Last week I did a cartoon showing Vladimir Putin atop Lenin's tomb reminiscent of photos we'd see of Soviet leaders during the cold war years. I was inspired to draw it following renewed interest by the Russians in the Arctic from the North Pole to the Mediterranean via the Caucasus. It made me think back, before Boris Yeltsin, to the last time I drew Lenin's tomb back when Mikhail Gorbachev was in power, as he warming up to the west with Glasnost, and implementing political and economic reforms otherwise known as Perestroika. The year was 1989, democracy was spreading throughout Eastern Europe, the Berlin Wall had just come down, and I was a student at the University of Ottawa. I was just starting out getting my worked published in the student press, through the campus newspaper called The Fulcrum. I had a cartoon strip called:

It was modern day (mostly Canadian) political news placed in a medieval setting. Brian Mulroney was the King of Canadaland, Gorbachev was the Russian Tsar, they rode around in horses, they spoke in Monty Pythonesque olde englishe. For most of the time it existed between September 1989, and April 1991, I collaborated with my friend, Paul Nichols, who was a fellow history student. He helped write it, and I drew it. It was published for each weekly edition of the Fulcrum.

Click here to see a larger version.

In retrospect, they were a bit wordy. The jokes were corny. The drawings were a bit crude, but keep in mind that we were twenty year olds. At the time home computers were still very basic word processors, there was no Internet, and early versions of Photoshop were still half a decade away. The inking of Alas & Alack had to be configured with exacto knives and glue stick. Tones were done using Chartpak shading film, and some special text was incorporated using Letraset transferrable lettering. It was all very time consuming work to put together a single Alas & Alack cartoon. A perfect excuse to keep me from reading textbooks, writing essays and studying for exams.

Click here to see a larger version.

Throughout the series I portrayed former Canadian Prime Ministers Clark and Turner, who were still active in politics at the time, as "erstwhile kings" who would show up every now and then carrying the crowns they once wore when they were in charge. Pierre Trudeau would show up portrayed as some sort of God-like character who lived in an acropolis type of temple on Mount Royal.

More Alas & Alack in the days to come....

A colourized version of the original drawn July 12, 2002

The Globe and Mail writes in a tongue in cheek editorial today on the death of a cartoon cliche thanks to some recent paleontological findings conflicting with long established theories of evolution. It must be the silly summer season when Canada's national newspaper opines about anthropology, even more so when it's suggested cartoonists will lose an over used cliche of a fish evolving through different stages of simian characteristics until it ends up resembling a human.

Will Science eventually destroy every cliche device known to cartoonists? Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing. Here are a couple of my own evolution cliche cartoons

The above one's from March 5, 1998

This one's from December 5, 2001.

Dear Editor,

Excuse me, that's Tour de France, not "Tour de Farce". The slanted, critical articles and cartoon are not fair to the sport or the majority of athletes that participate in this great event.

Granted, I am angry and disappointed when I see that a great performance that excited me has been falsely obtained due to the use of illegal blood transfusions or stimulants. It really burns me that a very few idiots have selfishly and desparately enhanced their performance, at the cost of their own integrity, the welfare of their team mates and the reputation of the sport.

The point that the authors of these articles and cartoons is missing is that cycling has been trying hard to clean up the sport, particularly since Floyd Landis was caught after winning the Tour last year. Teams and sponsors have been pulling-out or demanding  a clean sport, and it has been working. Apparently a few have not gotten the message.

The real issue here is that cycling is doing something about the drug problem. The increased and improved testing is actually getting results. Offenders are being caught and punished, and that is why it is in the news so much. That is more than you can say about professional football, baseball, basketball and hockey. If they started doing the same intensive testing as cycling, these other Pro sports would be lucky to have enough guys to field a team!

These so-called "sports" in North America are morally bankrupt in this regard and the people in charge do not want to know about the illegal use of drugs, nor do the "fans". They hang one scapegoat out to dry now and then, to make it look like they're trying, then it is back to business as usual. It's all about money and they won't risk that to catch cheaters. At least Pro Cycling has the guts to do it and risk some bad press to clean-up their sport.

  Ken Wilson
Ancaster

I know it's the summer when I draw back to back on local news -- when little stories are the fodder for editorial cartoons, simply because of a dearth of news on the national and world fronts.

Today's subject is the mulling over by city officials to make a bid for the 2015 Pan-American games. "Here we go again" -- I utter defiantly against the predictable enthusiasm of my colleagues in this editorial page room. Just as the current Pan Am games are being played out in Brazil with virtually no television coverage and scant knowledge that they're even going on a few bright lights in Hamilton are aching for the event to be played out here.

As with the city's earlier bid for the Commonwealth Games the thinking seems to be more about a blatant opportunity to grab a lot of provincial and federal funds to fix up existing arenas and stadiums than really understanding the traditions, history and spirit of what's behind certain international games.

At least with the second Commonwealth Games bid we were demonstrating perseverance by going after the games for a second time. Along the way we were learning what the Commonwealth games were all about, and became aware of the fact that the games had it's origins with the first Empire Games being played in Hamilton back in the 1930's. Our bids were not only just about fixing up our crumbling arenas, we had a genuine desire and connection to the games.

The politics of the bidding process screwed us, but at least we learned. More persistence could get us a Commonwealth Games sometime down the road.

But a Pan Am games bid? Now we're back to the old federal/provincial cash grab without really knowing what we're getting into.

I sketched the cartoon below but thought it really went beyond how I feel about the potential of hosting a big international games event. I'm not a bread not circus' advocate, just suspicious of Hamilton's tendency to put off fixing crumbling buildings and infrastucture with the hope that one day this city's going to win the lottery.

One of the things I note about attending editorial cartoonist conventions is how the American ones tend to be segmented into vague factions -- not unfriendly factions, but a few that seem to gather in social groups. They aren't so noticeably divided by nationality, such as Canadians vs. Americans, right vs. left cartoonists, or the cross-hatchers vs. the photoshoppers. There is a clique of Alternative cartoonists who tend to stick to themselves. While they don't say it at loud among mainstream newspaper editorial cartoonists I think the Alties view the products of the traditional big city cartoonist as generally lame, wishy washy in their politics, and predictable with their gags. The Alty cartoonist tends to be younger, angrier, they possess greater freedoms to express their opinions, and they tend to be from the left of the political spectrum. When they aren't skewering Bush, Cheney, or some other right winger getting heat in the Liberal press they tackle issues that are often overlooked by the full time editorial cartoonists, like religion, feminism, racism and homosexuality. I enjoy following the Alty cartoonists, and while I may not agree with the approach of their cartoons or the point they're arguing for, I respect their passion to tackle issues and politicians by using the liberties granted to them by their editors.

On the other hand there are those who don't appreciate the editorial cartoon. I'm having a hard time wondering how someone can dismiss what I would call an art form going way back through history. Ivan Brunetti, a comic book artist writes on the Daily Crosshatch:

"...Another problematic genre is the political/editorial cartoon, with its facile and smug symbology, which often seems manipulative and insulting to the reader's intelligence. The political value of comics (or art in general) is dubious at best, in my opinion. I have always said, "Political cartoons are the ass-end of the artform" (which is admittedly cruel of me). Political cartoons are often too reductive and lacking in nuance or subtlety. Occasionally, some heavy-handed or ham-fisted cartoon causes a great uproar. Well, if one sets out to offend a group of people with an image or cartoon, and one has a large forum, such as a newspaper, the cartoon will probably get a reaction. But I question the value of that. It seems like a little dance: someone draws something purposely to offend another, and then that person gets offended. Yeah, great.

Life and people, I believe, are a lot more complicated than that. It seems that (strictly) political cartoons can have one of two reactions: if you agree, you nod approvingly (but not really laugh), and if you disagree, you mutter something about the cartoonist being "an asshole" (and also not laugh). At best, the aim is to polarize people by relying on extreme viewpoints, and at worst, to pussyfoot around the issues for fear of actually offending somebody. Either way, everything is strictly in black and white terms, with no in-betweens, and I would much rather read a story about full, complex characters going about their lives. I think stories about human beings are still going to address political issues, if they deal with reality at all, but in an implicit rather than explicit (or worse, didactic) manner, thus generously and sympathetically allowing the reader to decide what to think. I guess one can argue that everything is political on some level, but then there really is no need to sledgehammer the reader's head."

Wonkette.com does a wonderful job of critiquing recent editorial cartoons. Wonderful, only because mine never get chosen.