In Tuesday’s cartoon, the government thinks we must be stupid. Click on the fragment below for the full cartoon at comics.com:
The more you click on my cartoons at comics.com during 2007, the better the chances they’ll appear in daily city papers in 2008. If you like Minimum Security, please see a new cartoon each weekday!
(Click any of the above images to see the whole set).
Cartoonists With Attitude totally rocked the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco last weekend. Also, I can’t even begin to describe how exciting it was to hold (and sell) copies of my first book (which will SOON be available for sale here, as soon as I get some more copies–I sold out of all the ones I had for APE). Also, the food in San Francisco was predictably amazing.
Masheka and I also had the honor of meeting Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder (see photo of him and Masheka above) and having dinner with legendary Wee Pals cartoonist Morrie Turner and hip-hop journalist Jeff Chang. And I got to chat with Curbside mastermind Robert Kirby! All-around awesomeness, really.
As soon as the image of the Virginia Tech killer with his guns drawn started popping up, I knew what I was doing for this week’s cartoon. When I saw that, my heart sank. How delighted he would be if he could see how eagerly his bait was taken.
For all the discussion out there about possible causes and motivations behind the Virginia Tech shootings, I am surprised how few people are talking about such massacres as media spectacles. As Cho’s “media kit” makes plain as day, these shootings are not just about killing people; they are about fame. By releasing his home video and other materials, NBC allowed itself to get played. It doesn’t stop there, though; as Josh Marshall points out on TPM, NBC actually branded the video with their logo, making the text of my third panel even more apropos than I’d thought. What, if anything, do these people find tacky?
I agree the video was likely upsetting to the victims’ families and friends, but that is not the issue that concerns me most. Broadcasting disturbing footage can serve the public interest — for example, informing viewers of the gruesome realities of war. But there was little such educational value here. The big problem lies with the next killer who sees the platform Cho was given, and decides they would like to go out in a similar blaze of “glory.” I’m not saying we can’t talk about Cho; there’s something to be gained from examining his behavior and learning what the warning signs look like. His Yosemite Sam pose, however, is superfluous to this effort.
I read somewhere that, unlike the U.S. media, the Canadian Broadcasting Company decided to describe the video instead. Our neighbor to the north proves they are saner than we are yet again! (Incidentally, I will be visiting Canada soon.)
Someone has set up a blog and petition to protest NBC’s decision here. As you can see, I’ve let them use my cartoon.
Because I’ve spent so much time working with so many great cartoonists in CWA and elsewhere, when I do shows I don’t really drop into gushing fan mode like I used to do when I was just another fan. I still admire and respect everyone’s work, but I like to think I have a little bit of a better understanding of being professional around other professionals. I say all that to intro the one major exception I knew would be applied to the rule.
I had absolutely no idea when I came to APE that Steve Purcell was going to be there. For the uninitiated, Steve Purcell is the creator of Sam & Max, which I have been confident since about the age of thirteen was the reason comics were invented in the first place. Anyone with a casual knowledge of Sam & Max can see (especially in the Christmas strips I’ve done) that Purcell’s work has been a big influence on me, especially the writing and dialogue. Well it’s more than just an influence.
I started drawing cartoons as a kid reading everything from Garfield to Doonesbury, but I didn’t really read superhero comics that much. It wouldn’t be until Bruce Timm’s reign that I’d become a Batman fan. When I was about thirteen, I found a copy of the Sam & Max collection at a bookstore, and vaguely recognized the characters from the LucasArts game (which, in itself, raised the bar for all standards of quality in that field). I remember to this day how I laughed at every page, seeing weird obscure gags and clever dialogue like that for the first time. When I learned more about Steve and how he was also doing stuff at LucasArts, not just as a cartoonist but a game designer and a content writer, I was excited that you could actually be someone like that. I was at a point in my life when I wanted to do computer programming, but honestly didn’t enjoy it that much. After I read Sam & Max, I realized that, without a doubt, I wanted to be a cartoonist.
When I applied to NYU’s animation progam, the entrance essay question was to write about a piece of art or film that inspired you to be an artist. I wrote about I wanted to be Steve Purcell.
In a sad way, I’m kind of upset I’m not as professional as I want to be when I met him this weekend, because without any real work or job experience to share with him I was just another fan, but Steve was still just as gracious and responsive to me telling him all the stuff I just told you up there as I hoped. Maybe some day I’ll have something really awesome in my reportoire to show him, but for now I’ll leave you with the photo below. If you have any knowledge of how great Sam & Max is, you will understand immediately how jealous you should be that I have this and you don’t.
Having returned home after a redeye from San Fran in which the very, very youngest of our citizens succeeded in preventing me from sleeping at all, I have just woken up again from bed, aka New Bestest Friend Ever.
I had so much fun this weekend it’s unbelievable. It felt like I was in California forever and for no time at all at the exact same time. I got to spend a weekend hanging out with my friend Amanda and get a hands-on tour of all the great stuff in SF. To crib Douglas Adams, The San Francisco Bay is just one of those views that require you to stand and applaud. Haight street is hilarious in that it’s actually like every movie where the out-of-town guy comes to San Francisco and they show that wacky montage of the “crazy, freaky folks in San Fran.” And even the hill are amazing to me. I lived in New York and now Washington, which are two cities not exactly known for changes in elevation. There are spots in SF where you can literally see every single house at one time, and it’s breathtaking. Or, conversly, they are hyperventilation-inducing when being forced to drive through them at breakneck speeds courtesy of professional racing stuntman Ted Rall. While I love the Romanesque architecture of DC, the eclectic layout of San Francisco’s buildings amuse and amaze me. The best metaphor I could give is that San Francisco is like SimCity after you’ve been playing for six hours, and all you have left are little green squares everywhere that you’re desperate to find way to fill, so who cares if you just drop in a third of a residential zone or a single park fountain. I dropped my keys at one point and when I got back up after bending down to get them there was a four-story walk up where a pothole used to be.
APE was great, even if the sales weren’t, but it was so much fun to see my friends in CWA again and spend a great weekend discussing cartooning, our ideas, and all that stuff. I’ll have a few photos up soon, and I’m sure some of my fellow CWAers will too. I also have a great moment from the show to share, which I’ll do very soon.
The Associated Press did a brief piece on the ” OTHER HEROES: African American Comic Book Creators and Characters” show currently up at Jackson State University in Mississippi, and they called me today to ask for permission to use a photo of my cartoon from the exhibit.
(Just in case it’s not already clear from my photos and self-portraits, I’m not black–I was included in the show because I frequently draw black characters, and the show was about black comics creators AND characters. I explained this to the photographer and suggested he might want to use a different image, but he said he wanted to use it anyway and he was also using images from two of the black cartoonists from the show, Kyle Baker and Mshindo Kuumba).
Anyway, here’s the photo of my cartoon “Let Them Eat Toxic Sludge” on Yahoo News. Fun facts: I drew the cartoon at 3 a.m. after coming home from a 2005 Katrina benefit show featuring Dave Chappelle, Q-Tip, Dead Prez and Talib Kweli.
Update: The Freedom Gravy cartoon was also used to illustrate a more detailed story in the Jackson Free Press, and they fittingly discussed my work and Masheka’s work (not to mention Keith Knight’s work–go CWA!) in the same paragraph:
Almost every viewer should find something in the show that resonates. My favorites include a poster by Mikhaela Reid advertising “Freedom Gravy,� the Bush-family solution to the post-Katrina food shortage in New Orleans and coastal pollution problems all at once. “Let Them Eat Toxic Sludge!� the poster proclaims while a wrinkly, pearl-wearing Barbara Bush offers a green spoonful of Freedom Gravy to a young black girl, saying, “Open up dear—I’m sure this is much nicer than what you people are used to eating.� Also interesting is Masheka Wood’s “Ask CEOs� comic strip, where she asks hideous white male CEOs “How do you spend your $13,000 an hour?� Replies from the executives range from the hilarious—“Imported cashmere wipes for my delicate buttocks.�—to the disconcertingly realistic—“Oh ya know, buying politicians and whatnot.� By juxtaposing both types of answers, Wood asks a pointed question: “Which is more outrageous: Cashmere butt-wipes or buying out politicians who are supposed to represent our best interests?� Also noteworthy for his biting political and racial satire is Keith Knight, whose understated visual style allows his wry observational genius to shine through.
I hereby pronounce Alberto Gonzales the most frighteningly botlike member of the Bush administration. I have yet to see this man display even a trace of warmth or humanity. As nutty and unsavory as Ashcroft was, at least he seemed somewhat organic. There was some feeling there when he sang that song about the eagles. The only emotion Gonzales seems to convey is prissy umbrage. One imagines he could watch Quaker children being waterboarded in a Syrian sewage canal without pausing from the next bite of his sandwich. He is pure adminidroid; he is the cold, hard face of authoritarianism. But let us not locate this problem in the man. He is merely the extension of a movement. His firing, while necessary, will solve little.
In Monday’s cartoon, Nikko is confused. Click on the fragment below for the full cartoon at comics.com:
The more you click on my cartoons at comics.com during 2007, the better the chances they’ll appear in daily city papers in 2008. If you like Minimum Security, please see a new cartoon each weekday!
Ted Rall Discusses the French Elections: Live in Washington DC
I’ll be joining Radio France Internationale correspondent Claude Porsella, TF1 correspondent Guillaume DebrĂ©, and fellow cartoonists Jeff Danzinger (New York Times Syndicate), Kal (The Economist, ex-Baltimore Sun) and Nick Galifianakis (Washington Post Writers Group) for a panel discussion about the French presidential elections tomorrow night in Washington.
When: Wednesday, April 25, at 6:30 pm
Where: Alliance Française, 2142 Wyoming Avenue NW | Washington, DC 20008 | Phone 202.234.7911
Cost: $8.00 for members of the Alliance Française, $12.00 for all others
