Idiot Box on the Cabbage Report

There's this cool video podcast show produced here in Canton, Ohio called the General Cabbage Report that focuses on local artists, cultural events, and other things worth mentioning. Check out their latest episode which features a short interview with me.

Another episode worth checking out is Don Dixon's musings on what it means to be 'Made in America.' Pretty funny.

New Toon: Flag Factoids

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What can I really say about the Flag Burning Amendment that failed to pass by one vote? I've already had someone write me saying that if flag burning is going to be legal then so should depicting Muhammad an having and Indians logo. Those things, of course, are legal and not being called the "most important thing the Senate could be doing." Did you know if you like this you can buy a print of this comic or even the original? Give your overly patriotic buddy a present!

I was going to include a joke about flags that are made in China, but it didn't make the cut. The latest cover of the New Yorker goes for it.

Brian McFadden also comments on our Awesome Flag.

New strip to start in the Seattle Stranger

Haven't been posting much lately as I have been busy starting some new projects. One of them is that I will be doing a second weekly strip, starting next week, that will run in the Seattle Stranger. The subject matter will be the same as Idiot Box, but in a smaller three panel format. The strip is slated to run "at least a month, maybe the rest of the summer, maybe longer" to paraphrase the Editor. I'll be posting them here for you every week. Not sure which day yet, so check back. I'm looking forward to trying out a new format and since I was planning on doing two Idiot Box strips for the rest of the Summer this works out great.

New Illustration

This was a cover for last week's Orlando Weekly. The story was called "Armageddon For the Religious Right" about how the Religious Right is poised to lose power in the next election.

We wanted some kind of apocalyptic setting and I sent back these three sketches. I imagined the crazy wearing a sign to have the headline and other text on it.

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The Art Director sent it back with a suit on the guy instead of priest robes since we were talking about the religious right, not religion in general. Then to make a better composition I moved the guy up and sloped the hill downward. It also created a large area for text that wouldn't interfere with the image. In the print version his head and a comet were popped in front of the text.

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And the final:

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Repost: How A Bill Becomes A Law become Suspended

I posted this comic I did for Free Inquiry earlier this month without realizing it was incomplete. For some reason the fourth panel was missing a word. So, for the record:

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Cancel. The. Account.

Phone and internet providers these days are becoming notorious for billing you after you cancel their services. One man decided to record his phone call with AOL while trying to cancel his account. Listen.

Heard it today on the Thom Hartman program.

New Toon: Al Qaeda Suicude Offensive

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The latest threat to our Freedom? Detainees committing suicide.

New Illustration

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This is the latest cover of the Free Press, a small quarterly publication in Columbus, Ohio. I don't usually do illustration in my cartooning style, but the material called for it. Blackwell is behind in the polls in his bid for Governor and we are all keeping an eye out for a repeat of the blatant cheating he orchestrated during the 2004 election. He has been hard at work since then outfitting every county he can with Diebold voting machines, manufactured just a few miles from where I live.

Due to the fact that no mainstream network or journalist would look into the 2004 anomalies, it was actually Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman of the Free Press--a tiny little paper with no budget--that did much of the initial reporting used in Mark Crispin Millar's book and Robert F. Kennedy's Rolling Stone article.

New Illustration

This was a cover for the Phoenix New Times for the story "The Case Of The Two Abigails" by Paul Ruben. It involves two children named Abagail in the Phoenix area that died under suspicious circumstances. One was strangled with an electric cord in her crib, while the other was suffocated in her toy chest. Both were in their Father's care at the time. The first incident was found to be a freak accident. The other is still under investigation, but the Father is suspected of murder. Allegedly, he stuffed his own daughter in her toy chest after disturbing him during an intense session of Metroid.

Yes, she wanted the same level of attention he was giving some blinking lights on a screen and was killed for it.

The Art Director called for the shocking image of finding this girl in her toy chest.

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We went with number 3, but pushed it to the corner to leave more space for the Title, cover copy, and silhouette of a noose. The girl who was killed with the noose managed to pull an electrical cord through her crib bars and resembles the shadow in these roughs. We decided that the girl's face should be covered with a stuffed animal--a single lifeless eye staring out.

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The crib shadow seemed busy and didn't communicate what was going on quickly. It was decided a shadow of a baby actually hanging should be used (a little more sensational, but it certainly gets the point across).

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As I prepared for the illustration there was a whole slew of things that were created separately and combined later in Photoshop. I drew the Bugs and Tweety characters and created the patterns for the trunk in Illustrator. The silhouette was inked on a separate sheet of paper, also.

After I colored the drawing and combined all the elements, I created the floorboards in Illustrator and added some bruises and scratches on the girl.

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New Toon: The #2 Man in Al Qaeda

Sorry for the lack of posting. I got slammed with work upon returning from MoCCA. I've got some good ideas I don't want to go to waste, so if all goes to plan I'll be posting two comics next week.

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I haven't lost any sleep now that Al-Zarqawi is dead, but I haven't slept any easier either. And while Zarqawi was not the actual #2 man in Al Qaeda, I felt it necessary to address this strange trend in the Global War On Terror to focus on a single terrorist as our target. He was the #1 man in Al Qaeda in Iraq which made him the--what? #4 in the world? Not sure exactly how it works, but I know the #1 man, Osama Bin Laden, is virtually ignored.

The death of Zarqawi is the latest victory/turning of the corner/critical step in the War in Iraq that won't change the outcome. Watch out, I hear the next six months are a crucial time for Iraq!

Reminder: Attitude 3 signing in Cleveland

This Thursday the 15th, I will be signing copies of Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonist with Brian McFadden of Big Fat Whale at Mac's Backs on Coventry Road in Cleveland (google map) starting at 6pm. If you need more incentive to get out of your house than two obscure cartoonists, we will be set up smack in the middle of the Coventry Street Fair where there will be music, merchants, and food.

You can also order a copy of Attitude 3 from my store and I will put a sketch in it.

New Toon: A Honeypot of Good News

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Yes, Iraq is just chugging along quite well, what with all the massacres and whatnot. I saw today Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed. So that's actually some good news in the I'm sure someone has replaced him already sense.

Strange how any mention of the Haditha massacre--reporting on it, expressing sorrow, merely mentioning it--is met with complaints from the right that we are A) pre-judging the Marines, and B) helping the enemy win. Of course, the uncharged detainees of Guantanamo were not pre-judged. Rush Limbaugh should generally be ignored, but his remarks capture the right's sentiments pretty well:

This Haditha story, this Haditha incident, whatever, this is it folks, this is the final big push on behalf of the Democratic Party, the American left, and the Drive-By Media to destroy our effort to win the war in Iraq.

It's not the Marines fault for rounding up and executing innocent men, women, and children. It's the Democrats and the media for reporting/feeling ashamed of it. Got it?

Most people are suprisingly understanding of what those Marines did. I've heard people tell me "It's hard to say what you would do under those conditions...they are under a lot of stress", and "Let's not rush to judge them." I'm quite sure if Iraqis were occupying America and rounded up 24 innocents to shoot them in the head, we'd be understanding of their plight.

MoCCA Reminder

I will be at the MoCCA Art Festival June 10-11 signing copies of Attitude 3 at the NBM table with Brian McFadden and August Pollack. Stop by on Saturday - 11:30-1, 2:30-4 or Sunday - 11:30-1, 2:30-4

If you aren't going, you can still buy signed copies of Attitude 3 and my Bodaciously Valued Comic Pack in the store. The BVCP collects Attitude 3 and four of my self-published work for a total of 272 pages of comics for a staggeringly low $18.95.

"It's not happening here, but it's happening now"

That's the tagline to Amnesty International's great new ad campaign.

How A Bill Becomes A Law become Suspended

A comic I did for the current issue of Free Inquiry, a great Humanist magazine.

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New Toon: Congressional Injustice Barometer

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It's really amazing how concerned Republicans and Democrats got about what is and what isn't constitutional after a Congressman was found with 90,000 in his freezer during an office raid. Dennis Hastert, who has spent the last five years smearing Democrats as Anti-American Al Qaeda sympathizers, lept to the defense of Jefferson saying:

"The Founding Fathers were very careful to establish in the Constitution a Separation of Powers to protect Americans against the tyranny of any one branch of government. They were particularly concerned about limiting the power of the Executive Branch."

Should they be concerned about how the raid was executed? I don't know, probably. But if they are suddenly concerned with the expanding Executive Branch, Guantanamo Bay, wars of aggression, Abu Ghraib, Jose Padilla, rendition, secret CIA prisons, torture, signing statements, and NSA wiretapping are a few issues that come to mind when I think of what the Founding Fathers would not have wanted.