The Week in Cartoons, Annotated for the Apocalypse...

Just kidding. It's only a catastrophe.

Good God.

Well, you can imagine what the week was like for This Political Cartoonist and Columnist For Substack and The Very Fancy San Francisco Chronicle. I’ve already written as much as I can stand to about Election Night. But let’s do a deconstruction of the drawerings, as my friend cartoonist Rick McKee calls them.

Here’s the first one, as I listen to Oasis on Alexa.

If this was a Hobson’s Choice, I wasn't aware of it. It seemed eminently clear that there was really one choice, which brings up Life in The Bubble. What did I miss? What did pollsters miss? What did Harris-Walz miss? To me, this was an existential choice, and about 51 percent of your fellow voters decided they wanted to live in Hungary (that’s the best case spin). Factor in the terribly nutty Elon Musk on a phone call with President-elect (Jesus Christ) Donald Trump, and we’re already getting a sense of what’s to come.

The cartoon itself features familiar symbols and tropes, ranging from the coin flip, the dumpster fire, the shithouse, the Statue of Liberty, the Fork in the Road, Mt. Rushmore, and various federal buildings, which were fun to draw. It’s OK to draw this stuff if you’re at least self-aware about your use of tropes. I am.

Another astute Substack Friend, Greg Sazima, suggested putting a volcano in the background, as I put the rough up on my first Substack Chat, which I will do more of soon.

My brother the artist also congratulated my on my volcano. Always high praise indeed. Interestingly, we haven’t even had the heart to talk to each other after the election. I think he sent me something like, “What the hell is wrong with this country?”

Being his big brother, I always to try to cushion him from reality (kidding—he has six kids, so he is well aware of reality times six). I honestly don’t know how to explain this country anymore, or a vast swath of it.

Next:

I drew this as an advance, wrongly thinking she was the likely winner.

I stand corrected. I stand by it, of course. I was finally happy with the drawing of her, and I was really happy with her likeness a few drawings down, which I will discuss momentarily. I might have moved Trump’s mouth up a little in Photoshop, which I now see as little off. I was pretty careful about it, though.Just for fun, I ran it through Photoshop now to see if it helped the likeness:

It did.

Interesting I didn’t catch it when I drew it.

Sometimes cartoonists have to do what I call predictive cartoons, and I hate doing them. On Election Night 2000, I did three cartoons that evening (got home from The Oregonian at 4 AM, I think). We all know how that one turned out (the GOP practice run for January 6th).

Next:

Many of you will recall this is a knockoff of the famous Bill Mauldin/JFK assassination cartoon from Nov. 22, 1963. It ran on the FRONT PAGE that afternoon of the Chicago Sun-Times, and he drew it in about 45 minutes.

So I did him barfing. I drew it in about 45 minutes as well. Note that I screwed up the perspective on the left side of the base of the statue.

One has to be careful when one draws barf.

Oh, this set my record for reactions on my own FB page: I think it was 9.3K reactions last time I checked, with 2.6K shares. That’s pretty crazy for one page.

No mainstream outlets ran it, except for the Chron that I saw. They have guts, unlike a lot of my other clients. The clients, however, did run this next one:

Kind of a fun drawing. I had to be careful not to make PEN NS look like…uh…you know, Arnold Palmer. And I didn’t. I did the lettering with a simple Uniball and then hit it with the Paintbucket Tool. E-Z. I also added rebar. I love drawing rebar, and it really adds randomness to the drawing, which is always a good thing.

Next:

This is my Sunday Chronicle cartoon about Newsom instantly becoming the President of Blue America. I was banging this idea around with my son and he is really good at helping flesh out ideas. He said leading man in passing, and that threw the switch. I said, yeah, I am thinking about Newsom as Hollywood characters, and he came up with a few and I came up with a few.

I hadn’t drawn Gavin Newsom for awhile since Harris got the nomination, and I had to sit back and think about him. I had changed his caricature a few years ago, and I had pulled my old chin rendering up again instead of the new one. Anthony York, his former press guy, complained to a mutual friend about it. I don’t have a view about York personally, but he was right—the chin wasn’t quite right. This was kinda fun to do, and I got to draw Arnold, a joy.

The kajillionaire Levi’s heir and politically completely inexperienced Daniel Lurie was elected San Francisco Mayor this week, defeating Mayor London Breed in a ranked-choice system. He spent $8.6 million of his own, and his mommy threw in $1 million. That’s a lot of denim, baby. I’m sure he’s a fine fellow, but, again, here’s money in politics.

Sigh.

Next, and finally:

I wrote a column for the Chron tomorrow (I’ll post on Sunday) about Harris running for governor in 2026. You can see where I am going when you read it, but my guess is she would clear the field. Not sure if she’s even thinking about anything other than getting back to Cali with Doug and hitting the gummies for a few weeks (and who can blame her?), but she would probably win going away. We have several really good candidates for 2026, but she’s got a hell of a head start if she wants it. I don’t see her running for president again.

This was probably the best likeness I’ve done of her.

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OK, Sportsfans (my dad used to say that), that’s it—the culmination of an exhausting two year marathon of complete terror. I’ll address this soon, but, like you, I am going to avoid television, and will golf, fish, walk, and drink nice coffees while I ponder my abject despair. As I have noted 123 times, this is now my main gig, and I am beyond grateful for any contribution you can spare. Seriously. I am here for you, unlike the president-elect. Free subs are also greeted warmly. Have a great weekend (in denial or despair—I’m going for denial). —J.