Q Toon: Exclusive Photo!

We had a major family event planned this past Sunday, the day of the week when I usually draw my syndicated cartoons, so I was busy drawing on Saturday. After so many weeks drawing about marriage equality (directly or tangentially), I had decided to draw a not terribly serious cartoon about erstwhile Olympian, now infotainment spectacle Bruce Jenner. I managed to come up with a caricature that, while not particularly flattering, I was rather pleased with, so I was feeling good about the cartoon.

I was nearly halfway done inking the cartoon when a story came on the evening news came that Jenner had been involved in a car accident resulting in the death of a woman in one of the other cars.

There was no way I could go forward with plans to run that cartoon any more.

I spent a good hour or two desperately scouring the internets for other topics I could draw something about, but I couldn't get away from the story that had stopped me cold.

Q Syndicate✒Feb 12, 2015

It was those photographs with the TMZ watermark of the moments immediately leading up to and including the crash itself that did it. I'm not buying the Los Angeles police statement that the crash was not the fault of the paparazzi. You don't have to be chased by a handful of cars jockeying for position around you and sticking telephoto lenses out their windows at you to be distracted by them.

That unfinished cartoon goes back in the folder. Maybe I'll finish it one of these days —I've already heard one late-night comedian toss off a Jenner reference as if there wasn't a funeral this week (and Mike Luckovich apparently thought enough time had passed to release today's cartoon) — or maybe I'll use the idea in a cartoon about somebody else.