Holy Week's Sneak Peek

Well, to be perfectly honest, you won't find this in this week's cartoon.

Here's something else you won't find in this week's cartoon: The Roman Emperor Commodus (reigned AD 180 – 192) was an incompetent ruler, devoting most of his rule to self-glorification. 

He had himself minted onto imperial currency, which wasn't unusual. He festooned Rome with countless statues of himself as Hercules, which was only slightly out of the ordinary. Then he renamed the city "Colonia Lucia Annia Commodiana." He further renamed the months of the year, the Roman legions, the fleet, the senate, the imperial palace after himself, and even decreed that each and every citizen of Rome must change their name to Commodianus. 

Within a year, he was assassinated, and the names were all changed back.

Edwina Dumm, Dog Lady

Comic Con has announced new inductees to the Will Eisner Hall of Fame this year, including Edwina Dumm (1893-1990), one of the earliest women in the field of American cartooning. The Graphical History Tour highlighted Dumm in our Women's History Month episode a few years ago; since she is about to be enshrined in a hall of fame, let's highlight her again.

Dumm started out drawing editorial cartoons (among other things), as reported in the May 7, 1921 edition of The Fourth Estate, a publishing industry journal: "Edwina started her career at the Columbus (Ohio) Monitor, a weekly at that time and later a daily, now defunct. At that time she drew political cartoons."

I have not been able to find any on-line archive of the Columbus Monitor, but I have found two of her editorial cartoons in Cartoons Magazine. She was the all-purpose cartoonist for the Monitor from its first edition in August, 1915, (her editorial cartoons went unsigned until that November).

This is from an article in Cartoons Magazine's January, 1916 edition introducing her to her colleagues.

"Adrift and Handicapped" by Edwina Dumm in Columbus Saturday Monitor, ca. Dec., 1915

"It is not often that the ladies make a success of political cartooning, but Miss Edwina Dunn [sic.] of the Columbus Saturday Monitor, refuses to be handicapped by precedent. No subject is too big for her to wrestle with, and she interprets world events in real masculine cartoons."

In a feature article one year later, Cartoons Magazine got her name right.

"Father, Dear Father, Come Home with Me Now" by Edwina Dumm in Columbus Daily Monitor, ca. Dec., 1916

"She had always wanted to be a cartoonist, so she went to work to pay for an art education, thus showing a lot of spunk and independence. She is quite old, being in her early twenties, and is the daughter of a newspaper man."

According to her biography at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum, at the start of her cartooning at the Monitor, Dumm relied on her father — the paper's editor — for political information. After he suffered a stroke, she found inspiration from her friends, including some serving in the military. She later told an interviewer, "I thought you had to know a lot about the politics of the past... [but] all you had to know at that time — and possibly today — was what was going on that day and the policy of the paper."

The Monitor ceased publication in 1917, whereupon she moved to New York City and pitched a comic strip she had drawn for the Monitor to the George Matthew Adams Syndicate. "The Meanderings of Minnie" was about a tomboy and her dog; she and the editors agreed to change the girl to a boy, and "'Cap' Stubbs and Tippie" was born.

"'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dunn for George Matthew Adams Service, March 4, 1918

ibid.

A Local Girl Makes Good article in Marion [OH] Daily Star on Feb. 20, 1918, states that "now she will have a daily comic strip in some of the leading newspapers of the country, including the Boston Globe and the Pittsburgh Post. ... It deals with kid life, humor, thrills, action and human nature." The earliest examples of the strip I can find were in neither of those two newspapers, but both published on March 4, 1918: the top one in Rock Island [IL] Argus, the lower one in Beaumont [TX] Journal. 

(This was not at all unusual for comic strips when the cartoonist didn't write a date in the cartoon. Editors received a bundle of cartoons at once, perhaps a week's worth, and printed them in whatever order they wanted.)

Advertisement in Morning Post, Camden NJ, March 8, 1926 (also in Camden Courier, March 6, 1926)

100 years ago this month, her comic strip, "'Cap' Stubbs and Tippie," was finding a new home in the Morning Post of Camden, New Jersey. In a note to Morning Post readers, Cap, the boy starring in the strip, explained, "You know, we useta live there at the Currier [sic.] about 4 (four) yrs. ago. Well, we come back today, but we ain't gonna live at the Currier, but at the Mornin' Post, which I hears is a New Brother to the Currier, or something."

Women cartoonists being very much a rarity in the 1920's, The copy headlined "Meet Edwina, Too" leaned into her gender as a selling feature:

"You can regard this as confidential or not, as you please. Edwina, who draws ‘Cap’ Stubbs, is a girl.

"The male members of the comic profession are falling over flat on their backs to see a MERE girl running off with the honor of what is undoubtedly the truest-to-life humorous strip depicting the every-minute experiences of a boy and his dog.

"When we reveal Edwina's identity to anybody who has studied her comic strip for several weeks, the usual comment is, 'Impossible! A girl couldn't draw such a good strip about boys and dogs!'

"All we can say is, 'Well, she does.'

"And how Edwina can draw dogs! Your ordinary newspaper cartoonist can only draw one side of a dog, and that's all. Most of them can draw a dog going South. But Edwina can draw the ANATOMY of a dog.

"And so there is real drawing in 'Cap' Stubbs, and in the other people in Edwina's pictures. None of the tricks and short cuts of conventional comic art are evident in her work."

I have no idea what ordinary newspapers cartoonist Ms. Dumm (a "MERE girl" of 32 years) or her publicist were dissing. 

"'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for Geo. Matthew Adams Service, March 1, 1926

Dumm's strip occasionally spread a story arc over several days, as in a series of strips in which Cap's mother and grandmother had been planning a tea party. In these cases, it did make a difference in what order they were printed.

"'Cap Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for Geo. Matthew Adams Service, March 2, 1926

Other times, the day's strip was a one-off. Either way, it's unlikely that the Cap Stubbs fans in Camden New Jersey needed much time catching up with the four years of Cap Stubbs strips that they had missed after the Courier had dropped the feature.

"'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for Geo. Matthew Adams Svc., March 8, 1926

Cap was a sometimes ornery boy who got into minor trouble every so often, always with his dog by his side. A girl friend of his appeared in the strip from time to time, but Cap was a bit young to have a girlfriend. The women in his house figured more prominently than his father, mostly because they were around the house most of the time and Milt Stubbs had a job somewhere.

"'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for Geo. Matthew Adams Service, March 18, 1926

You may have noticed that the credit line for Cap Stubbs was always "By Edwina." That was certainly intentional, and she kept it that way throughout her career. 

Dumm was not the only woman cartoonist in the 1920's, as remarkable as her accomplishment was. Fay King was perhaps the most famous in the day; Juanita Hamel and Nell Brinkley drew stylish panels for newspapers' "Women's Page"; Barbara Shermund achieved fame as the "flapper cartoonist" for several popular magazines; and Virginia Huget would be the artist behind the comic adaptation of  Anita Loos's "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" debuting on June 7, 1926.

"'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for Geo. Matthew Adams Service, March 31, 1926

Tippie didn't have much to do in these strips from 100 years ago. He didn't speak, you can't read his thoughts, and he didn't fantasize about flying a Sopwith Camel in World War I. He pretty much just followed Cap around on his adventures.

"'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for Geo. M. Adams Service, March 29, 1926

Dumm's strip was a Monday-through-Saturday feature to begin with. Once a Sunday color comic was added in 1934, the additional newspaper real estate opened up more opportunities for Tippie to take center stage.

"Tippie and 'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for Geo. M. Adams Service, March 29, 1956

Eventually, Tippie got top billing in Edwina Dumm's strip. Even if the basic gags had similar premises.

"Tippie and 'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for Geo. M. Adams Svc., March 31, 1956

Although apparently the dog wanted to go to Washington D.C. for some reason.

Meanwhile, in 1931, Dumm launched another canine-centric cartoon feature, "Alec the Great," a one-column-wide drawing of a little puppy (very similar to the later, shaggier Tippie) over quaint little couplets written by her brother Robert. The Miami Herald introduced it to readers in 1936: 

"Alec the Great is a puppy. A rollicking happy-go-lucky, awkward pup that steals his way into your heart, and makes you want to cuddle him or give him a piece of hamburger and a pat on the head. Alec is waiting to welcome you on the editorial page of the Herald. He's a regular there."

"Alec the Great" by Edwina & Robert Dumm for Geo. M. Adams Svc., March 29, 1936

The Herald was one of several papers that used "Alec the Great" to break up the type on their otherwise gray editorial page; other papers relegated it to the classified ads for the same purpose.

"Alec the Great" by Edwina & Robert Dumm for Geo. M. Adams Svc., March 30, 1936

As if Tippie and Alec the Great weren't enough, Dumm also contributed cartoons about a dog named Sinbad to Life magazine. If it's Sinbad in this 1929 cartoon, it was before a readers' contest gave him a name.

"Gee, I'm So Hungry, I Could Eat a Sandwich Man" by Edwina Dumm in Life, Jan. 18, 1929

Here's Sinbad, and I have to say he looks mighty familiar. So does Grandma.

"Sinbad/I'm Sorry" by Edwina Dumm in Life, Aug. 8, 1930

Edwina Dumm never married. When she first moved to New York, she roomed with and collaborated with singer-composer Helen Thomas, and you can a make of that (and "The Meanderings of Minnie") what you will. Living in New York has never been inexpensive. 

She retired from cartooning Tippie and Alec in 1966.

The last installment of "Tippie and 'Cap' Stubbs" by Edwina Dunn for Washington Star Syndicate, Sept. 3, 1966

Inducted into the National Cartoonists Society in 1950, she received the Gold Key Award from the NCS Hall of Fame in 1987, the first of only two women to receive this honor. (The other was Bunny Hoest of "The Lockhorns," in 2013.)

Edwina Dumm died in New York on April 27, 1990, at age 96.

Q Toon: Tea and Bessentpathy

You have, of course, heard about Donald Joffrey Trump bleating on Trump Social, “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!” (Unless you’re a Fox Noise junkie.)

There is no bottom to the depravity of the nasty, brutish, and short-tempered man befouling the Oval Office and the nation. Many have come forward this week to condemn this indefensible shitpost.

So instead, I'm condemning the lickspittles who are defending it.

Meet the Press host Kristen Welker concluded a contentious interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on March 22 by asking him about Trump spitting on Mueller's grave before the body was even cold:

Kristen Welker: "Do you think it's appropriate for the president of the United States to celebrate the death of an American citizen, someone who's a Bronze Star, Purple Heart recipient and who served in Vietnam?"

Bessent: "Kristen, I was with the president in the green room at Davos and there was a video playing of the — what may have been an illegal raid on his home at Mar-a-Lago. They are going through his wife’s wardrobe. And I watched the look in his eye, and I think that neither one of us can understand what has been done to the president and to his family."

Welker: "But to the question of the president’s post, I mean, Robert Mueller didn’t order that raid. Is it appropriate for the president to celebrate the death of any American citizen –"

Bessent: "Again —"

Welker: "– Mr. Secretary –"

Bessent: "I think that given what has been done to President Trump and his family it is impossible for either of us to understand what he has been through."

Welker: "So, you don’t think that there’s anything wrong with the post, saying, 'Good. Robert Mueller’s dead.'”

Bessent: "Again, I think that we should all have a little empathy for what has been done to him and his family."

Welker: "All right. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, thank you as always for being here."

Think about that one for a second. Retired FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed in 2017 to conduct the investigation into candidate Trump's collusion with Russia, and published a report in 2019 that was immediately mischaracterized by then Attorney General William Barr as exonerating his boss. Mueller had nothing to do with the 2022 FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago when Trump was refusing to return presidential papers illegally stored there.

By the way, kudos to whoever it was at the 2026 Davos seminar whose brilliant idea it was to have video of the Mar-a-Lago raid playing on the television in the green room while Trump was in it. Well played! Maybe next year you can put together a montage of courtroom sketches from his 2024 fraud trial.

So anyway, Mr. Secretary Bessent behooves us to muster up some empathy — which I thought was one of those woke mind viruses Republicans want to stamp out — for the most amoral, ill-mannered, foul-minded, self-absorbed, overgrown brat ever to escape the clutches of the law and the Peter Principle to ascend to the Presidency of our late Republic.

Personally, I hope that Donald Commodus Trump lives long enough to see the next occupant of the White House demolish his precious ballroom; and if a giant sinkhole swallows up Mar-a-Lago at the same time, that would be bonus. But I have wondered many times over the past couple of years what we editorial cartoonists will draw (if there are any of us left) when he at long last faces the Grim Reaper like nobody has ever seen before.

Now I know.

This Week's Sneak Peek

There's gonna be some mansplaining in this week's cartoon.

I posted a new cartoon at the end of Saturday's Graphical History Tour of cartoons I had drawn decades ago. I suppose I could have posted it separately, especially since I devoted much of that post to pointing out the flaws in the older cartoons. 

On the other hand, I could have used the occasion to discuss why adding boar tusks to my Trump caricature would have detracted and distracted from the facial expression I was going for in the new cartoon. 

The Winter of Our Recycled Content

Daffodil shoots are poking through the slowly melting snow in the garden hereabouts. While Spring hopes eternal outdoors, today's Graphical History Tour parades through four decades of my March cartoons from 1986 to the present. 

Yes, I said "the present."

1986

in UW-P Ranger, Somers Wis., March, 1986

Ronald Reagan had campaigned for the presidency in 1980 promising to rein in spending and to cut the federal deficit. Instead, thanks to tax cuts and increased defense spending, the deficit climbed year by year, topping $220 billion, not quite 5% of gross national product, by 1986.

Republican Senators Phil Gramm and Warren Rudman, joined by South Carolina Democrat Fritz Hollings (left to right in my cartoon), put forth a scheme to force future Congresses to slash spending or face automatic budget cuts beyond their control. Gramm-Rudman-Hollings passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law in 1985, but the Supreme Court found it unconstitutional in 1986.

Gramm, Rudman, and Hollings later came out with a revised bill addressing the Court’s objections to Gramm-Rudman-Hollings I. Coupled with a tax hike, social spending cuts resulted in some reduction of the federal deficit, but it was right back to $221 billion by 1990.

A propos of nothing, $220 billion happens to be the amount Secretary of Special Military Operations Pete Hegseth wants over and above the Pentagon's 2026 budget in order to continue the Excursion in Iran.

1996

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., March 7, 1996

I really liked this cartoon, partly because it was my first truly successful caricature of Pat Buchanan.

Its problem lay in that it relied heavily on references to the 1995 film version of Richard III, which reset Shakespeare's play about England's last Plantagenet king into the late 1930's, depicting Richard as a murderous fascist grasping onto his usurped throne. I took the boar's head banners directly from the film (a white boar having been the actual heraldry emblem adopted by Richard himself).

Had there been more of an audience for updated Shakespeare histories, those references might have worked better. And why wouldn't audiences have flocked to see Ian McKellen, Annette Bening, Robert Downey, Jr., and Dame Maggie Smith bringing the bard from the 1480's into the 20th Century and the murders from offstage onto the screen?

I had been reading all of Shakespeare's history plays at the time, starting with Richard III, spurred on by first reading The Daughter of Time by Dorothy Tey. In her novel, Tey's detective, Alan Grant, is laid up in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound in a previous adventure, and passes the time investigating the murder, supposedly by Richard III or on his orders, of Edward IV's two sons.

I even bought the DVD.

Which sits unopened on the DVD shelf, still in its plastic wrapping from Barnes & Noble. 

It ain't exactly Date Night material.

2006

for Q Syndicate, March, 2006

Another problem with the cartoon about Buchanan was that the newspaper headline in it was kind of small. It was passable in a university newspaper, read by young adults with generally good vision. I couldn't foresee people reading it on an itty bitty phone screen; nowadays, I would have had to put the newspaper more in the foreground. or the headline in a "News Item" text box.

The church window in this 2006 cartoon has the same flaw. I had plenty of room to make the window much bigger, and I think the cartoon would have been improved if it were at least taller.

I don't think I was intentionally referencing this illustration by Maximino Cerezo Barredo of the biblical story of Jesus's temptation by the devil, although I was aware of and probably influenced by it:

"Cuaresma 1C" by Maximino Cerezo Barredo

The Temptation of Christ is read in Catholic, Lutheran, and Episcopal churches every year on the first Sunday in Lent: after Jesus has fasted in the wilderness for 40 days and nights, the devil tempts him with power and glory. Liberation Catholic theologian Cerezo Barredo depicts the devil in clerical garb, offering Christ cash, a crown, and satellite communications, in what I interpret as a slam against televangelists.

2016

Sadly, this brings us to some 2016 election cartoons, as the tragic trajectory of how we got where we are today begins. Call it Act One, Scene One.

for Q Syndicate, March 2016

In a more recent election cycle, I thought of using the boar's head from Richard III as a leitmotif in my cartoons of Donald Dickon Trump. I was already drawing him with a pig snout by then, so why not just add the boar tusks?

The answer is that I tried it once, and besides being even more obscure than it was in 1996, it just complicated the caricature. Besides, the real Richard III was a capable soldier and commander in battle, in spite of developing scoliosis, whereas Trump claimed bone spurs to avoid the Vietnam draft (when he wasn't playing tennis and squash at Fordham).

I was still developing a caricature of Trump at this point; he has one of those faces with too much of a muchness, defying cartoonists to choose which feature to fixate upon. The pout? The ridiculous comb-all-over? The eyebrows? The wattle? The overlong tie? The tiny hands?

As for Hillary Clinton, considering how long she has been in the public eye — as First Lady, senator, Secretary of State, presidential candidate, and Republican bête noire — it annoys me that I have so few cartoons where I feel I have drawn her successfully. This is not one of them.

2026

Wait, what?

The Graphical History Tour doesn't usually make a stop at Yesterday Afternoon, but you've been such a wonderful tour group, you all deserve a little treat.

Trump's hand-picked Commission of Fine Arts revealed controversial designs for new dime and gold dollar coins to celebrate the nation's semiquincentennial and Trump himself. 

The dime kicks Franklin Roosevelt to the curb; instead, its eagle grasps the arrows of war but has dropped its olive branches of peace. The dollar coin features Donald Render-to-Caesar Trump.

for this blog post, March 21, 2026

This is not the design proposed by the commission, but perhaps you remember this little episode from when Time magazine wanted to get some campaign photographs for a cover story on Trump.

Federal law has long prohibited putting living persons on U.S. currency, but a special exception was made for coins commemorating the nation's 250th anniversary. I'll give you exactly one guess which president signed that legislation into law.

Can you imagine any previous president getting his own mug on golden dollar coins while he was still in office?

Can you imagine Donald Imperator Trump passing up the opportunity?

Q Toon: Ric Rolls with the Punches

Since I had introduced Max's mother Karen during my vacation as someone working at the Donald J. Trump John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts (hereinafter referred to as the DJTJFKMC4PA), who better to interact with newly former President of the DJTJFKMC4PA, Ric Grenell?

Gay Republican Grenell has a track record of stirring up opposition wherever he goes. Republican Theocrats were up in arms when presidential candidate Mitt Romney took him on as a foreign policy surrogate; he later repeatedly offended his hosts as Ambassador to Germany in Donald Trump's First Corrupt Presidency.

With the recrudescence of Trump, Grenell came on board to oversee the bastardization of the JFK Center, sending artists and audiences streaming toward the exits. He and a new board of Trump lickspittles and right-wing ideologues rubber stamped Trump’s impetuous response to shut the DJTJFKMC4PA down for so-called renovations for the next two years.

Now, we don't know whether Grenell quit or was fired. Nor do we know what his plans for the future are; New York Times reporter Elizabeth Williamson attempted to ask him that quite reasonable question, only for him to throw a hissy fit back at her, huffing that she is a "left wing hack” manipulating the news.

Not the response of someone who left of her own accord, girl!

I drew my cartoon before Williamson and Grenell’s exchange became public. I suppose I would have had to draw a completely different cartoon otherwise, but Karen is not a New York Times reporter or a left wing hack. I wrote her as a rock-solid Republican. Whether she's a lickspittle or an ideologue — well, you'll have to wait and see.

At any rate, to have Grenell snap at Karen would require him to be even more of an unhinged sissy than I think he is.

But what do I know? I'm just a left-wing hack interested in attacking Republicans and manipulating the news for my own far left agenda.

St. Urho's Day's Salakähmäinen Kurkistus

No, I'm  never gonna give you up.

Our internet, phone, and cable was restored sometime around 8:00 Saturday morning. We don't know whether the power was out at their local satellite headquarters or somewhere between there and our neighborhood; we weren't the only household incommunicado. At least one neighborhood in town had no power until Sunday afternoon.

At which time the snowstorm started sneaking in.