New Toon: Explosive Awareness Campaign

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Stopping the Genocide in Sudan seems futile. The U.N. is useless and Bush can't be bothered by it. Even if Democrats take the White House two years from now they aren't likely to commit Americans troops to another country. So we all just sit around while everyone dies...and I make silly ironic shirts about it that do nothing.

Bringing about awareness of what's going on in Darfur is good, but I think the money would be better spent if everyone pooled resources and bought Sudanese villagers a few dozen crates of AK-47s and rocket launchers to protect themselves with. Cause nobody else is going to do it.

Killed Cartoons

I recently picked up Killed Cartoons: Casualties In The War On Expression Edited by David Wallis, who previously Edited Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot To Print. The book features killed comics and the stories behind their death, including comics from CWA members Ted Rall, Mikhaela Reed, and Keith Knight.

Sprinkled in between the comics are a few killed illustrations that are extremely tame and shouldn't have been included. But I guess I'm a little biased as to why--I submitted the one cartoon of mine that was killed but it didn't make the cut. In fact, many of the cartoons themselves are tame. It's is a great resource for those interested in political cartooning, but don't prepare to be blown away by the controversial nature of the comics. This book is really a testament to timid Editors and depressing to an artist who sees the various offenses you can't get away with on an Editorial page.

War Is Boring #7

Read it here.

Readers React!

An anonymous fan gets my Janitor/CEOs comics all wrong. I'd apologize but for not being clear enough,, but everybody else seemed to get it. Plus they're an asshole.

If crayon scribblers had real jobs, they wouldn't be
so quick to poke fun at people who perform hard and
unpleasant work and then must endure rude barbs from
those who think themselves superior.

There hasn't been a decent joke in your strip in
weeks. Your art compares favorably to most 3rd
graders. The board is forcing you out, you've been
replaced by someone with a concept of, and compassion
for workers, a junkyard guard dog.

Your severance pay is a box of brown crayons and
appropriate media for your idea of humor.. a case of
Pampers, you eliteist (sic) asshole.

Longtime correspondent Lloyd Hillstrand writes:

Winner after Winner! That's what we Bring to our Readers!

What happens when that perfect small cap issue releases astounding news
and gets a massive PR campaign behind it? It Takes Off!!!

Irwin Resources (IWRS)
Last $0.50
Target $1.50

Do not miss this one. These small caps Really Fly when people take
notice, and Believe us they are going to take notice this Friday!

Thanks Lloyd!

New Toon: Micro-Management

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Sudan Is For Lovers Shirts

I just got word that the finished shirts are being shipped my way so I should have them in a couple of days. I'm going ahead and opening up the sales for them in the store so go buy one.

Cartoonists Speak

Cagle's blog has started a series of audio interviews with cartoonists explaining their work. The latest two were M.e. Cohen and Andy Singer talking about his transportation comics.

New Illustration: Earth Corps

I have an illustration in the latest issue of The Utne Reader for an article by the magazine's Founder Eric Utne and Carol Bellamy on Earth Corps, an organization the authors are founding to act as a Global Peace Corps with members from around the world. The article can be found on the Earth Corps website here.

Volunteers would work to monitor and reverse global warming, clean up polluted rivers and toxic waste sites, teach basic computer skills and business practices to the recipients of micro-credit loans, provide information and medical care to people at risk of HIV-AIDS infection, and so forth.

They wanted an something showing a Peaceful Army or group of diverse people helping the Earth in some way. I tried a few different things.

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And here's the final:

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New Toon: AIDS Maverick

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I was pretty happy with my McCain and Coburn caricatures in this. Hopefully they make up for the horrible one of Gore I have coming Thursday.

McCain's recent answer to a question about condoms and HIV was amazing in that he was caught off guard without a prepared answer for the Christian Right. Of course McCain knows condoms stop the spread of HIV. He just can't say that.

The transcript is really worth reading in its entirety:

Reporter: “Should U.S. taxpayer money go to places like Africa to fund contraception to prevent AIDS?”

Mr. McCain: “Well I think it’s a combination. The guy I really respect on this is Dr. Coburn. He believes – and I was just reading the thing he wrote– that you should do what you can to encourage abstinence where there is going to be sexual activity. Where that doesn’t succeed, than he thinks that we should employ contraceptives as well. But I agree with him that the first priority is on abstinence. I look to people like Dr. Coburn. I’m not very wise on it.”

(Mr. McCain turns to take a question on Iraq, but a moment later looks back to the reporter who asked him about AIDS.)

Mr. McCain: “I haven’t thought about it. Before I give you an answer, let me think about. Let me think about it a little bit because I never got a question about it before. I don’t know if I would use taxpayers’ money for it.”

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.”

Q: “But you would agree that condoms do stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Would you say: ‘No, we’re not going to distribute them,’ knowing that?”

Mr. McCain: (Twelve-second pause) “Get me Coburn’s thing, ask Weaver to get me Coburn’s paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I’ve never gotten into these issues before.”

It's That Time Again...

The time where I ask you, dear reader, for your help. If you enjoy reading my comics every week here for free, there are two things you can do to ensure they keep appearing and I make enough money to keep this website running.

Write the Editor of your local altweekly. I can't stress this enough. Please if you live in a city that has a free weekly paper and you enjoy my strips, take a moment to write their Editor and tell them. Maybe send them a link to the site. Their e-mail should be relatively easy to find in the paper's Masthead or on their website (this will help). Many times Editors only receive mail when people are bothered enough by something to write in. One e-mail could go a long way.

Buy something from the store. You have to spend money for this one, but you get cool things in return. I have cheap collections of my strips not available on the site and shirts I made myself for a mere five dollars. Also, copies of Attitude 3: The Subversive Online Cartoonist can be purchased. It has interviews and cartoons from 21 web cartoonists including myself and I'll do a little sketch in it for you.

New Toon: If Janitors were like CEOs 2

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Here is the second part of this comic. I'm sick and don't have much desire to write so I'll refer you to Jim Hightower on Hank McKinnell, the inspiration for this comic:

For the past five years, he's been the top dog at Pfizer Inc. On his watch, this drug giant has seen its stock price plummet by 40 percent and has come under federal investigation for its marketing practices. So, last year, Pfizer's board forced McKinnell into early retirement – i.e., they gave him the boot.

But what a cushy boot it was, padded with an unbelievable puffiness of dollar bills! For starters, Hank was handed a lump sum severance of nearly $12 million. Then he was given some $6 million dollars in stock grants, plus $2 million as a bonus payment. Yes, a bonus for failure! Also, he was paid some $900,000 for unused vacation time and for benefits he would have received had he not been... well, fired.

And here's an especially sweet one: McKinnell, 63 years old, is to get an annual pension of $6.6 million. That's 6.6 million every years until he dies! Hank's total "go-away" package amounts to more than $180 million.

I don't have a pension so go to the store for my strip collections and cool shirts.

Sunshine Week

Sunshine week is the annual week where awareness is raised about open government in the hopes of someday actually having one. View a gallery of this year's comics here, including an older comic of mine.

New ACLU comic

Read my new one, A Legal Guide to the War on Terror.

New Illustration

The Texas Observer hired me to draw their cover last month (my first cover for them is here). The cover story focused on Texas death penalty cases being reviewed by the Supreme Court and how they might rule now that Bush has had two appointments. This was supposed to be printed at the beginning of February but right before press time Molly Ivins died, leading to them putting out a Tribute issue.

There were a lot of elements they wanted included and it was difficult to figure out a way to get everything in. I had to show the "Texas Death Machine" with prisoners entering alive and leaving dead but they also needed to show that the judges were responsible for their fate. I tried a few different things:

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Elements from the first and last sketch were then combined into this

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This is the illustration I initially turned into them. I think it's one of my more successful illustrations and I did some experimenting to get a new effect (for me) in the background.

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The Editors felt the red was too aggressive and overpowering so they asked me to tone down the colors. This is the version that was printed.

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Atheist Cabal in Congress grows to 1

The conspiracy theory of Bill O' Reilly and most right-wing Christians is that secular humanists are waging a secret war to turn America away from God.

In fact, the Secular Humanist's tentacles are so far reaching that it's 2007 and a Liberal Congressman from the Bay Area can now feel comfortable admitting to not believing in an invisible man in the sky.

Secular groups Monday applauded a public acknowledgment by Rep. Pete Stark that he does not believe in a supreme being, making the Fremont Democrat the first member of Congress — and the highest-ranking elected official in the U.S. — to publicly acknowledge not believing in God.

I imagine there are some others but this poll at the end of the article illustrates why they don't admit to not believing in the supernatural claims of old books.

A USA Today/Gallup poll last month found that 45% of respondents said they would vote for a "well qualified" presidential candidate who was an atheist. Ninety-five percent said they would vote for a Catholic candidate, 92% a Jewish candidate and 72% a Mormon candidate.

War Is Boring #6

Read it here.

Coulter

Got to agree with Ted on the effort to get The Universal Press Syndicate to drop Ann Coulter's columns:

These campaigns, whether directed against Coulter or myself, are wrong. Censor the other side and you justify censoring your own side. If people are upset about Ann Coulter's anti-gay slur against John Edwards, they need to ridicule her.

MediaMatters has a page set up with the contact information of Editors who print Coulter. Papers should decide for themselves to drop her columns because she writes trash, not because a bunch of Liberals write newspaper Editors in towns they don't even live in complaining about columns they don't even read.

Update: Rall has an interesting open letter to HRC and Media Matters here.

comics

Check out the cartoon playground at funnytimes.com

New Toon: If Janitors were like CEOs

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I've never had a two part comic before so I thought I'd give it a shot.

I think CEOs are more important to a company than janitors, just not 425 times more important. I'll have more on this after I post part two next week.

Check out the store for my strip collections and cool shirts.

War Is Boring #5

Read it here.

Stay Safe

If you spot a terrorist arrow, pin it against the wall with your shoulder.

View other safety tips for the War On Terror here.

Bathroom writings

Spotted last night in the Men's restroom of the Tugboat Brewery:

"History will absolve me." - Fidel Castro

"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception." - Groucho Marx

"Peace is the absence of opposition to socialism." - Karl Marx

"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." - Matt Groening

Coulter

See her remark of the week here first.

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APE

I will be tabling with members of CWA at Alternative Press Expo April 21-22. We'll be signing copies of the Attitude anthologies and collections of our strips. Hopefully, I'll have my new shirts by then. The confirmed attendees are:

• Ted Rall
• Keith Knight - The K Chronicles
• Shannon Wheeler - How to be Happy/Too Much Coffee Man
• Stephanie McMillan - Minimum Security
• August Pollak - Some Guy With a Website
• Mikhaela Reid -The Boiling Point
• Ben Smith - Fighting Words
  
• Masheka Wood -Not Just Knee Deep

New Toon: The Infectious Optimism of Barack Obama

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It's not that I don't like Obama. It's just that his optimistic tones are sometimes too much for a hardened cynic like myself. I'll give him credit though, he's the only Presidential candidate who seems like he might be able to name a contemporary music group other than one he's trying censor. It probably has to do with not being in Washington very long. He's also sparkly clean and articulate!

And on the Obama/Hillary spat earlier, I know it's been duly noted by now, but I love how after David Geffen said of the Clintons, "Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it’s troubling,” they lied with such ease, it was troubling:

While Senator Obama was denouncing slash and burn politics yesterday, his campaign's finance chair was viciously and personally attacking Senator Clinton and her husband.

David Geffen isn't his campaign finance chair nor an employee of the campaign in any way.

Check out the store for my strip collections.