The Current State of Political Cartooning: Is it as bad as Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year—2007 Edition makes it seem?

I was quite eager to dive into The Best Political Cartoons of the Year—2007 Edition (Pelican Publishing Company; 2007) because there's really no better way to sum up a year's worth of national news than through a couple hundred pages of cartoons (at least, not in my book), and I'm woefully out-of-touch with political cartoons now that my full-time job is not as a newspaper writer and/or editor.

Having read through the book, part of an annual collection edited by Charles Brooks, I immediately found some problems with the title, which is more than a little misleading. First, there's the year "2007." Astute readers will of course note that it's only April of 2007, so it can't possibly contain the best political cartoons of this year. The number refers to the year the collection was published; the 'toons themselves are all from 2006.

The second problem is that word "Best," which can't possibly be true. I say this not simply based on the quality of the cartoons inside, but because of what' s not inside. The funniest, angriest and most insightful political cartoon in the universe, one that's handicap of having almost no real art at all involved in its creation, Get Your War On, is notably absent. (This could be that it's multi-panel format makes it more of a strip than a cartoon, though, which would also explain the absence of The Boondocks and Doonseberry). So too is the work of Ann Telnaes, who owns one of the best, cleanest, most elegant lines in cartooning at the moment, and whose depiction of Dick Cheney is the absolute apex of Cheney art.

Also, a lot of these cartoons are pretty bad. Like I said, I haven't been reading political cartoons as religiously as I used to—I cancelled my subscription to Newsweek, which generally printed some of the better ones each week, and I live in a city with one of the worst newspapers in the country which I avoid coming into contact with at all costs—so maybe this is where political cartooning has gotten to as of 2006, but somehow I doubt it.

The contents of Best Editorial Cartoons... is pretty illustrative of everything wrong with political cartooning in general. Specifically, a lot of them looked an awfully lot like The Onion's intentionally bad parody of bad political cartoons, by doing the exact same thing as The Onion 'toons (namely, taking the opposite of the funny side of an issue, illustrating it poorly, and then using big-ass labels on the various elements to make the joke as obvious as possible.

I'm of the opinion that these labels, are bad for political cartoons, and a large part of the reason why nobody loves them, not even people like me, who love combinations of drawings and words to the point that I obsess about them publicly online. The labels are, more often than not, unnecessarry (if the drawing is done well enough and properly captures the zeitgeist of the newscycle, a newspaper reader will know what the heck's going on without needing them), and generally just serve to telegraph the joke, or over-explain it. And, if you have to explain a joke, then chances are it wasn't all that funny a joke to being with.

Let's look at some examples, though. (Apologies for the bad scans and, as always, just click on 'em to make them nice and big).





This one's by Michael Ramirez, whose easily one of my favorite cartoonists included. It's really a hell of a drawing. The shark and fish both look great, and he gives it about 510%; clearly he didn't have to draw the coral on the bottom so well, or do that cool underwater light effect on the sharks back, but he does it because it looks awesome. The shark's tale is what really grabbed me though; that's pretty much the definition of brilliant. He symbolically transforms what is recognizably a shark into a symbol of the Soviet Union.

So why's the shark wearing the word "Putin" on it? This cartoon would have appeared in papers the same week that Putin and his governement were revealing themselves to be a much greater danger (a shark) than what they had presented themselves to be (a dolphin), which the dialogue and tail-shape lay-out. I don't know that it has to say "Putin" to hammer it home.







Similarly, this Jake Fuller cartoon doesn't gain anything from the labels, and wouldn't lose anything if it lost them. (Add, oddly enough, features a great drawing of a brilliant symbol and is also set underwater). Note the fact that the congressional jelly fish doesn't have the word "congress" on it, because it's completley unnecessarry. It's recognizably both a spineless jellyfish and congress, and the fish's dialogue sets up the joke—it's spineless, it won't do anything, don't worry. Does it matter that the fish are Gas Prices, Immigration and the Deficit? Not really. Because I assume the cartoonist's point wasn't just that congress is too spineless to tackle these three issues specifically, but just spineless to tackle any big issues in general.







Steve Sack's cartoon is a perfect example of one that works perefectly without the labels. He doesn't put anything in the panel that doesn't need to be there to get the point across, and yet it still slugs you with it's meaning. This is due in large part, I think, to the fact that he chose his symbols so well. The Noah's Ark story is one so familiar that you notice any variations on it almost immediately. The fact that all the animals on the ship are mammals, all the ones on the raft are birds, and the looks on everyone's faces tells the whole story, with Noah's dialogue as extra insurance. A caption saying "If Noah Built His Ark Today" or whatever would have been totally overkill, and Sack realized it. I also really dig Sack's style. This is one of several 'toons in the book that just really stand out as unique-looking.








Not that the labels are always bad in all instances, as long as their done wth restraint, as in these two cartoons from Mike Luckovich, whose cloudy, line-filled style is another of my favorites from the book. He needs to label the cookie jars because, well, how else would you know what kind of jar it is (It's worth noting that, in real life, an awful lot of cookie jars are actually labled "Cookies").




He doesn't have to have "G.O.P." or "Republican Party" on the elephant's side, and he doesn't put it there.






Similarly, anyone who's ever seen a picture of Richard Nixon whould be able to tell what Nixon looks like, so there's no need for a "Nixon" placard hanging around the shadow's neck. The "W" is a little less necessary, but short of drawing the groundhog more Bush-like (and thus risk losing his groundhogishness), there's no way around it.







This image didn't really strike me as a particularly successful cartoon; it's not terribly insightful or funny. But damn, it is a nice drawing, and one that looks completely different than anything else in the book. Or just about any political cartoon I've ever seen. It really looks like something out of an art-first indy comic of some sort, and to see the style applied to Putin makes him look all the creepier and the cartoon all the more unique. I suspect the hand-written lettering, resembling actual hand-writing rather than comic strip/cartoon lettering, also contribute a lot to it's aura of weirdness.




Finally, another of the reasons I sincerely doubt that these are in actuality the best political cartoons of last year? The number of repeats. Check out these two, for example.





Despite the fact that these two images are almost word for word, image for image the exact same joke, I doubt either cartoonist stole the idea from the other. There's just so many cartoonists making fun of the same current events at the same time that overlap is inevitable, and this is just an example of it. It's a decent gag and all, but the fact that two cartoonists had the exact same idea probably disqualifies either as one of the "best" cartoons of the year, doesn't it? After all, it's quite clearly not that original or unique an idea, it's not something that seperates itself from the pack, and the evidence is right there in the very same chapter. So what the hell are these cartoons doing here, exactly?

It's not the only example of repeating jokes either. Gags involving the NSA wire-tapping in relation to Americans talking loudly and publicly on their telephones and plays on the word "habeaus corpus" as "habeas corpses" are repeated, and I lost count of the nuber of times I saw Cheney and Bush drawn as rats gnawing on the Constitution or Don Knotts in heaven.






Superman's Adventures in Political Cartooning: The Man of Steel popped up a coule of times in the book, probably driven by the release of Superman Returns making Superman even more prominent in "civilian" culture's collective mind.




Here we see Superman leaving a screening of United 93 and shedding a tear. The cartoonist uses him hear to make a statement about the people depicted by the film and their real world heroism. It's not a funny cartoon by any means, but it gets it's point across well, and in a way only a cartoon could.

Do note the tear on Superman's cheek though, whch should qualify this as another image to file under Super-Crying (Rachelle has what is probably the single greatest image of Superman blubbering).

Super-nerds should also note the graying hair. That's right, this is Earth-2 Superman.






Okay, remember Steve Sack's bird flu cartoon above? If that's the top of the heap of avian flu gags, this is definitely the bottom. First of all, I totally don't get it. I mean, Superman's not a bird. If this were Hawkman, it might be funny. But it' snot. It's Superman. Why would he be in contact with birds? Because he runs a chicken farm? (If it were Colonel Sanders, it might be funny, since he's, you know, a recognizable icon associated with beign around birds). Because he works with carrier pigeons? What? Oh, he flies. So maybe he flew by a bird. And thus got the bird flu. Is that the joke? Is that it? Because it's not at all funny.

Also, Superman can't get the bird flu. Not only because he's not a bird, but because he's fucking Superman. He's invulnerable to everything this side of kryptonite. He sure as hell doesn't get sick.