CSotD: Tuesday Random Round-up
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We’ll start with some good news, since that’s in such short supply lately: Palestinian cartoonist Safaa Odah, winner of the 2026 Kofi Annan Courage in Cartooning Award from Freedom Cartoonists, has left Gaza and arrived in Paris. Odah had been living in a tent in Gaza after her home in Rafah was destroyed and gave a good interview on her situation just a few weeks ago.
Glad to see that things have changed. We don’t hear that often enough these days.
Things are not so fraught for cartoonists in the free world, but that’s not to say their prospects are rosy. Dave Whamond has launched a Substack and began things with a discussion of how Trump cartoons like this example don’t seem to get picked up by editors as often as cartoons that don’t feature the president.
“Was it fear? Fear of MAGA nuts bombarding them with calls and emails? Or fear of Trump himself?” he asked. “Were they bending the knee? Law firms, colleges and other institutions were doing it so why not the media?”
It’s an interesting question, and I wish I didn’t know the answers, but I spent enough time working at small papers and dealing with editors and editorial pages that I have at least a few theories.
We start, as I’ve said before, with the fact that most editors are literalists and don’t understand cartoons, either political or humorous.
The funny pages, moreover, are considered a nuisance. Once the lineups are chosen, editors have no practical control over them, since the pages are laid out in the backshop where they go unseen until the phones start ringing the next morning.
As for editorial cartoons, there was a time when most papers had a cartoonist on staff, so that his contributions were seen ahead of time, if not drawn to order. There were also papers that would run two editorial cartoons, one liberal, one conservative, but today most only run one and some have given up on expressing opinions entirely.
And, of course, as with everything else, nobody calls the editor to say what a fine cartoon ran in today’s paper, but they certainly call when they don’t like the choice. I wish editors would recognize that silence implies consent, but they rarely do.
I also wish I had a solution, but the best I can do is to suggest that cartoonists stick to their principles, because it’s better to fail with honest opinions than to succeed with drab garbage. And I recommend setting up a Substack or other revenue-based site so that you can bypass editors and appeal directly to readers for support.
And, by the way, don’t set it up and neglect it. I go through 164 bookmarks each morning, some of which contain multiple cartoons, but I couldn’t do it in a reasonable time if so many sites were not neglected. Woody Allen’s law applies: Eighty percent of success is showing up.
That needn’t mean every day. I understand schedules. But then again, if you wonder why some cartoonists show up here with regularity, it’s because they post a cartoon every day or nearly so.
And that doesn’t mean showering us with cartoons about kids staring at their phones any more than it means cartoons with women drivers smashing the garage door. Some cartoonists can fire out good work on a regular basis, others are brilliant once a week. But leaving the same thing on your page for a month isn’t going to build audience.
When I was freelancing, I hated that I spent more time selling than I did writing, but a shoeshine and a smile are part of the gig. Take it or leave it.
Speaking of not making sales, I greatly admire Clay Jones for his courage and his willingness to push the limits, but he’s way off-base by being upset and puzzled that editors didn’t like this one and that GoComics even removed it from their site. What I’ve obscured is an invitation, in French, to have sex with your mother, and not delicately phrased.
As we’ve seen before, all it takes is one phone call to one editor and, if he decides to make a big deal out of it, you can find yourself blacklisted nationally.
I’m used to the fact that people under 40 drop F-bombs the way older folks use “hell” and “damn,” but I don’t think it’s crossed over from conversation to publication, and I’ve seen cartoons with casual F-bombs that I doubt many editors in the mainstream press would run.
On the other hand, the Hollywood Argyles referred to Alley Oop as a “mean motor-scooter” and I never heard a peep from anyone who picked up on the Oedipal Epithet they creatively elided.
Be cool, like little Fonzies.
The Excellent Timing Award goes to Jonesy for having this drop the day the Secretary of the Army decided he’d had enough and walked out the door. Though enough top brass in all services have come to the same conclusion that it would probably have been timely just about anytime.
There is speculation that Hegseth is on the verge of being fired (scroll down), but in the meantime, there’s also talk about the number of people in the high command who warned against the Iran adventure and whose experience and misgivings were ignored.
It’s also becoming hard to hide the fact that Iran wiped out the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet and the damage was hidden by our government.
But no prize for this one: The attorneys general said social media was dangerous for youngsters, but I believe the laws in states where recreational marijuana is legal also put age-limits on that, and higher than the limits they want on social media.
I’m burning out on Lake America cartoons, but Huck got me with this one. I don’t remember at what grade we learned that pinning Amerigo Vespucci’s name on the entire New World was pointlessly random, but we were very young and it’s a good poke at Dear Leader’s notable ignorance of history.
Vespucci wasn’t the first, he wasn’t the best and Wikipedia says he may not have even written the booklets that inspired the naming.
It’s all in the marketing, innit?
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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