Q Toon: Minnesota ICE

I wish I had come across this quotation by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in time to send this cartoon out for publication by the federal holiday (yes, it still is a federal holiday, in spite of the racist Trump regime's refusal to respect it). Instead, it goes public during Black History Month (not a federal holiday, but another observance repudiated by the white supremacists in the White House).

The quotation is certainly not aimed at the good people of the Twin Cities who have literally risked their lives to stand up, speak out, video, and blow whistles against the wicked people and the wicked government that sent them there. We are all, however, at a Which Side Are You On moment in history.

There are still plenty of people who support, defend, and excuse what this government and its hired storm troopers are doing. Many such people are beyond any cartoon's powers of persuasion. (But we keep on trying.) This cartoon is directed to what I believe is the dwindling middle ground of Americans who are yet to face the musical warning of the late Neil Peart that, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

I had most of this cartoon inked before leaving on vacation last month, leaving a few spaces in case I needed to acknowledge outrages in addition to ICE's murder of Renée Nicole Good and the dogged persecution of brown-skinned detainees, including those who happen to be LGBTQ, such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Elias Perez Zuazo, and Jose Nuñez.

We weren't watching the news down in South America, but our Facebook feeds were flooded with reports and videos of the summary execution of Alex Pretti. I have a lot of college friends who live in the Twin Cities area, including one couple who live on the same block as Pretti's home.

Including Good and Pretti, 40 people have died in ICE custody or at ICE's hands in this first year of the Lawless Trump Regime's ethnic cleansing campaign. 32 in 2025. Eight in the first month of 2026.

So you will excuse me if I don't give a flying frock that somebody couldn't understand the words of Bad Bunny's halftime performance. 

William Henry Harrison's Birthday Sneak Peek

As I mentioned the other day, I've been away on vacation the past couple of weeks.

And it only occurred to me on Saturday, waiting in a foreign airport for the last of the planes to take us home, that I hadn't prepared a third Graphical History Tour to publish here in my absence. For that I apologize.

I had drawn enough editorial cartoons for the weeks I was gone, and, in case flights got delayed or connections missed or the U.S. air traffic control system shut down, most of the one I needed to have finished by last night (plus working ahead on some other stuff that people needed from me). Since I came home to find my white-out had congealed to the consistency of pizza dough, and my ink likewise to fresh tar — and I had a replacement bottle only for the latter — and my computer quite happy to remain on its own vacation, it's a good thing I hadn't left myself a lot to finish up.

Well, anyway, here's the sneak peek for that cartoon.

Q Toon: Exit Stage Left

Here's Part Two of Mama's visit to Max and Leo's humble abode.

I've made an effort to by coy about where Max and Leo live — in what city, town, or village (someplace with a couples therapist and a coffee shop, however), what part of the country, and whether in a house or apartment. Hence the introduction of Max's mother, who, it can now be revealed is on or works for the board of directors for the so-called Donald J. Trump John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.

It can also be revealed that I was away on vacation when the deadlines for last week's and this week's cartoons arrived, so these two cartoons were drawn well ahead of time. In fact, they were drawn before the Washington D.C. Opera withdrew from the DJTJFKMC4PA last month. (The Center's President Ric Grenell claims they were fired; perhaps the company wanted to present Emmett Till: the Opera by Clare Coss and Mary D. Watkins. Or had commissioned an opera about Jeffrey Epstein.)

So anyway, I've spent the last few weeks hoping that none of the real entertainers mentioned in this cartoon kick the bucket, or get arrested by ICE for protesting in Minneapolis, or denounce the renaming of the DJTJFKMC4PA. 

But then our pouty mercurial president went and brayed on Trump Social that now he is shutting the DJTJFKMC4PA down for two years in order to redesign it into the gilded Louis XIV whorehouse he’s always dreamed of.

The center’s staff learned of the imminent closure through Trump’s Truth Social post, which proposed “temporarily” closing the “Trump Kennedy Center” for “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding” starting July 4. Trump added the move is subject to approval by the center’s board, which he chairs. — https://wapo.st/3NRd901

Phuoc that gagh damask whole.

Ground Hog Day's Sneak Peek

January, 2025

Part 2 of the visit from Max's mom is coming up this week; and at this point it might be relevant to remind loyal readers that she perhaps lives in or around Washington, D.C.

P.S. FDT.

...and Farewell

"Columbia proved unequal to Uncle Sam and gradually was replaced as a common cartoon character." — The Ungentlemanly Art, Stephen Hess and Milton Kaplan, 1968

Today's Graphical History Tour continues following the career of Lady Columbia into the 20th Century.

"Pan-American Puck" by Samuel Ehrart in Puck, May 8, 1901

As the personification of the nation, Lady Columbia was riding high at the turn of the century. She welcomed South America to the 1901 Pan-American exposition in Buffalo, New York (where President McKinley would be assassinated).

Ehrart's cartoon illustrated the host nation's hope that, in the words of Puck's editors,

"We have extended our trade horizon to include the Antipodes, but we have not yet secured the trade of our nearest neighbors. Central and South America still find reasons for going elsewhere to do most of their shopping. The weightiest of these reasons have to do with a certain protective tariff, and the disposition of them must await the enlightenment of a certain majority of the voters,— a condition happily promising for the near future. ... Incidentally we shall become better acquainted with the resources of our own island possessions and give their people, perhaps, a more favorable view of their relationship to us than they have thus far been able to gather."

"A Fair Return" by Louis Raemaekers in Chicago Examiner,  August 15, 1917

World War I raged in Europe for three years before the U.S. entered the fray. Dutch cartoonist Louis Raemaekers welcomed U.S. entry into World War I by depicting Lady Columbia embracing Marianne, the personification of France, telling her, "When I was a child it was you who saved me."

Columbia's gown doesn't have the usual flag motif in Raemaekers cartoon — perhaps because white stars are hard to draw in charcoal.

"It's a Great Day for America" by Albert T. Reid in National Republican, Nov. 3, 1920

The stars and stripes are back in Albert Reid's cartoon. Lady Columbia, here updating her wardrobe from the robes of classical Rome to congratulate President-elect Warren Harding, was often enlisted to welcome a new administration to office.

"My Harp Is Also Turned to Mourning" by Gennette in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sept. 7, 1901

One of Lady Columbia's chief roles in editorial cartoons was as chief mourner for the country. Cartoonists drew her grieving at the deaths of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley (in this case), Harding, and the Roosevelts, as well as other prominent figures in the news. 

"Columbia's Anguish" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Jan. 30, 1922

Here she mourned collapse of the Knickerbocker Theater in the nation's capital that killed 98. It is possible that Berryman drew this particular Columbia to represent the District of Columbia, where the tragedy occurred, instead of the bespectacled and bewigged 18th-Century gentleman that he usually drew to represent the capital city. This Columbia lacks the Phrygian cap and wears full-length mourning black.

"Hail and Farewell" by Clyde Batchelor in Washington Times-Herald, April 13, 1945

Every reference I have found about Miss Columbia agrees that she went out of fashion sometime in the 1920's, Uncle Sam, the Statie of Liberty, and the eagle becoming the go-to cartoon personifications of the United States. 

I did find this 1945 Batchelor cartoon of her paying her respects to Franklin Delano Roosevelt upon his death the day before. Perhaps because Batchelor disagreed with much of FDR's policy (his April 12 cartoon accused the administration of covering up warnings of the attack on Pearl Harbor), his Columbia isn't racked with grief she typically was for earlier fallen presidents.

Looking back at my post a few years ago of cartoons drawn after President McKinley's assassination, whereas Columbia knelt in grief, it was Uncle Sam who meted stern justice to the assassin.

Today, Lady Columbia would be horrified and ashamed of the present government’s wanton murder and disappearing of its citizens. What would Uncle Sam be doing?

"His 146th Birthday" by Charles Kuhn in Indianapolis News, July 4, 1922

One does notice Columbia fading into the background, cartoon-wise. At the nation's 146th birthday, she serves the cake; but it's Uncle Sam's birthday, not hers, even though he was at most a mere 110 years old.

"Uncle Sam Will Take a Little of the Stuffing" by Wm. A. Rogers in Washington Post, Nov. 26, 1925

At Thanksgiving, Columbia serves the dinner, and while Uncle Sam frets that he'll have to settle for a little stuffing, there doesn't even appear to be a seat for her at the table. Unless a chair is hidden behind that turkey, Lady Columbia must have been demoted to kitchen staff.

"Why Not Flowers for the Living, Too" by Winsor McCay for Hearst newspapers, May 30, 1925

Would Uncle Sam deliver a bouquet of flowers to wounded veterans?

One theory is that Columbia as a cartoon character fell into disuse in the 1920's once she became the mascot for Columbia Pictures. Columbia Pictures wasn't named after her directly; the movie company was a division of Columbia Records, which was originally headquartered in the District of Columbia.

"Some Day They'll Come Crawling Back to Her" by Joseph Parrish in Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1948

Last week's post began with a cartoon of a female "America Triumphant" drawn before she was given the name Columbia, so we'll end here with one of that familiar lady, back in her liberty cap and Romanesque robe, but without the name coined by Edward Cave over two centuries before.

Q Toon: Mama Comes to Visit

Please enjoy a respite from the news of the day. I'll explain later.

MAGA Max and Liberal Leo are back this week, along with Max's mother and their Dog To Be Named Later. (Max's mom's name is Karen, by the way. Because of course it is.)

I guess Max has told Karen that he and Leo are part of the trend I've heard about of friends buying homes together because of the sky-high cost of mortgages these days. Young people were renting together before Friends was a thing, which they could work around when one of them took a job out of town or got married. Deciding what's fair when co-owners are confronted with one or the other of those inevitabilities could be just as thorny as if they were a married couple.

Well, I've never specified whether Max and Leo have a legal union; but I'm pretty sure that Max is insinuating to his mother a little white lie about where he sleeps.

To be continued...

The 2-Point Conversion of St. Paul's Sneak Peek

I'm introducing a new character into the Max & Leo series this week. It's a two-parter, and probably not a three-week series, since, as Benjamin Franklin once quoted Jonah's Nineveh hosts, "Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days."

By the way, I've got to take care of a little editorial housekeeping here. In Saturday’s Graphical History post, I asserted that the first cartoon appearance of Uncle Sam was in 1832, and it behooves me to back up that claim in case some artificially intelligent future researcher ever credits me as an authority. 

My reference is The Ungentlemanly Art: The History of American Editorial Cartoons by Stephen Hess and David Kaplan (1968), which in turn cites The Rise and Fall of Cartoon Symbols by William Murrell in The American Scholar, Summer, 1935, pp. 310-311. The text of the Hess-Kaplan book (page 35) says that the cartoon below was published in 1832; the citation in the index (page 178) says it was in 1834.

"Uncle Sam in Danger," cartoonist unknown, 1832 or 1834

I think you'll agree that this is not an Uncle Sam readers today would recognize if he weren't named in the cutline.