The Week in Cartoons, Annotated for you!

Here's the week's ink, and yes, I still use ink...

As we wind down to Election Day, things just keep getting weirder and weirder.

For Smerconish.com. I did this little number on Trump’s odd visit to a McDonald’s. First, I had to make sure, because I’m lightly OCD, that the fry machine was close to correct, at least. A friend wanted to know why I didn’t do the number “451” instead, and it’s because my friend is clearly smarter than I am.

I saw a few “You want lies with that?” cartoons the same day after I drew this, which doesn’t surprise me, exactly. What surprises me is not seeing a lot of duplicate ideas in the rapidly shrinking universe of the daily editorial cartoon (me, and four other guys). I kid, I kid (it’s six).

I have a tool in Photoshop that I use to make stars and splatter patterns. I changed the color to yellow, and there you have it: good oil splattering. Yay me.

Next:

Oh, boy. This one get a lot of pick up, but mostly not by major outlets. It killed on my Facebook page ( last time I checked it had 23,000 likes and 6,700 shares). Some major site must have picked it up. I don’t have time to sleuth these things. Friends sent me tweets (John Fugelsang sent it out, and he’s big on the tubes, they tell me), and I think Morgan Fairchild did as well.

I quit Twitter/X last year in protest of its now-fascist overlord ownership.

Anyway, the senile GOP candidate remarked about the size of Arnold Palmer’s…junk, I guess, and so I was moved to go Mushroom Foraging.

Can you imaging the crazy-ass stuff this freak will be spewing if he’s elected?

No. No, I mustn’t go there. Stay positive.

Anyway, the ol’ Splatter Tool, if you will, covered Trump’s shortcomings nicely, and nothing to see here, folks.

And I mean nothing to see.

Next up:

I like drawing bar drunks, and the last one I did was Bill Barr, which, of course, also created the perfect bar pun as well.

Trump sounds like some Depends-wearing souse speaking to no one in particular, rambling on like a meth head about the various visions he’s currently having in his mental cinema.

People say Trump literally smells like pee, and I believe it.

Again, how is that about half of the American electorate listens to this piss-stank?

Please tell me.

Onward:

Got off a nice drawing here, nice and loose, not labored. I had a little more time this week to draw, do I was able to hit my pencil roughs better than when I have a gun at my head. It’s all about the rough, not the finished inked drawing.

Hey! Remember when Eisenhower was a Republican president who didn’t kiss Hitler’s ass? I believe he was in charge of all the suckers and losers (including my beloved Uncle Hal) at D-Day, and everywhere and everyone else in the U.S. Army.

Imagine how Ike would react to the urine-stained, bone-spurred mendicant who has now taken over his party.

I don’t want to waste too much knuckle time on this subject. Little Splatter Tool action in this one as well.

Next in line:

This is an illustration for my San Francisco Chronicle column about said Fry Photo-op, which I will post later today. I had this one sitting around for a few days dying on the vine, and then Pete Wevurski and I were banging around column ideas. He said, hey, go ahead and do Mickey D’s and Trump, so I did. Pete is super easy to work with; he loves comedy and we talk about Bob and Ray and Ernie Kovacs. This resurrected this perfectly nice idea.

Up at the plate:

This is my SFC Sunday, and I had to do this story about Musk and his elaborate election bribery scheme.

Sometimes I get so sick of all of this I just want to quit.

Anyway, Musk is a mental patient in charge of our space program and major defense satellite comm networks, so if Trump wins, expect a billionaire to make even more off of the horrific Big Government he’s so afraid of.

Note how we (I) can allude to penis size and it’s so very sanitary.

I hate doing cartoons about penis size, people. I really do. The Creepshow Phallus running for president introduces this crap, and I am forced down to his level. Imagine if Kamala Harris made a joke about Dolly Parton’s breasts. How would that go down? What if she said “schlonged”?

You know what would happen.

Finally:

This is my daily for the Chronicle on ranked choice voting, which I think is a terrible idea. It did give me the opportunity to do this rather elaborate drawing of a haunted house, which I am sure will impress Pete. That’s my job. Interestingly, I had a different bubble over the couple, which was her saying “This wasn’t my first or second choice!”

As I was inking it, “City Hall-oween” occurred to me, so I bagged the earlier caption. This happens more frequently than you might think, but I like getting a better twist on the same drawing. I remember talking to the great political cartoonist Mike Keefe about the notion of starting a drawing and not knowing what the caption is going to be, on deadline. He confessed he did this regularly himself.

Anyway, that’s it for the week.

Have a great weekend!

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Hey, kids: I’ll post that Chron column after I grab a quick lunch. I’ll probably do another original column later or this weekend. Try not to think about the election. It’s all ground game now, and she’s got one. He doesn’t. I want to note I hit a milestone yesterday on Substack: 350 paid subscribers. This literally has changed my life (really, it has) because of Paid Readers Like You, and I also have 2,200 free subscribers. Tell your friends! Thank you, and thank you. —J.