National Anthem Remixed

This was a photo illustration for campusprogress.org that never got published. It was for an article about the different ways the National Anthem has been interpreted. The latest trend is hip-hop or R&B.

click to enlarge

New Toon: Hamed, The Known Al Qaeda Agent

Well, this ends the two strips a week run. I expect I'll return to it in a few months, after I have the chance to get a ahead on the comics so I'm not killing myself at the last minute to get it done.

The governments excuses for wiretapping aren't making much sense. According to them, they are only for international calls from known or suspected Al Qaeda operatives. Does this mean they don't monitor domestic calls of Al Qaeda operatives? Like the ones the 9/11 hijackers probably made to each other? I really wish they would. Oh, and with a warrant like the Constitution talks about. In fact, if there are Al Qaeda operatives on American soil that we are openly aware of --and feel free to call me crazy here-- I'm leaning towards arresting them.

click to enlarge

Barrels 'O Blood!

I got an e-mail about my last comic, A Modest Proposal, from a guy that runs the website barrelsofblood.com. He has calculated the amount of blood we have spilt for oil in Iraq in barrels.

The number of pints of blood in the average human body = 10
The number of gallons of blood in the average human body (8 pints per gallon) = 1.33
The estimated number of gallons of blood lost by an injured person = .25
The number of gallons in a BARREL OF OIL = 42

Currently, it's at 173, 994.

New Toon: A Modest Proposal

I had planned to do a Brokeback Mountain comic, but events led me to pitching it to a magazine for a full page strip, which seems like it will seee the light of day before the Oscars. So I cheated a bit and slightly reworked a comic I did back in the day when Idiot Box just started. I have always wanted to redraw it with the current porportions of the strip so it could be printed, so here you have it.

click to enlarge

Goings On About Town

New Toon will be posted late tonight...

The Beast's 50 Most Loathsome People of 2005 is up. Read it.

I was going to rant about the amount of lame ass editorial cartoons on Brokeback Mountain, but Mikhaela already did that for me.

August Pollack is hosting the 2006 George W. Bush Dead Kitten Survey.

New Comics

Here are two strips that ran this past month in the Seattle Stranger. Two others ran, which I turned into the two PNAC strips I've done recently.

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

Cartoonist draws caricature of Robber

I knew this would happen someday

AFTER a burglar broke into caricaturist Bill "Weg" Green's Heathmont home on Sunday, it took the 82-year-old just seconds to draw his attacker.

Fifteen minutes later, patrolling police caught a suspect — and Mr Green's drawing proved they had the right man.

found via Comics Reporter.

New Toon: 50 Cent infomercial

I've been wanting to comment on 50 Cent's rampant commercialism ever since I heard of his new brand of water. I would call him a sell out, but that would imply he had integrity at some point. Apparently in the rap community making your living selling crack to people in your community, then using that money to buy guns, cars, and diamonds and gold that starving Africans mined from the Earth gives you credibility.

50 Cent is everything that is wrong with rap. Besides the obligatory mysogyny, homophobia, and materialism, he seems to be the rapper that made it cool to start beef and shoot people again. I thought after Biggie and Tupac rappers chilled out a bit and realized dying prevented them from making more horrible albums.

click to enlarge

Best Movie Ever

Fuck Chucky.

Fuck Jason.

Fuck Freddy, Michael Myers, Leatherface,the Leprechaun, and everyone else.

The Gingerdead Man is hands down the best horror movie of the last, oh, three centuries.



I saw it last night and I must say it's in the running for Best Picture at the Oscars. Brokeback Mountain watch out! And yes, you read that right, Gary Busey is the Gingerdead Man. He plays an insane killer who gets sent to the electric chair, but when his ashes are delivered to his mysterious mother, she mixes them into a secret batch of gingerbread seasoning for the unsuspecting local bakery. 15-20 minutes at 450˚later the GingerDead Man is born.

This movie contains the greatest plot hole of any horror film I've ever seen (besides cookie dough coming alive in the form of a 7 inch tall cussing maniac with super strength). The people in the bakery just stay there the whole movie as the GingerDead Man kills them one by one. Are they trapped? In the middle of a desert? No. They are in the middle of a city. They could walk out the front door, get in their car, drive home, and go to sleep. Why this never happens is a bit of a mystery, but it does allow for the movie to take place. And for that I am grateful.

Writing On Politics

Here's a new illustration for the SF Weekly's book review section. The subject is writing about politics, which is the topic of whatever book this illustration is for. It's one of my first times putting half-tone patterns in my stuff. I like the way it looks so I'll probably do it again. click on them to enlarge.

New Toon: Learn How To Laugh!

I didn't think it would come this soon, but it has. The point where actual news reports are so ridiculous, so insanely funny , that I cannot exaggerate them any further. Nothing can be added to make it more absurd.

What then is my role as a satirist? Am I to just transcribe reality itself and count on it being mind-bendingly comical?

Such is the case with this cartoon. All information is taken from this USA Today article.

click to enlarge

Recent Comics That Rule

Masheka Wood celebrates MLK Day.

Lloyd Dangle muses on the limits of Presidential powers.

August Pollak revisits the history crying in the courts. Apparently Mrs. Alito is in good company.

And, unfortunately, Steve Notely looses points with me for making fun of the golden nectar that it SoyMilk. But if you're are a soymilk hating, puss-filled, cow milk drinking radical you'll probably enjoy the comic.

New Toon: PNAC: The Divine Iron

The second Products For A New American Century comic. I was planning on doing something on Alito, but became too disgusted by the whole thing to even work up the energy to write one. Anyway, it looks like the Democrats won't bother to mount a filibuster, so I'll be able to do comics on him for the next thirty years. Or at least until they come for me. I have some other non-political cartoons coming before the end of the month, so keep checking back as I desperately try to fulfill my pledge to do two a week for the rest of January.

click to enlarge

Cash Rules Everything Around Me Shirts

Only one medium size Johnny Cash shirt remains. I'll probably make a few more someday, just not sure when, so if you wear a medium, go here to pick it up.

New Toon: Troubling Legal Question of Colonial America

click to enlarge

My Alito comic from a few weeks ago was posted in Cagle's gathering of Alito comics, which led to me being swamped with e-mail today. Here's a sample:

Just went thru cartoons posted on MSN regarding the Alito Supreme Court nomination. While I am an independent who considers himself a moderate and most certainly no fan of George W. Bush I must say about your supposed cartoon, I am not sure whether you a trying to make a social comment or be funny, but you fall woefully short on both counts. You do manage however to show a complete lack of any taste and waste the public's time by reading that rag you drew.

-Timothy E. Smith

I love how since he doesn't like the comic it's a "supposed cartoon".

Mark Davis writes an intersting criticism:

jr. high art work. Go back to school and learn to draw.

David Teran:

You left wing zealots are really incredible! A child cannot even get an aspirin without the parent’s consent….and yet you’re all for them being able to get an abortion without mom and dad even knowing what’s going on. Go figure!

If America knew what goes on in an abortion…it would be illegal and punishable by prison in a matter of weeks. Just try doing one of those to a dog and see what happens to you.

Where in that comic do I talk about parental notification for minors?

Get On The Scene...

One of the best parts of being a freelancer is you get paid to draw stuff like this for the SF Weekly's Dept. Of What The Fuck? The only guidelines I was given was to draw James Brown as a sex machine.

click to enlarge

Archives!

Finally, I took some time to figure out the archives. All the links don't work, but for the most part you can permalink to a post here should the spirit move you. It only took me 14 months to get comments and archives working, so you can bet all the bugs will be fixed in no time!

Looking through some of the old posts I found some comics of varying degrees of quality you may have missed if you haven't been reading for a while.

• copyright free cartoon
• Random Comics
• Karl Rove and the Cartoon That Never Was
  

New Toon: Scandal!

click to enlarge

New Toon: Being A Democrat

Democrats these days. Hate 'em.

click to enlarge

Lipstick

Here is the first post of what I hope to be a regular thing from now on here at the Bors Blog; posting my creative process for illustrations.

This is for an article on campusprogress.org, Red Lips, No Veil, about an Iranian-American student who grew up in a conservative Muslim family and used lipstick, among other things, to dissent from the strict rules of appearance and behavior she was subjected to by her father.



I don't have any sketches or pencils to post for this, but here are the two sets of inks I did. Usually, I will create a second layer of inks on a piece of tracing paper, which create the main fields of shading. It gives them a more organic feel instead of creating them entirely in photoshop. Plus you can feather the edges easily.




Then I'll combine the layers in photoshop adding the fields of color to the inks I want to change from black.



Initially, I went with this color scheme. I was trying for a sexy, defiant look so I thought that a purple veil and the green background matching her eyes made that happen a little more.

What's coming from me in 2006

• Two strips a week this month!
• I'll be posting lots of illustrations on this blog since that's mostly what I do all day. When possible I want post my whole creative process: sketches, pencils, inks, color, and changes.
  
• Attitude3: The Subversive Online Cartoonist Edited by Ted Rall will be out in June 2006. It'll have interviews and cartoons from 21 alternative cartoonists including August Pollack, Ben Smith, Rob Balder, and yours truly.
  
• I'll be appearing on two really cool podcasts at some point this year.
  
• Possibly awesome project with the Free Press about the 2004 election.
• More non-Idiot Box comics--one pagers and short stories--are in the works.
• Other stuff I can't think of now.
  

New Toon: Best Reporting Awards

First, I'm going to try this out so there aren't any garauntees, but I'm going to do two strips a week this month.

This week I had to ridicule Farris Hassan, the rich kid who flew to Iraq to write a paper with such nuggets of wisdom as "There is a struggle in Iraq between good and evil...Those terrorists are not human but pure evil." In the last panel I wish I would have done it a little differently. I attribute three quotes to him without specifying that the first two are real and the third is made up. I don't say that any of them are real in the strip, which will probably lead people to believe that I'm exaggerating what he wrote.

click to enlarge