CSotD: Weekend housekeeping
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No major theme today, but some things I've wanted to share …
Rex Morgan is, for the moment, leaving the Morgan family to sort out adding another toddler to the brood in order to focus on cartoon forgery.
About a year ago, the Morgans moved into a new house and discovered a cache of old comics in the attic, which a patient who is a comics buff traced to a legendary but retired artist. That storyline is back in play as forged reproductions of the fellow's art are being sold by a scammer.
The arc started here on Sunday, and, while it's kind of insider baseball for the comics community, it's also a public service announcement for comic fans, particularly given the collectibility of comic art and the growing popularity of Cons, by which I mean "conventions" and not the kinds of "cons" who rip off fans with forgeries, either on-line or at those conventions.
Sports memorabilia is probably more of a sewer hole: There, if you didn't see the athlete put his signature on the jersey or ball or whatever, it's probably a fake. Not only do crooked sellers fake autographs, but it's not unknown for lazy jocks to have ball boys do the signing when a box of baseballs is making the rounds in the lockerroom.
Comic art isn't quite at that low level, but it's very much buyer beware.
The other gripe going around within the community is con artists who write fan letters to cartoonists requesting a sketch-and-autograph which then turns up on Ebay. Often, the fan letter is so generic that it's laughable, but other times the cartoonists fall for it and the problem then becomes a level of cynicism that means no autographs even for genuine fans.
One piece of advice would be to always personalize the signing: "To Joe, best of luck" can significantly lower the value of a signed piece, except to people named "Joe."
Rex Morgan has a long tradition of educating readers about various medical issues. This is a new tack, but, whatever the consumer-educational benefits, Terry Beatty is venting on behalf of a lot of his colleagues.
I'd give him cred for both.
Speaking of artists and money and such
The Nation has added a political cartooning feature, which you can see here and read about in Michael Cavna's column here.
It's a paying market for editorial cartoonists of a progressive slant, and any paying market is a good thing, in these days when newspapers are shedding cartoonists to save money, traditional syndication has been undercut by cut-rate competition and stuff is available free on-line anyway.
The introductory paragraph on the site says "check back each day as a diverse set of artists take aim and draw," and a daily paying feature isn't a bad thing at all, for artists or readers.
Juxtaposition of the Day
(A pair of historical recreations which fall into the "yes, but …" category.
Stahler raises a point that comes up fairly often, which is that, in writing the Second Amendment, the Founders didn't anticipate guns that could fire more than three rounds a minute, which is true, but the counterargument is that, in writing the First Amendment, they didn't anticipate TV, radio and the Internet.
However, the First Amendment is about personal freedom, while the Second is about how the national defense is to be organized.
It still seems hard to find anyone who is a purist on both, but perhaps the problem is that there are both personal and states' rights in those first 10 amendments, and so they can't all be compared one to another on an absolute basis.
And, by the way, we do have laws against libel and fraud and child pornography, and God knows (they asked him), most Second Amendment purists are also eager to truncate that "freedom of religion" thingie.
But, aside from the fact that the Second Amendment wasn't about personal freedom until 1939, and not confirmed until 2008, the Founders not only thought they were talking about muzzle-loaders, but that no farmer was going to want to put a cannon in his livingroom, a note that Sanders' brings up in a corner of his piece.
However, I'm going to differ with Sanders on a point I can't document at the moment because, when I came across it, I didn't bookmark the source. Still, there was a pushback against registering cars from people who feared Big Brother three decades before Orwell came up with the name.
New York required license plates and some sort of registration from 1900 on — more or less the period in his cartoon — but during Prohibition, there were yet no permanent vehicle identification numbers on cars, and one of the issues in trying to stop rum runners below the Canadian border was that, when they came to a roadblock, they'd simply jump out and disappear into the woods.
The cars were often stolen, but, even if they weren't, it was hard to prove who owned them, much less who was driving them that night.
I'm not saying that's why people didn't want stricter registration and licensing, but it was a factor in why the state did.
However, while some people did object to registration, Sanders' cartoon still makes the point that we haven't had a rash of automobile confiscations, though there are laws defining "street legal" and you can't just take any pile of junk or any souped-up racecar out on the road.
New York didn't require drivers' licences until 1924. Here, mostly for your amusement, is an explanation of how it was going to work. Note that they gave drivers a little something back, tightening the rules on speed traps in order to pretty much make them impossible to pull off.
That part of the law apparently changed, though, if it didn't, a sharp lawyer could sure have fun in court.
Now, a song about being romantically transported:
And one about life and liberty:
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