Illustration Friday

A man has a ...problem.

Bootyquake

So an Iranian cleric says scantily-clad women cause Earthquakes. Makes sense, considering how Iran is one of the most earthquake-prone countries on earth and also one where women dress conservatively. Haha! Silly fundamentalist Muslim. Its not like inane, unscientific garbage like that is given equal weight in our media.

Kim Jong Il Comix

Here's the third installment of the strips I'm doing with Kyle Mizokami at warisboring.com

Bolg issues

Blogger is changing at the end of this month and I'm going to have to make a switch - probably to WordPress. Unfortunately I've had zero time to look into this and am not sure that I'll get around to it before the deadline. I'm going to try to keep there from being an interruption, but realistically it will probably happen as work has piled up considerably. As far as I know (which is not much) I'll be able to keep the same url for the blog, so stick around!

( . Y . ) <=3

The Supreme Court is making me nervous. Not only because it's stacked with four right-wing radicals, but nine people who seem a little out of touch with technology. DC Dicta's reporting on a sexting case last week got a lot of attention. All the justices seemed a bit befuddled.* Here's Scalia, unfamiliar with the technology presumably because it wasn't mentioned by name in the Constitution.

“Could Quon print these spicy little conversations and send them to his buddies?” Scalia asked.

Yes. Usually when I have a sexually explicit e-mail or text I want to share with my buddies, I print them out and mail them. Or, if I want to cut down on transmission time, simply fax them over.

*To be fair to Clarence Thomas, he never asks questions so no one really knows what he thinks. It would also be naive to assumed he doesn't know about the latest ways you can sexually harass people.

Wednesday: Shakin' Your Booty

Mailbag Douchebag - Armed and Dangerous Edition

Racists scored a huge victory today with Arizona's racist immigration law. A&D is a racist who isn't too into the comic I did on it this week.

Bors,

Who's side are you on? Make way you communist sympathizer, we are on the MARCH from SEA TO SHINING SEA! So quit your illegal alien sympathizing and shut the FUCK UP. Our revolution will be victorious, and we will reclaim the lands which are rightfully ours.

Step down pussy.

-Armed and Dangerous.

Oh, best part. Subject line: "Bors you Unamerican Piece of Shit." Thanks for writing Mr. Dangerous. Please don't shoot me in my unamerican pussy.

Illustration Friday

Gross woman at the salad bar.

Just Musing

Josh Marshall:

Walking back from picking up my daily salad I was thinking, what are the most improbable professions or job titles? I'm going to start the bidding with "celebrity pathologist". Whaddya got? Any others?

"Online staff cartoonist."

Brown Out

“By and large, language is a tool
for concealing the truth.” - George Carlin

Arizona passed a "Show Your Papers, Please" law to target brown people for harassment. I'll be happy to see them kick all the illegals out and the white retirees get off their asses to wash dishes and do landscaping.

Mailbag Douchebag

Dan F. writes in with some erudite foreign policy observations:

Matt,
how on earth can you compare Israel and Iran?
The difference is Israel has had nukes for yeras [sic] no proble[sic], as some[sic] as Iran gets just one they will use it!!!
Wake up dummy

I guess Dan wuld[sic] have filed[sic] out the forth[sic] panel this way:

Phone-In Awards

John Sherffius' gun cartoon wins the quick draw contest.

Fill in the blank

Consistency in foreign policy is to America as Lady Gaga is to ________.

Here's something I captured from Drudge's homepage this week.



Outrageous, no? Look, if a few bottles of Bourbon are needed to get everyone relaxed and negotiating shit then I'll gladly pay for it myself. Better than footing the trillion dollar bill for the foreign policy of a belligerent dry drunk.

Psst

Serial plagiarist Ben Domenech has been getting fired and failing upward for years. (Which August speaks of here.) He made is all the way up the media ladder to a CBS blog where he asserted (it's cross-posted here) that potential Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is gay, a rumor that brought him under fire for his non-standards in the realm of facts.

He wrote a pretty weak defense at HuffPo:

I erroneously believed that Ms. Kagan was openly gay not because of, as Stein describes it, a "whisper campaign" on the part of conservatives, but because it had been mentioned casually on multiple occasions by friends and colleagues -- including students at Harvard, Hill staffers, and in the sphere of legal academia -- who know Kagan personally.

Yes, I believe that is called... wait - what is the term? Oh Right. A whisper campaign. I guess since they spoke at normal volume and didn't literally cup their hand and speak softly into Ben's ear there was no "whisper" and it wasn't a "campaign" in the sense that no one started a KaganIsGayPAC with printed literature, a twitter feed and a Board of Directors, but publishing unconfirmed rumors you overhear to elevate it to "fact" in conservative circles is not really what a journalist does. I'm guessing that Ben is a little confused about the definition of that word as well.

Maybe he should play "Telephone." It's a popular game where journalists call people and have them speak on the record. But I wouldn't expect a gay immigrant voodoo priest* like Domenech to do that.

*Overheard at a party

I don't know Karzai, but I know Karazy!

There were a lot of Karzai-bashing cartoons in the last week, but none so...so... so goddamn crazy as Pat Oliphant's, who advocated using a nuclear weapon to assassinate him!

Monday: Choose Your Own Foreign Policy!

Illustration Friday

A hit and run at the airport.

Kim Jong Il Comix

Here's the second installment of the strips I'm doing with Kyle Mizokami at warisboring.com

An unrecognizable America

Retiring Justice Stevens was the first Supreme Court appointment made after Roe v. Wade was decided. Boy, that must have been rough. Linda Greenhouse:

I obtained the transcript of his Senate confirmation hearing to see what kinds of questions the senators asked the nominee about abortion. He had no record on the issue, and no one knew what he thought about it. To my surprise, I found no questions at all, and I read the transcript through a second time just to be sure. The Democratic-controlled Senate approved Justice Stevens by a vote of 98-0 three weeks after his nomination, and after five minutes of debate.

Or... not.

Happy Tax Day!

It's important to pay your taxes. Roads and bombs don't grow on trees.

Here's a cartoon from a few years ago I remembered last night while toiling away in TurboTax. Cross your fingers and hope no right-wing terrorists attack America today.

Par for course

If an Apache helicopter ever strafes a crowd at the Masters, you can bet there will be a serious national discussion about the Rules Of Engagement. Until then, if you happen to be an Iraqi driving your children to school and come across a journalist in the road barely clinging to life who you think should be driven to, you know, a hospital in the spacious van you own, well, better luck next time. (If you survive.)

On this whole Wikileaks video I'm hearing a lot of apologia from folks across the spectrum. Everybody is very understanding of the complex moral issues involved. Just flip the script to reveal the hypocrisy: The Iraq army mows down unarmed US civilian contractors and reporters while laughing and dismiss the small children they shot with a shrug. "All by the books," says the Iraq military. Que American Media Firestorm with non-stop soundbites on the hopelessly corrupt government of Iraq while cameras show the devastated relatives of the slain tying ribbons to trees while sobbing uncontrollably.

As for the assassination thing Obama is doing... let's all pretend we wouldn't be ripping our hair out if Bush did the exact same thing.

Friday: Karzai

More Fiore

A great interview with Fiore over at the Comic Riffs blog. I found this part interesting:

So did the Chronicle nominate him, then?

"No, I nominated myself," says Fiore, who began regularly drawing for SFGate.com in 2001. "More directly, my wife [Chelsea Donovan] did. She did most of the nitty-gritty work."

Fiore says he's glad to have won the Pulitzer for the Chronicle. "I'd hooked up with the Chron before the Merc-News -- they were my first client, running my animated work in 1999," he says. "They were happy to see me come back."

Man, sounds like the Chronicle owes Chelsea a Thank You card.

Pulitzer Sur-Prize!

Pretty awesome blog post title, no? I'm referring to the pleasant news that Mark Fiore was awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in editorial cartooning yesterday.

The win really is notable on a few different levels. First, Mark doesn't suck. But beyond that, his portfolio consisted entirely of animated cartoons - a first for a winner and probably the only entry like that. Mark, a former staff cartoonist, is now a go-it-alone freelancer without even a syndicate behind him. He's also what you might call an "altie" in that his humor and visual style seem to be derived from the present day and is not freakishly anachronistic. All in all good news!

Now, my colleague Jen Sorensen believes she had a hand in Mark's win through jinxation. I suppose my Machiavellian ways are so subtle that others can take credit for the win, but I'm here to tell Jen that it is I who created the circumstances for Mark's victory... as this photograph from the AAEC convention proves. For the price of a beer or two, this advice can be yours as well!

Unaltered photograph taken by JP Trostle

Duke David

Matt Taibbi destroys the pompous David Brooks.

(Found via Tom Tomorrow, whose latest cartoon on the Internet is worth checking out as well.)

Fundraiser Update

Last week I posted a fundraiser to get much needed moola to help promote my strip to newspapers this year. I sold two of the three pieces. Now I need a valiant reader to step up and purchase the remaining pope drawing below for $40. Newspapers still pay money and it takes a little bit of it to make sure editors see my work.

I'm trying to make sure I can keep doing this for the duration, so if you are interested in helping out - and in getting a condom-topped pope drawing in the process - send me and e-mail!

SS Pride

Bob McDonnell doesn't care about black people. But he's a conservative so that shouldn't come as a surprise.

The GOP seems more invested in the Civil War than the Confederate Tchotchke Industrial Complex that makes all those dumb ass bumper stickers for hillbillies. 150 years after the Civil War ended slavery, Governors of former slave states don't forget to mention it while proclaiming "awareness" of the Civil War. It's done on purpose as one part of the larger GOP strategy: convincing the most privileged class of human beings on earth - White Americans - that they are actually part of a minority that has been horribly wronged for centuries.

Pat Buchanan, MSNBC's senior political racist, was getting fired up about the slavery-ending war on Hardball. Buchanan, a war crime apologist for any atrocity ever committed against a brown person, calls General Sherman the "great terrorist" of the Civil War for all the pillaging he did. This is the type of person who says black people need to get over the past.

Pat "Both Sides Were Right" Buchanan also writes: "Slavery was not the cause of this war. Secession was..." Logic 101, Pat. Why were they seceding? For fun?

Wednesday: Tiger Awareness Month

Harshing their mellow

It sure doesn't take much to get Europeans to strike. I guess when you depend on your employer to provide beer at all hours of the day instead of a minimal health care plan, there's a different dynamic.

Hundreds of Carlsberg [brewery] workers have gone on strike for a second day after a 'beer ban' was imposed by bosses.

Up to 800 employees walked out of the firm's Copenhagen factory in protest over its decision to allow drinking only at lunchtime.

Illustration Friday

One of those embarrassing asshole dads that goes crazy at his kids sports games...

And an illustration for The Village Voice on schools that teach through video games.

Crying Turd Alert

My editorial cartoon canary died this morning and I knew I had to find the cause. Sure enough, excess levels of methane were found wafting in from Pittsburgh, where Randy Bish dropped a big stinky pile of poop. Not only did he excrete a turdy tear onto his drawing table, or a tear shaped like a state, but a tear-shaped state with a label for those ignorant of geography. This one's a two flusher!

(click here to view)

Randy Bish Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Apr 8, 2010 EditorialCartoonists.com

Worth a try

Graphic novelist James Sturm writes (and draws) a Slate article about his quest to quit the internet.

Kim Jog Il Comix

I've teamed up with warisboring.com contributor Kyle Mizokami to illustrate Kim Jong Il Comix. There will be a few more of these in the coming weeks.

OWNED

Any artist or writer - really anyone in any field - who has ever been asked to labor for free, for exposure, for payoff down the road in some yet-to-be-defined way, should read this exchange between an editor and writer about an "unpaid" book project. I found myself cheering.

Fundraiser

I'm planning on promoting my strip to papers this year and that costs money. Funds are low so I thought I would try to appeal to Bors Blog readers with something more appealing than begging.

So if you would like to help support my work and get an original drawing for it, here's your opportunity. I'm selling the drawings below for $40 a piece. A steal! The first three people who e-mail me can have them, provided you are able to send money through Paypal.

These drawings are india ink on bristol board and approximately 4 x 5 inches. Feel free to state your preference on the drawings as well. Also, if you'd like to commission a different caricature or a larger drawing, you should also contact me for a quote.

It takes money to get these cartoons out there in front of editors and eyeballs - Thanks for considering!

Pissed Off

I thought I'd mark my own comedic territory here with some pee jokes - attempting fart humor would only put me in the gaseous shadow of Grand Master McFadden.

So Dr. Jack Kassell wants anyone who voted for Obama to go elsewhere for urologic care. He won't deny treatment to anyone - how Obamacare of him - but he'd prefer if Democrats fuck off and die of bladder infection before asking for his help, so horrible is health care reform. Having voted overwhelmingly for Obama, I'm sure his African-American patients feel at ease with him treating their UTIs.

Oh, and as it turns out the guy has no idea what the hell he is even talking about.

Liberals are worse!

"That a reckless and depraved liberal elite would set itself up as moral tutor to Pope Benedict XVI is beyond satire." - George Neumayr, editor of the Catholic World Report.

Go read the rest. It's complete with mentions of gay adoptions (apparently bad?), Michael Jackson, Planned Parenthood and NAMBLA. NAMBLA: the group every card-carrying latte liberal supports! (If they're aren't already a member, of course.) You might even say the column is "beyond satire."

The Catholic Church's response to this criminal scandal has been horrible. Blaming gays, secularists, the media and whoever else isn't helping their position. It's typical of conservative Catholics and this pope in particular to lash out against secularists while glossing over their church's failings. (In this case, "failings" is intended to mean "actively covering up a worldwide pedophilia crises for decades.") I'm reminded of their "blame secularists" mentality in this comic from a few years ago...

Turning the burner off

I've been meaning to post about this but various meatworld occurrences have been demanding my attention lately. I'm going to attempt to get back to regular blogging here. We shall see...

Sadly, my friend Mikhaela Reid announced she will cease drawing her weekly political cartoon "The Boiling Point." She cites lack of pay, burnout and the fact that there is a little human growing inside of her.

With that she joins other great cartoonists who have hung up their political cartooning pens (or mouses) in the last year or so, including David Reese, Tim Kreider and Kevin Moore. All of them cite economic conditions as a factor, if not the factor. It's a sad state of affairs when cartoonists like these cannot find enough pay to justify even one cartoon a week while certain hacks I mention here occasionally are paid a full salary to phone in five.

Further negative news is that Salon, one of the only online publications to run - and pay for running - alt-type strips, recently axed most of its lineup, which included "Tom The Dancing Bug" and "The K Chronicles." At this point I'm hoping the iPad really is the savior of mankind and media that it's been hyped to be. I don't mean to post another blog bitching about the State Of Things, but when good cartoonists stop cartooning it should be mentioned (along with the reason why).

To end things on a positive note, the brilliant cartoonist Jen Sorensen was awarded the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism.

Interview

Boston cartoonist John Walsh has an interview with me over at his site.

What kind of research goes into your strips—what books/papers/blog/websites do you read regularly?

I’m basically a news junkie. I work from home so I’m listening to NPR, talk radio, podcasts and audio books when I draw. I’m dipping in and out of the internet all day checking news sites and blogs. Tweeting. I’m doing the tweeting. I even subscribe to the print edition of The Oregonian to stay up on local news (I do local cartoons for them occasionally) and give my eyes a break from the computer. I subscribe to about 12 different magazines. Read books. And then I drink beer and stare at the wall until an idea hits.

Read the rest.

Jesus Vs. Pope

When faced with the opportunity to remove a child rapist from his position of power that he uses to prey on victims, anyone with the slightest hint of morality would do so in a heartbeat - then ask if they could chop his balls off for good measure. Joe Ratzinger would much rather sweep it under the rug so his organization can keep the moral high ground while scribbling encyclicals on the evils of spermicidal lubricant.

Faced with mounting evidence that the Vatican has been actively covering up a child abuse cases for decades, they are choosing to attack the media and portray themselves as victims on par with the persecution faced by Jews. I find it a strange comparison because, unless I'm mistaken, being starved and shot to death in a concentration camp is in no way similar to having newspaper articles written about your child rape fests. Given the unpleasant fact that Ratzinger was goosestepping in the Hitler Youth at the time, it makes for a clumsy comparison.

Meanwhile, the bigoted Bill Donahue of the Catholic League decided this was a great time to blame gays for all this. Just another humble Catholic leader focusing on what really matters here.

Wednesday: Pissed

Sunday Quote

Joe Lieberman on Meet The Press:

Look, we're at war. We were attacked on 9/11. And I think when you're at war, even though this is a different kind of war, people you capture, enemies who are aiming to attack you or have, in fact, attacked you, ought to be tried according to the rules of war. It's not that we're not going to have the rule of law, it's which rule of law.

There are multiple rule of laws to choose from?

Illustration Friday

Some regular patrons at a restaurant are pains in the ass.