May the Force Bewitch You

To start this week's Graphical History Tour, here's an illustration I drew for a local church thirty years ago this month. 

"One in the Spirit," May, 1992

The Gospel for the seventh Sunday of Easter is always Jesus' prayer that his followers may always be as one. My idea for this illustration was a collage of faces representing a variety of ages and ethnicities.

The old woman in upper center was modeled after my grandmother. There aren't many photographs of her smiling, but she was meeting her great-grandson for the first (and only) time in the one I used.

The other people in the drawing were based on photos in magazines; two of them were from news photos taken during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles.

I was never quite satisfied with the young man at the lower left, having made some changes to his appearance from the real person. I would make a few changes to him over the years as the drawing got re-used; this is the original version.

"Assume the Position" in UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., May 7, 1992

As for drawing editorial cartoons about the riots, I only drew one. The uprising began on April 29, 1992, after I had drawn the cartoon for the April 30 edition of the UW-M Post. The Post of May 4 didn't have an editorial page, and the May 7 issue was the last of the school year.

"The Line We Bought..." in Journal Times, May 26, 1992

The Journal Times preferred my cartoons to concentrate on state and local issues, or at least local angles on wider issues. But the editor did let me get away with this one about H. Ross Perot's coy responses about how he intended to achieve his #1 policy position of balancing the federal budget  (at a $290 billion deficit, or 4.5% of GDP in 1992).

Since it turns out that I don't have a lot of cartoons to show from May of 1992, and I'd rather not close this post out with a discussion of the ups and downs of the federal deficit, here's one I've always liked from ten Mays later, as power company Wisconsin Electric was trotting out its new moniker:

"You Used to Know We Energies as Wisconsin Electric" in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, May 31, 2002