The Herblock Foundation has a brand spanking new whitepaper out on the state of political cartooning called “The Golden Age for Editorial Cartoonists at the Nation’s Newspapers is Over.” Too true.

The whitepaper (which you can download as a PDF here) contains a glum survey and a depressing collection of essays by a wide range of cartoonists, including Clay Bennett, Ted Rall, Jen Sorensen–and yours truly.

Here’s a quote from my essay, which is untitled in the collection, but which I like to call “The Way the Future of Political Cartooning Wasn’t.”

The future of political cartooning I imagined in 2001 was already a far cry from the future of political cartooning in 1981. My fellow 20-something alternative cartoonist friends and I didn’t even vaguely aspire to comfortable drafting-desk staff positions at daily newspapers with reasonable salaries and health benefits. The Pulitzer Prize application just seemed like a waste of money.

Our model was self-syndication in the alternative weeklies. We looked to Ted Rall, Keith Knight, Alison Bechdel. We’d pay our inky dues, toiling in the Bristol Board — or Wacom tablet — trenches. We’d work day jobs. By night we’d comb through news sources and write and draw and write. Sleep was for suckers.

We’d market ourselves with clever self-promotional packets mailed regularly to hundreds of alternative and niche publications. We’d blog and send e-mail newsletters, and we’d draw attention to our cartooning book collections at comic conventions with big vinyl banners and brightly colored tablecloths. We’d sell T-shirts and stickers to our legions of super-dedicated online fans.

Our aspirations were modest. Maybe one day we’d quit our day jobs and squeeze by on a low five-figure income. Or if we were already squeezing by fulltime, maybe one day we’d be able to afford — gasp! — basic health insurance.

That’s one of the least sad bits. Download the whitepaper PDF to read the whole thing.

Yeah, um… Happy New Year. And stuff.

P.S. If you want a more thorough sum-up of my 2011, it’s over here at my sewing blog Polka Dot Overload, but I do warn you that it is mostly about babies and sewing and not political cartoons or politics (except for a mention of me getting laid off from the cartoon syndicate United Media when they outsourced all our jobs to Universal Press Syndicate).

Masheka and I will be tabling with our Cartoonists With Attitude pals Keith Knight (creator of “The K Chronicles” and “The Knight Life”) and Jen Sorensen (of “Slowpoke” fame) at the always fabulous 2011 Small Press Expo. More details to come!

What: SPX 2011

Where:

Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center

5701 Marinelli Road

Bethesda, MD 20852

Subway: White Flint Station

When: Open to the public Saturday and Sunday, September 10 and 11, 2011.

Saturday: 11:00 am – 7:00 pm

Sunday: noon – 6:00 pm

Bonus photo: Here we are with CWAer Matt Bors at SPX in 2006:

What’s in YOUR Monster Box?

(thanks to C-Po for this one)

Get Black Comix: African American Independent Comics, Art and Culture from here ** or schlep your lazy ass to the nearest bookery (if they’re cool, they’ll have it). It’s 175 pages of hardcover goodness from, and about, some of the best artists out there.

And the best part is not only am I profiled in the book, but I have a little illo on the bottom left corner of the cover.

See the Black Comix blog for more info.

*Not recommended for lonely racists.

**although you won’t get it shipped by Valentine’s Day, it should arrive by February 19th for Valenteen’s Day, a holiday I just invented.

He just wants to help.

He was also recently(ish) featured in the gorgeous art book anthology Black Comix: African American Independent Comics, Art and Culture. That’s his art in the bottom left corner:

See the Black Comix blog for more info.

And he has another project coming up, which I’ll post about when I have more details.

A character I came up with for a larger story about a group of giants who are part hillside. This one combines my fascination with body horror, eternal optimists and compound nouns.

He is not an animal! He is a human be-… actually I don’t know what the hell he is.

Click to enlarge

Self-explanatory, I think.

It’s skeet-tastic! (sorry.)

-M

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