Political cartoons on WikiLeaks, military, Catholic Church.

Last updated on January 3, 2023

Each week I think, I’m just going to limit it to the three best opinion cartoons this time, but I always find myself adding a couple of others – so I’m going to divide this roundup into a 2-parter.

I was shocked this week, SHOCKED to have an editor at a major book publisher tell me that they don’t publish many books of political cartoons “because they’re too hard to understand, and people feel like their brains hurt.” As I’ve written before, I never read political cartoons myself until a couple of years ago, so I feel their pain, but still…a smart, sexy editor can’t understand a cartoon?!

I can’t explain her mental state, but one problem I had was that I just didn’t follow the news enough to understand the cartoons- and another problem was the cartoonists themselves – messy, scrawling, ink scratching, with symbols and name tags and not a bit of humor, either. But they’re online and colorful now, and if you think of political cartoons as little puzzles, or mind games, you’ll have ever so much more fun with them!

I’m starting this week’s roundup with a cartoon by Dario Castillejos, on WikiLeaks. I like a lot of the foreign cartoonists, for both style and concept – they usually don’t have much dialogue, so they really work on their drawings! Uncle Sam is a rather tired symbol – I’ve never used it, nor been tempted to, in 2 years of doing cartoons – but this drawing of Uncle Sam as a scarecrow is pretty amusing! Oh, look, Mr. Crow has torn out his eye. Gulp. I like this grisly approach, maybe because it reminds me of Scarecrows, a truly scary good movie that I recommend.

Also, I might have missed an ingredient here. Does taking an eye out mean something different in Latin America, where the cartoonist is from? That’s for scholars to figure out.

I don’t think WikiLeaks is very interesting or exciting so far- what was it this time, name-calling? – so this cartoon is a little overdramatic, but it would liven up your paper, wouldn’t it? Thanks, Dario.

I’m not a fan of animation. But sometimes I have dreams where I’m looking at a single panel cartoon and it starts to move. I’m including this cartoon by David Fitzsimmons because he has some interesting movement going on here, and because how can we ever say thank you enough to our military men and women?

David has a loose cartoon-y style, but that only emphasizes the straight-backed dignity of this soldier as he goes on his way. Cartoonists never cry, but I may have gotten something in my eye for a moment…

Arcadio Esquivel cartoon on Pope and condoms

Last we have Arcadio Esquivel and a really great cartoon on the Pope and his take on condoms! I laugh every time I look at this! I want to do a cartoon on this subject, too, but Arcadio might have won this game. This cartoon has movement in it, too – the way he keeps jiggling the condom on a stick, and his rather devilish expression – divine!

This cartoon has what is called a limited palette – only 2 colors, instead of the rich reds, etc, others might use on the Catholic Church leader’s vestments. It works.

Come back tomorrow for Part 2!

A big thanks to Cagle Cartoons.com for permission to use these cartoons (except for mine below, which are ALL MINE. :).) If you want to submit your own cartoons for consideration here, feel free to email me here. (JPGs under 200 kb, and only one per week, please!)

My own cartoon this week of gays in the military can be found on Yahoo News (Sorry, no link now. Uclick Gocomics threw away 2 years of my cartoons on Slate, Gocomics and Yahoo News when they kicked me out.), and comments are on GoComics.