Comments on: Bad Cartoonist!

By: Nickleking

Nickleking — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 11:52:23 +0000

Found some stuff indicating that posts are made by Robert Tanner. An AP reporter… not a cartoonist.

Still a great read though!

By: Kevin Moore

Kevin Moore — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:06:03 +0000

RonF: You raise a good point (and sorry, Barry, but it’s a slight tangent) about newspapers. When American cities had more than one newspaper competing for readership, readers were better served - and writers and cartoonists were better paid. There were more opportunities for writers and artists to express themselves and develop their voices - and thus more opportunities for readers to find a diversity of view points and styles. It wasn’t a utopia, and there was certainly a conformist/mainstream/element of manufactured consent, but media diversity - in ownership as well as numbers of papers - generally served the interests of their local communities and the larger democratic society.

The current troubles of the newspaper industry are largely of their own doing. The consolidation that started in the late 70s has drastically reduced the number of newspapers - just in time for the Internet to arise and allow for the diversity print media used to excel at (and still does, but in different forms than newspapers.)

For writers and artists, the loss of newspapers is a loss of clients, made only worse as the remaining newspapers tighten budgets, cut out staff writers (reviewers) and farm out writing and cartooning jobs.

In a sense the Bad Cartoonist is reacting to the aesthetic decline of mainstream political cartooning due to the encouragement by editors and basic economics of hackwork.

By: RonF

RonF — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:47:15 +0000

And how many families ever have a situation where the couple sits over coffee in the morning while “Dad” reads the newspaper?

It has to be the morning. Newspapers are almost all morning papers now. I date myself to say that I remember when you could read a paper in the morning and then get a completely different paper in the afternoon. Dad used to get the Boston Herald in the morning and the Boston Traveler in the afternoon. The Globe had two editions at one time, I think, and then there was the Boston Record and the Boston American. The Herald and the Traveler merged, the Record and the American merged, and then the Herald-Traveler and the Record-American merged, with the result just calling itself the Herald. Both the Globe and the Herald are morning papers now. The Globe used to have Szep, but I don’t know if he’s still in there. That man used a straight razor instead of a pen sometimes, it seemed.

By: RonF

RonF — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:40:04 +0000

Hey! Amp! Get to work! I want to know what happened to those two Jewish kids!

By: RonF

RonF — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:35:13 +0000

That didn’t look like photoshopping - it looked like photocopying!

By: Kevin Moore

Kevin Moore — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:00:45 +0000

Judging who is “more creative” is probably a subjective value judgment, but for my money, I’d say the list would include several successful cartoonists: Tom Toles, Pat Oliphant, Tom Tomorrow, Jeff Danzinger, Ann Telnaes, Clay Bennett - people who write and draw their own stuff in unique styles. They may have their off days, but I would never accuse them of phoning it in - or photoshopping it in, either.

By: Disgusted Beyond Belief

Disgusted Beyond Belief — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:10:20 +0000

I wonder what the economics of this are. In other words, if you compared the Stahlers with the more creative political cartoonists, would the more creative ones be more successful, and if not, then you have your explanation.