Fidel-ities

So, Fidel Castro is in the script for the next cartoon. This got me thinking. Considering the fella's current medical condition and age; it may not be such a great idea. With my luck, he'd kick the commie bucket the same day the cartoon came out, and I'D look like the evil dictator who oppressed and destroyed a once proud nation.

Then I remembered this cartoon:

The cartoon is by Mike Peters, and is in the Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year: 1995 edition. This cartoon making fun of how long Castro has been a pain, is itself 12 years old. It is more about an overthrow and his government falling than the dinosaur dying, but is still kind of relevant. This only strengthens the basis behind the cartoons that are coming out over the next few months. By the way, the reason the cartoon above has a giant ink stain is because I started doing editorial cartoons for my university paper and a local paper in 1995. I carried this book with me everywhere. I was the prententious type of wanna-be-editorial cartoonist who did all my cartoons with a bottle of ink, and old-school pen nibs. This means I ruined lots of clothes, carpets, books, and 3/4-finished editorial cartoons.

I highly recommend the "Best of Editorial Cartoons..." series edited by Charles Brooks. I have most of the editions from 1975-2006. I'm not just saying that so that the fine folks at Penguin Press won't ask me to take these images down, but because they are great books for inspiration and design. Also, the books that Darryl Cagle puts out are great, as is his website.

Here are some more Castro toons I ran across today:

I also ran across this cartoon, which must have somewhat subconciously influenced me a bit in the next few scripts:

Looking at all of these cartoons today reminded me just how amazing an artform editorial cartooning is. It is a shame that it has been dying a slow painful death; and not just because of Islamic fatwahs on Danish cartoonists. Newspapers have been reducing budgets and the cartoonists are usually the first to go. I would say that becoming an editorial cartoonist might be the hardest job to obtain in the graphic arts. This is because there are so few positions out there, when somepme gets hired as an editorial cartoonists they tend to stay there for a while, and if they dont get fired the paper tends to remove the position when they leave. God bless folks like Mr. Cagle who are exploring ways to keep the artform alive in syndication and online.

So, I threw away my plan to really take my time with the design and spent about 30 minutes whipping out Castro for the next cartoon. And I a pretty pleased with it to be honest with you.

I included the crappy sketch to show how much better my life would be, and how much less paper I would waste if I had a Cintiq.

I was going to talk more about design influences and processes, but this blog took too long, and I need to get back to drawing before it gets to late...so I will leave that for another day.