Your Week in Cartoons, Annotated, per usual

So many topics, so little time...

Well, it was the usual Trumpie Goofball Fascism Show this week. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

This was the week that my friends and acquaintances tried to cheer me up with the ol’ “Well, you’re going to have a lot of material,” to which I always respond, “ I try to think like a concerned citizen first (I’m corny that way) and as a political satirist (such a fancy phrase) second”.

But yeah, if I can stay out of the re-education camp, I will have lots of material. One of my dear old buddies from Minnesota graciously offered to visit me in South Dakota if they set up a camp there, it being Kristi Noemland. Maybe she’ll just put me out of my misery like one of her miscreant dogs.

Anyway, let’s go to the video tape.

This was probably my bellringer of the week.

I wanted to draw this but was really hesitant because it’s a lot of brushwork. I know you guys don’t notice this stuff, mostly, which I why I bring it up. I drew this with…drum roll…a Uniball Micro. I buy them 12 to a box, and they work really well. I used a Uniball because I thought it would create a more uniform line. One of buddies, a noted cartoon collector, thought there were parallels to Sempe, which I was flattered by. The line weight in a drawing like this is key, because I needed Trump, Musk, and Ramaswamy to pop in front.

Note the leg lamp on the right, which is an homage to Jean Shepherd’s A Christmas Tale. It was also spurred by my friend Jeff Parker, who posted a very funny photo illustration of the father in the movie set up like Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate looking at Mrs. Robinson’s gam.

Fun “Graduate” fact: Dustin Hoffman was 31 and Anne Bancroft was, I think, 37. That’s not even outside of the Seven Up, Seven Down rule of dating partners.

Anyway, I enjoy drawing this. I took awhile (probably an hour on the line work. I also knew that for it to work it basically had to be a gold background, so if I spent 15 minutes in Photoshop on this, I’d be surprised.

I pride myself on my ability to do really small caricatures well, and check out this photo I took of the original, in a light self-congratulations moment people with faintly damaged childhoods like me are prone to:

The very notion that these clowns are going to be in charge of anything bigger than a golf cart is revolting. I guess they want to make even more money, so everything is going to be privatized, even the concentration camps.

Next?

I drew this thinking it would be quick and dirty, but it wasn’t because I wasn’t very happy with the Musk. Sometimes you look at faces and you think, oh, piece of cake, but they're not. Their faces are the caricature. It’s your job to replicate rather than exaggerate. I saw lot of last Gingrich and John Kerry caricatures which were just the hair on blank faces, and they were lazy. You can really tell a good caricaturist by how they do bland-looking people.

As Musk looks like one of his spacecraft discovered him floating in orbit, I still struggle with him.

The pen and ink first pass was way different than this, so I put a patch on his face, to wit:

Passable enough I guess, and no one complained.

Anyway, the cartoon was a knock-off of an element I did in a Sunday Chronicle cartoon. Let me see if I can find it. OK, no, I can’t. Maybe I didn’t.

Next up:

Again, this is a simple idea that I screwed around with endlessly. I had to get Kari Lake’s nutty grin right, but my main issue was making the background “MERIC” part lightly visible, and also making the red pain opaque. As I have noted many times here, I know enough Photoshop to get my work done. Originally, I had the red letters translucent over the dark MERIC, but it was too busy. So I finally hit the MERIC with a small point eraser and that left enough visible. Of course, everyone knows she went to VOA, so I guess I was obsessing.

This is what I do.

I am friends with Amanda Bennett, the former VOA director (she worked at The Oregonian with me, and is married to Don Graham, yes, that Don Graham of The Washington Post, a truly admirable and lovely guy). I cannot imagine what’s going through her mind with the Lake appointment.

OK, yes I can.

Next:

I very much enjoyed drawing this one, even if it’s not technically accurate. How is not accurate, you may be inquiring of yourself.

Well, Medusa is a Gorgon and not a goddess. Now, I have an Honors Program degree, and I studied Classics for two years (I wasn’t any great shakes at it—I did get As, but still, everyone in the class seemed to know every aspect of Greek and Roman mythology). Several dear buddies who are classics guys pointed this out. I decided, well, close enough, but I’d get an F under Professor Lawrence Wheeler, my Honors prof.

I got to the idea through chatting with my youngest son. I was originally going to do Greek Ruins, but then landed on this approach. The ideas of a premise should be BANG BANG BANG and not tortured, otherwise they just don’t work.

He threw out Medusa, and so I ran with it. The snakes took the most time, and I did them with said Uniball, again.

As you know, Kimberley Guilfoyle dated Don Junior, a truly sad shell of a human with no accomplishments of his own. She also was married to Gov. Gavin Newsom, which seems almost inconceivable to me now. She’s a prominent San Francisco figure, and, of course, everyone over there was falling either ill or all over themselves kissing her snakes.

Imagine getting an ambassadorship as a break-up consolation prize. No one ever gave me one, and I even asked. “Hey, sorry about how this all played out, but I think I’d make a really good Ambassador to New Zealand”.

Great fly fishing there, for starters.

I enjoyed drawing the statues, but, oddly, forgot to shade them. I am always trying to get that congrats right. I had time, but forgot. Sorry, Pete!

And now:

The owner of Salesforce and Time Magazine, Marc Benioff, is (was) widely regarded as a solid billionaire citizen over in San Francisco, my newspaper home. For some reason, Benioff decided to, well, do what billionaires are now doing, which is kiss Trump’s…um, foot.

If you haven’t been to San Francisco, Salesforce is is huge tower there, and they have the famous Ohana Floor (it’s actually two floors), and it’s a widely sought-after event venue with a 360 degree panoramic view of the Bay Area. I’ve not been there, but thanks to the handy Internet Tubes, I noted that the pillars are covered in foliage, which made this fun to draw.

Now Benioff is regarded as a feckless supplicant in SF. That’s a charitable phrase.

Oh. I forgot the Smerconish cartoon.

Pete Hegseth is, inexplicably but not, still in play as Secretary of Defense, even as he’s a drunken disrespecter of women and utterly unqualified to be SECDEF. Period. I guess that the MAGA Nuts have been pressuring Sen. Ernst, whose first take was correct: he’s a cad. Now she’s being told she’ll never eat McDonald’s French fries in this town again if she doesn’t give him a pass.

Oh, well, Senate advice and consent was fun while it lasted.

I had to consult exterior photos of the Pentagon, as I didn’t want to wing it. This is close enough for an editorial cartoon.

Lemme tell you about Michael Smerconish really fast.

He’s kept me and three other editorial cartoonist afloat, and also just put out a book of our work that sold 10,000 copies in a few weeks. He then donated the $185,000 proceeds to a Philadelphia children’s charity, while kicking in $15K of his own. Sign up for Michael’s newsletter, please. He’s a really fun guy (and a fly fisherman). Sadly, the book isn’t available.

Speaking of books, I am putting one of my own out in a few days I’ll offer here.

I think that’s it for the moment.

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Yo Peeps, thanks for much for the paid subscriptions that have come in recently. Many are free to paid subscribers, which makes me feel like I’m doing something right. I am up to over 3,000 subscribers, and WOW, does this make my life a bit easier these days. I am not putting up a paywall here, and am dependent on paid subscribers helping out if they can afford to do so. I suppose it’s not a smart economic play in some ways, but I am kind of Marxian about this, so consider this a thank you and a low-key solicitation all at once. Have a great weekend and enjoy your life. —J.