I went to the dark side.

The last few years I've gotten very interested in local politics and shenanigans, but it stopped there. I mean, isn't there enough going on to protest and change right in one's own backyard? I always felt I had my hands full with Griffith Park - there's 800 acres, right there - and then Silver Lake, where I live and where I started to run after the big fire in Griffith Park.

I know some people dream big, but that wasn't me. Until last fall, when a big news magazine requested cartoons in a New Yorkery style, but based on news - like the election. Well, I like puzzles, and often I think of cartoons as puzzles, which you have to move around until something clicks. So I did a few roughs every week, but boy was it hard. A New Yorker cartoon is usually very impersonal and vague and abstract (although more concrete the last years, which is why they aren't very funny any more.) Or it's the TEDIOUS dog sitting in a bar. But politics are real people, and it's harder to make them do silly things and still be funny.

To be honest, I never even read editorial cartoons before. They were kind of messy looking, and they weren't funny. Well, my drawings aren't so dark and scratchy, but making current events funny is quite difficult, so I have a little more sympathy for the editorial guys... Oh well, just a harder puzzle to work out!

I never got beyond the difficult editor there (and dishonest, I think - and that's why I'm writing this here rather than in my cartoon blog!) So I had a handful of editorial cartoons I really liked, but where to sell them? It was all new to me! So, in short, Slate liked me, and I had to get syndicated to get in Slate, and so I got picked up by Uclick.

I'm in usually 3 times a week - and these deadlines are killers. New subjects, research needed, etc. And there were also the technical issues: I had to scramble to learn Photoshop better, and also to figure out what size lettering I needed to be legible that small. You can see the new cartoons as they appear in Slate here, (new ones show just after 10 PM our time) or in Gocomics here, where you can also comment, or sign up (for free) for 200 other cartoonists.

Anyway, the cartoon above is one of my favorites! The drawing turned out just how I wanted. I knew I wanted to protest the nerve of Mexico blaming us for their drug problems...and then Clinton throwing money at them, as if they didn't get all our drug money anyway, but I went through several drafts before deciding on this attitude at the very last minute. Of course, not everyone will agree with this cartoon, and that's the fun of opinion cartoons!

If you're interested in hearing more about editorial cartoons on Mayor Sam, let me know.
As always, cartoon ©Donna Barstow!