A great many visitors to the site will see my local cartoons and move on without having a clue about what I'm drawing about. The cartoon above refers to the perpetual story of a decaying building in Hamilton's downtown and the lack of political will to decide its fate. I post the brief explanatory to the right of each 'toon hoping it'll put some context to each cartoon.

It is often said that the it's the local cartoons which are best appreciated by newspaper readers. They often bring in the most feedback, and may occasionally cause some to cancel their subscriptions. Perhaps that is why some of the tamest cartoons I've ever drawn are subject to greater scrutiny by my editors due to their potential for local provocation. It's far more acceptable to spear a national leader with the same degree of satire than it is a local mayor or councillor. If an editor kills a local cartoon because he thinks it goes too far, then you've basically wasted 4 to 5 hours on something that will never get published anywhere else.

So while local editorial cartoons often beats any chance that some generic cartoon drawn by some freelancer hundreds of miles away will get printed, there's still a greater chance that the local cartoon will be under more scrutiny. Increasingly, I'm finding the local cartoons to be more of a hassle to draw than the non-local cartoons. The result is that I've been doing less the local stuff, which is unfortunate, because a city like Hamilton could use more satire.

The above cartoon might be regarded by some as a cheat since I relied so heavily on Photoshop to achieve the result. I believe in recycling so I don't see incorporating images from past cartoons into present cartoons as an evil thing.

Components of this cartoon have appeared here, and here. The first appearance of the parliament buildings component appeared almost exactly a year ago. Anticipating more cartoons involving images of Parliament will come, I've banked it in my personal clip art archives. Expect to see it in one shape or another in the future.

Added to my clip art bank is the Capitol dome, which I created yesterday. Considering it symbolizes politics in the U.S. so significantly you can expect to see that reappear sometime again. In the past I've toiled with drawing the same image from the same angle. This isn't to say I'll never draw this perspective of the capitol dome ever again, but at least I'll have one banked if time presses me in the future.

Is this cheating? You tell me.

I hated the blog editor my web host provided me. So I ditched it. So now blogdrive.com will generate my random thots from now on. My apologies for those of you who left comments on the last blog. What follows below on this page are the blog entries I made on the old blog host. I didn't transfer the comments. But you can find the old blog here. It was quite ugly .

I like this one. It's easier on the eyes and it's a lot less clunky to operate...

So my latest cartoon:

...has the invisible fingerprints of my editorial masters all over it. Dumbing this one down was the choice I made to prevent a repeat on the PoHamilton Adventure from May 14. That one was completely axed with no chance of editing it for the sake of getting it in print.

This time the concern was dishonouring the many brave men and women whose duty it is to serve and protect and the defend the laws of the province of Ontario. Despite all the bars indicating the high ranking commissioners of the O.P.P. it was felt I needed to actually spell out that the monkeys depicted are the goofs who commanded the troops to turn their backs on lawlessness perpetrated by certain bad eggs during the recent native road blockade in Caledonia.

If I was allowed to go with my original plan, I would've simply had a silhouette of the road barricade in the background and a caption reading just "Ontario's Petrified Police".  Oh well.

... I know, the old monkey see no, hear no, speak no cliche is really tired... but, it's actually the first time I've ever used it.

 

I guess there's been some time elapsed to reflect on the last cartoon of contention. The internal temperature has lowered and life does indeed go on after one of your cartoons has been spiked.

It turns out the cartoon drawn last Friday was killed due to its vulgar nature. The boss made it clear it was not because of it's hardline opinion against the Liberal's wishy-washiness over extending Canada's military mission in Afghanistan.

He apologized for not letting me know before I opened Saturday's issue of the Spectator (which was subsequently tossed into the recycle bin.)

More importantly in our conversation he mentioned the cartoon seemed to be angier than usual. I agreed, and on further discussion we resolved that angry cartoons aren't the best cartoons. They certainly make a strong point but that they often piss off a major chunk of the newspaper's audience. Hopefully I'll remember to better manage my anger in the future rather than ink it on paper.

This one came close to being put on the chopping block. Perhaps it already has and I won't know until I wake up and sit down 9 hours from now only to find its absence. (I waited around 2:00 this afternoon to cartoon on it after abandoning a startling, though dubious story from the National Post about Jews and Christians in Iran being required to wear Nazi styled badges.)

The boss thought it was a tad vulgar. He wasn't comfortable with how I showed Liberals with their heads up the @$$e$! to illustrate the typical wishy washy Liberal stance concerning Canada's role in Afghanistan. Then came the awkward discussion of what the term "head up your @$$!" actually means. I define it as self centeredness, stupidity, ignorance. It went offly well with the gag line " must be their defence position."

So other editors were canvassed and I suppose their reactions moderated my immediate supervisor's revulsion at the image. I can't blame him for his queasiness though. It'll be up to him, after all,  to answer to offended grannies and higher level editors put off by the scene. I just wonder if the impeding outrage (if any) will actually be less about the image and more about my editorial dart directed at the precious federal Liberal Party.  

* * * UPDATE - January 21 2007 * * *
Folks at the conservative news forum, FreeRepublic.com ranked this as number 9 out of 44 finalists for best cartoon of the year.