Hey, here’s a cartoon I did for the Phoenix. Look at it, if you don’t mind my aggressively-local sense of humor.
I’m an expert at this subject, but I will only share the location of my favorite townie bars with trusted individuals. All dives in my neighborhood are under constant threat of turning into hipster bars, so their locations have to be protected.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMh-vcNKA6E
I started this little comic strip right after 9-11, not for political reasons, but because those attacks made me acknowledge my own mortality. There was no way I was going to spend years in a shitty engineering job, saving up to pursue to my real dreams, only to let some asshole kill me before I got to do any of the shit I actually wanted to do. Sure, it was Al Qaeda who brought that to my attention, but all sorts of assholes can end your life before you even get it started: Cancer, car accidents, wicked-fast adult-onset diabetes, etc. …, so get going, kids!
So I started drawing dumb, poorly-drawn cartoons about jerking-off and eating chicken wings. Simultaneously, America turned into a crazy jingoistic collection of shitheads. First the Afghanistan War, then the totally phony run-up to the Iraq War sparked my latent Massachusetts’ liberalism into full-blown opinionating. But don’t get me wrong; even though I’m now part of it, I still hate the media for the role they played in starting the war they’d rather forget. Occupy is great and all, but WAY more people took to the streets in opposition to that invasion; it just didn’t fit the media’s narrative at the time.
Anyway, that war ended yesterday, to no great fanfare, even though it has provided the political backdrop of my (totally fucked-up, but for unrelated reasons) adult life. And as my generation slowly ossifies into old-folks, I figured I should throw this out onto the Internet before I become an old guy with a mustache who champions wars for no reason at all.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwFaSpca_3Q
Obviously I’ll never become the Mustache, but if any mall-heirs want to debate the issue, over steaks and shrimp-smoothies (That’s what you richies eat, right?) at the disgusting strip mall you inherited, I’m hungry enough to entertain you.
Here’s a link to the Electric Six album the above-song came from if you want to buy it.
My pal and fellow cartoonist John Walsh has just ten days left in the Kickstarter campaign for his graphic novel, Go Home Paddy. It’s 75% funded as of this writing, so any little bit you can contribute will help push it over the finish line. Besides helping the project out, various contribution sizes result in assorted thank-yous including prints and original art.
And it’s not just a story for us Boston micks. Anti-immigrant fervor is still everywhere in this country, although the xenophobes’ ire has shifted from us potato-boilers to brown folks who actually know how to make food that tastes good. You can see for yourself since a huge chunk of the comic has been serialized on its website.
Don’t delay, pledge now!
Readers Colleen and Kevin went all out for Halloween and decorated their home with an Occupy theme. And as the above photo shows, they gave a shout-out to my Occupy Poor Street cartoon. Check out the rest of their display here. The grave for the Red Sox was especially spooky. Thanks, guys!
If you’re curious about what I do, I did an interview with online zine, Bamboo. Here’s an excerpt:
The tone of “Big Fat Whale” is often acerbic and quite bleak. How pessimistic are you about the direction the country is headed in?
I’m very pessimistic for the short term. Until the current system is replaced with a functional government, nothing substantial is going to happen as our country slowly crumbles from neglect. As the past few years have shown, the GOP is willing to destroy the nation if it helps their chances in the next election, and the Democrats are unwilling to stand up to them for a whole host of reasons. As for the long term, once we hit bottom, things will have to improve, right?
I also talk about my early years, and the New York Times gig. Read the whole thing here.
I get tons of boring email. It comes with the territory. But it’s Friday night, I’m finally setting up a Netflix account of my own, enjoying a fine IPA, and all of a sudden, this professor storms into my inbox with long-winded righteous indignation! I normally would ignore such blathery, but I blame the IPA. His email, in full:
Dear Mr McFadden,
Will you read a letter from a conservative art historian who teaches at [REDACTED] College?
Since early childhood I have been a fan of political cartoons, and love to see a point made cleverly with visual means, whether or not I agree with the politics. There are cartoonists of the left who make me laugh, even as I disagree with them, and vice versa.
But I think your lemonade stand bit this weekend in the Times fell flat, and in a way you didn’t intend. As you well know (to judge by the comments on your blog), conservative businessmen or Republican governors do not tyrannize lemonade stands. This is exclusively the province of petty soul-crushing bureaucrats, the bland mediocrities that Hannah Arendt described for us. If you want to scorn, mock, ridicule or otherwise lampoon us on the right — it should be vaguely related to something we actually do. In fact, since your cartoon appeared, your own Massachusetts gendarmes just shut down a 12-year old’s stand.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/08/25/massachusetts-state-police-shutdown-twelve-year-olds-green-tea-stand/
And here’s a litany of similar cases.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/273739/war-lemonade-rich-lowry#
Anyway, the rest of the cartoon is fine but it struck me that that panel was dishonest, and the one thing that’s fatal to the political cartoonist is dishonesty. Vulgarity, obscenity, any of the seven deadly sins is perfectly fine in a cartoonist, but not dishonesty. I won’t bore you any more, but for your files I am attaching here an essay of mine on the subject that appeared in Commentary in 2003. It’s only the pdf of the galley; the title was “Cartooning, Right and Left.”
Somehow I have the feeling that I’m not the only one who’s taken you to task about lemonade.
politics aside, congrats on your posting to the Times,
[REDACTED]
And my well-thought-out reply:
Thanks for the essay, professor!
Somehow I have the feeling a passive aggressive somebody needs to look up the definition of tyranny. And “for my files”? Yeah, I went down to Big Fat Whale Special Collections right away with those op-eds and put them in an acid-free box…with my poop.
Steven Heller over at Imprint said some nice things about me, and in the interest of making sure work keeps coming my way, I had to share.
Now, “The Strip” by Brian McFadden, which was moved from the back page to the more prominent page 3, is the first thing I jump into on Sundays. And it is well worth it. His wit is dry, smart and on topic for the times.
I’d much rather share hatemail, but the Times doesn’t link to this site, so I haven’t gotten any yet. I imagine the haters Google my name, and as a result, this douche is catching all my flack.
Rather than try to crank out three cartoons this week, I’m going to post the new BFW on Friday and give myself a bit of breathing room. Several freelance jobs need my attention, and I have one last move up a flight of stairs that’s probably going to keep me occupied most of Monday.
I’ll post something funny here tomorrow though, even if it’s just a drunken napkin-doodle from pub trivia tonight.
So for yesterday’s Sunday Review cartoon, I set my sights on centrist pundits like Tom Friedman and his ilk, using a superhero trope. Unfortunately, it didn’t occur to me that this was painfully similar to Tom Tomorrow’s take on our Centrist-in-Chief, until people mentioned it. It’s even a recurring bit of Tom’s, so the similarity should have been obvious to me from the earliest stages of writing. I guess I was blinded by my excitement at drawing Friedman in his underpants.
My sincere apologies, Mr. Tomorrow!
My Sensations/Fingers of Death illustration is featured in today’s Covered (an amazing site full of classic comic book covers interpreted by different artists).
And while you’re there, check out my latest favorites: these by Matthew Allison.
