widely credited with aiding in that crook's ouster in 1870s New York City. One can only dream…

We're using these as promotional images for the funny new book Trump Tweets Alt-American History that L.K. Peterson and I collaborated on. Buy it on Amazon.

04/25/18

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