The Week in Cartoons, Annotated ( and pet-friendly!)

It's been a week, people, but here they are...

I hope none of you consumed too many pets over the week. I thought about it, but went to sushi instead.

First, let’s look at the Smerconish cartoon…

As the Cheneys endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris last week, I had to be physically restrained from having Too Much Joy. Not so much that I dig the Cheneys (his little Iraq war thing, her fragging of her own sister), but you have to give them credit. They’re not sitting it out.

Not that standing up for the United States Constitution is a heavy lift (I do it all the time), but I do think that they deserve some kudos for really ripping into Trump’s fleshy cheeks, Wyoming-style, and that means…

The Shotgun gag!

Now, I have done variations on this a time or two, but I missed drawing Dick enormously since he’s been out of office. I didn’t even look at a photo. His lopsided sneer is what gets me panting with caricature excitement.

I have two copies of Liz’s book, for some reason, and I paid for both. I do recommend it. But not twice.

People of a certain age will hear the phrase “Liz and Dick”, and not conjure the Cheneys. We will think fondly of the thespian and falling-down-drunk Richard Burton and his wife-not-wife Elizabeth Taylor. When I was a kid, one would see every grocery tabloid rack featuring these folks, smiling, splitting up, reuniting, splitting up, rinse, repeat.

OK, I loved drawing Liz and Dick so much, I did it again for my national Tribune clients. And here it is…

…

This one, as you can see, didn’t feature the shotgun joke, but rather an observation of the oxymoronic nature of Dick Cheney and the word “joy”.

Now, these are pretty simple renderings for me. I like to fuss over my drawings, but sometimes just making them simple makes them work better. A few of my colleagues ( I’ll name one to you in a private email) are so bogged down in microscopic detail that you can’t really tell what the cartoon is about. Not trying to be snide, and I like drawing aircraft landing gear as much as the next OCD editorial cartoonist, but sometimes detail obscures the message. As Bill Mauldin once observed, a good drawing doesn’t save a bad idea.

The Lizdick Story was too much entertainment value for your boy here, so I doubled up. You also note that this week that I not only doubled up on a subject, but quadrupled up.

Here is Contestant One…

:

We fancy Pulitzer Prize Winners © (did I mention that I won the Pulitzer Prize©? I won the Pulitzer Prize ©) don’t like to waste any time, and I got this idea the day before the debate. I figured, well, it’s an online world now, so just get it out there, and if Kankakee wants to run it in print, that’s their problem (no disrespect, Kankakee, and I don’t even know if I run in Kankakee. I guess I like typing “Kankakee”).

Little did I know, as a Pulitzer Prize Winner ©—this joke is aging fast—that the debate would not only be won by Harris, but that it would be an abject, absolute catastrophe for Trump. I was hoping, but my hopes have been dashed so many times, except by The Pulitzer Prizes ©.

OK. I’ll stop.

Anyway, I thought of the Prep/Perp thing, had to bang it out in an hour or so, and have it hit my Tribune deadline, which is 6 PM Central. I think. I need to check. Maybe it’s five.

Moving right along, here’s debate cartoon number two

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Obviously, I had the opportunity to actually see the debate instead of predict it (see also: My Biden Cartoon Before The Debate), so the handshake thing was key. As I watched that, I thought, wow, you’re on offense right off the bat—not like when Biden walked haltingly on to the debate stage on June 27, which now seems like April, 1865.

Here the Harris caricature is not bad: I noticed something about her cheekbones and incorporated that. My Trump caricature in 2016-17 wasn’t what I wanted, either, but familiarity breeds, well, familiarity at least. We’ll get there.

I like to draw his tie backwards, which none of my colleagues seem to be doing.

I used to be obsessed with ties as a young man; I still own virtually all of mine from high school on, and I have been very attentive to tie knots and patterns looking like the way the man actually wears them. For example, Gavin Newsom always wears either a light blue tie and a navy suit or a navy tie and a navy suit. I cannot recall him wearing anything else. A wonderful Minnesota Daily buddy, Bill Peterson, once made this observation: you’re good at ties.

Let’s look at, I’m not kidding, Debate Cartoon Number 3:

Michael Smerconish told me and the other contributors to Smerconish.com (check it out, it’s free, and Smerc is a great guy) we could do another cartoon per week for him. Being the free market capitalist that I am, I was delighted to be able to do that, so I did this one on Wednesday, I think. It all runs together. Here the Harris likeness is a bit stronger, and I used the chin-on-hand pose that she used to great effect the other night. I’ve noticed her hair is lighter than I thought as well.

I did model this after the Trump Baby Dirigible, but didn’t take the time to actually look at a photo of said Trump Baby, being sick it all and wanting to give up. So I winged it. As you can see, it’s a simple but effective pun. I saw my dude Nick Anderson do a very similar drawing, except his was demonstrably different on how he framed it. It is not uncommon for cartoonists to take similar approach on the same day on the same subject, but I am always stunned by how different most cartoonists do their work on the same subject each day.

Let’s now look at Debate Cartoon Number 4:

This is my Sunday San Francisco Chronicle cartoon, which is always fun because it doesn’t have to flow like a regular daily. I get to insert little Easter eggs (that means hidden jokes), mostly inside stuff to amuse myself.

Here my Harris is the way I want her to look. I think I got her, for the moment. Never rest, kids. I’ve also been using the little floating head device recently, so that was fun.

Finally, I did a Chronicle cartoon about State Sen. Scott Wiener’s AI bill, which, if signed, would be way ahead of what the U.S. Congress has done on this subject.

This is a fascinating Only-in-San-Francisco political story. Speaker Emerita Pelosi just knocked off Joe Biden for Kamala Harris, and now Wiener is her next likely Democratic victim. Her daughter, Christine Pelosi, who is also very able person, is being teed up to succeed her mother. Wiener is also a smart, young legislator who’s been angling to succeed Nancy. Wiener also happens to be gay, and that’s a useful demographic in San Francisco. He’s also 6’8” and seems to own one brown suit. Brown suits must works somewhere, but in San Francisco? Willie Brown would be appalled.

God knows how this all plays out, but I wouldn’t bet against Nancy.

I was banging around a few different metaphors this morning, as I was driving my son to a shoe repair place that looks like it was still 1949 inside. In fact, there are many parts of Sactown that look like 1949, Freeport Blvd. being preeminent.

I ran a few ideas past him, and he shot them down, and kept saying, you gotta do something with Terminator and Arnold.

Well, Arnold wouldn’t work into the drawing, but a rising (political) machine would, so here we are. Nancy makes a nice little Terminator robot with red pupils. I enjoyed drawing this, and any time I can do lasers, I’m elated.

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That’s it for the moment, kids. Any spare change you can throw at me, fantastic. If not, enjoy. I am closing in on 2,000 free subscribers, and that’s been a wonderful moment for me in my career. As I mentioned, this is the plurality of my income, so every little bit helps. Heather Cox Richardson makes $5 million a year off Substack, so carve off a little from what you send her. Nothing against Heather Cox Richardson. I love saying “Heather Cox Richardson”. And Liz and Dick. Have a great weekend! Maybe I’ll post, maybe I won’t. Gonna go fishing for a day at least.