Political Cartoon: Mission Statement
Hello all! Here’s my latest cartoon for
, published this morning.
I’m often worried about how the medium of political cartooning frequently overgeneralizes to ill effect, what with the thousands of words they symbolize getting boiled down to a picture. It’s so easy for a right-leaning person to look at an elephant or a left-leaning person to look at a donkey doing something worthy of criticism in a cartoon and go “that’s not me! That’s the other guys—that’s them!” and get nothing out of a piece of media that explicitly, even singularly exists for their eyes.
Not only could the person ignore the cartoon’s meaning, but a cartoon that attacks or generalizes with too much loose-cannon vitriol could further anger and shut down an already tribalized voter. If a piece of opinion media doesn’t make anyone reflect on their beliefs, does it make a sound? I don’t think so. And if it’s too loud, it could be a sonic boom that leaves our target audience deaf.
More soon.
Last week I wrote 1000 words’ worth of an essay about topics similar to this with the intention of posting it on Substack almost immediately.
As I was writing it I crossed the fine line from heartfelt analysis into angst, and it fell to the wayside. I need to open back up my Notes app and finish it. Hopefully it will be ready soon.
Also, I am hoping to start using this Substack in moderation(!) for updates related to events I’m attending or recently attended. I won’t be posting that here at the level of frequency that those updates come on Instagram, but I want to be documenting that work here. Tabling at a comic convention is a truly mammoth amount of work and I want to be milking that work for all it’s worth.
Until next time.
Good point.