Your Weekly Cartoons, Annotated with Angst...

I really want to be chipper for you. I really do. Promise.

Sometimes, the news cycle doesn’t run the way I want it to run.

The catastrophic Trump/Vance/Zelenskyy meeting of course happened on Friday morning, which is when I’m usually wrapping my work for the Chronicle that week. Let me run you through my deadlines, since we’re here.

Monday I do the Smerconish cartoon, so that’s in the morning I try to get that done by noon, so that I can have some time to think through (and maybe even actually write), my San Francisco Chronicle opinion column.

As I’ve gotten into this phase of my career, I actually enjoy the writing more than the drawing, which is fine. I have done 13,500 editorial cartoons in the past 47 years, and writing seems easier to me now than drawing. I think part of it is my deteriorating vision.

I have written about this before, and won’t belabor it. I had cataract surgery in my right eye in 2022, and it turned out great. Unfortunately, the left eye is now deteriorating, but it’s still not quite to surgery level yet. I am hoping I can get this done this year. Anyway, drawing can be a real challenge now, and it always seems like I am constantly adjusting my head and eyes to accommodate the cataract. It’s almost like there is a “sight lane” or something, where I can see better. I wear a contact on the left and nothing on the right. There are also the eye floaters, which I am struggling with. But it’s pretty stressful to draw these days.

This Tuesday, I did three national editorial cartoons for Tribune, which is what I owe them. Normally, I might even do four, depending on the news flow, but I had to get those three done fast because I think I only did two the weeks before. I can slop it over to the next week, as the actual number is 12 per month.

If I didn’t have this writing to do, I might have more time to fuss with things. I did six this week, which was practically like being on vacation.

The downside was I have not yet done a Zelenskyy cartoon, which I will probably do tomorrow. I don’t like working on Sunday, but if I get up early enough, it’s not much of a problem.

So, here’s the Smerconish cartoon:

Turned out pretty well. I was actually happy with it. That’s generally not the case, and when I am not happy with an idea, it’s usually over some microscopic OCD aspect of the drawing, which doesn’t really matter to readers. There is something terribly wrong with this drawing, however, and only one person picked up on it. Guess!

You’re right.

Soldiers do not salute with their left hand. By the time I figured it out, I was about 95 percent done. Oh, well. Thank you for your service, anyway, and I will try to bear this in mind the next time I draw a saluting soldier.

Next up:

This was Cartoon Number One on Tuesday. Fairly simple idea, didn’t need a lot of ornamentation, and people seemed to dig it. Sometimes when you have a simple idea, you just have to fight the urge to put a lot of visual bells and whistles on it. That’s difficult for me. I would say I am somewhere in the midrange of detailing in cartoons. Sometimes you can just completely overwhelm an idea because you feel guilty that it only is going to take you an hour.

Actually, the real work is done in the rough draft stage, and by real work I mean the stressful part of drawing. To me, inking is a zen joy, and if I could figure out a way to be a comics inker I would probably do that as a side hustle.

This cartoon really represents to me the fallacy of the Trump Argument, which is that it’s all rigged.

I wish it were these days.

I would put the Deep State on speed dial if I could, but the fact is, whatever the Deep State is, they appear to be taking a coffee break.

Next up:

:

Tuesday Cartoon Two: Since I had again missed the Friday Boat, since the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was relieved of his duties by his alcoholic woman-assaulting SECDEF for being in favor of DEI, kinda like Driving While Black. You know. Nothing personal. We just don’t too many of you minorities messing with our photo-white supremacy movement.

Also: 18 percent of the military is Black, for starters. How’s that recruiting going, Hegseth?

This is, again, a simple idea, and I didn’t want to over-illustrate it. It popped pretty well, and there was no real way to overdraw it, anyway. I get bogged down in trees, grass, and home siding. Nothing really to overdo here. Sometimes I wish I had the stones to take out (rhetorically) one of my over-illustrating colleagues (and, if you think you’re that colleague, I can assure you that you’re not, because I am sure Over-Illustrating Colleague never reads this Substack).

I alternate between drawing an upside down flag and a Russian flag on Trump’s lapel. Some newspaper killed a cartoon by a colleague over an upside down flag a few weeks ago, and I can’t remember who did it. I am sure that newspaper is in equally high dudgeon over Trump’s sabotage of NATO. Uh huh.

Incidentally, I really like the vast majority of my colleagues (except for one—he over-illustrates). I wish you could meet them sometime. They’re absolutely fascinating people.

Tuesday Cartoon Three:

Yet another simple idea. I hadn’t hit the egg price joke yet, so this was kind of catch-up week for me. I now see I forgot to highlight the MAGA lettering on the hat, which is probably a speed mistake. That’s the trouble with three in a day. I miss small stuff.

No real need to overdraw this one, either, and, in retrospect, it was probably best that I missed the hat highlighting. I just did flat blue and flat yellow for the background.

Worked.

But here’s my Magnum Opus of the Week (I’m so modest):

I ran into a nice guy named Doug Kelly from Davis the other day, and he’s a former journalist and sports announcer. He’s a Chronicle subscriber, and he inquired how long my Sunday Chronicle pieces take, which hardly anyone ever asks me except American Journalism Hero Pete Wevurski, Managing Editor for Opinion at the Chron.

Pete is interested because if I don’t turn these in on time, things get messy on his end. As I mentioned, Pete is the best and most fun editor I have ever worked with, so he always inquires amusingly.

Anyway, I got this idea on Wednesday late afternoon, and spent almost the entire day agonizing over what, precisely, I was going to give to Pete. I veered from one subject to another. Sometimes it’s pretty clear and also fairly simple to get there, but I was really struggling Wednesday. I might have been tired.

I sometimes bang around ideas with my youngest son, who is also a writer. He lives in Sacramento. He’s a very good Writer’s Room for me. He’s great at saying, yeahno-tryagain.

After quite a number of failure-to -launch concepts (Newsom’s new podcast was one, and I will get to that probably next week), I decided after banging it around with my son that Yosemite was going to be the topic. Here’s where the real work of this cartoon came into play: I spent two hours trying to find the right perspective to draw this from, and looked around endlessly at Yosemite photos. I finally landed on this one.

Why is this important?

Because a lot of Chronicle readers go to Yosemite, and if it ain’t right, I am going to hear about it. I totally could pull off a made-up park scene for my dear friends in New Jersey, but not my friends in the Castro or San Rafael. Plus, Chronicle readers can be…tart. They all seem to have masters degrees in liberal arts subjects, which makes them a great audience, but demanding. I never draw down to the Chronicle readership, since they’re all smarter than I am.

Once I finished pencilling this thing, I sent the rough off to Pete:

Pete looks at this on phis phone, incidentally. I then texted him and said I was gonna add a few things. I’ll put the original up again so you can see the contrast in one frame.

Incidentally, I drew right over the rough with ink and brush.

Note the little climber on the left cliff. That’s one of my young Chronicle colleagues who recently did that at Yosemite.

Anyway, here's the final cartoon:

Napa is experiencing some contraction because wine tasting rooms are shrinking—this may seem silly to people not in the Bay Area, but Napa is a real economic engine around here. I try to do things about Napa, Oakland, and other places in the Bay Area, too.

I’m not a drinker at all (I know—I’m so virtuous and perfect. It’s actually because I am trying to stay under 190, upon advice of my 37-year-old doctor, plus drinking gives me a headache now), but I appreciate the Napa area, and can’t believe I can pop over there for the afternoon if I wanted to.

Let me circle back to my week’s schedule, which I dropped back up in the text. I generally ink the Chronicle Sunday piece on Thursday, and sometimes I can get it done by midday, but usually not. Fridays I do a national and a Chronicle Daily. Somewhere in the week I squeeze in an illustration for my Chronicle column.

So it’s an action-packed week.

That’s all I got, people. Have a great weekend. Look for the Zelenskyy stuff shortly.

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Hey, YBs!: I hit a milestone today on this Substack, and I want to thank you all for saving my career, which you did. This means I can do this thing as my mostly-full time hustle if I have to. I owe you everything, honestly, and if you know me, I am super cornball. So, thanks, kids. —J.