Drawn During Dog Days

It has been a couple of months since I've featured my own cartoons in these weekly Graphical History Tours, so it's about time to rummage through my archives in search of my favorite August cartoons from years ending in three.

The summer pickings in some years are meager, so all of these have appeared here before.

UW-Parkside Ranger, Sept. 8, 1983

As it happens, I drew several cartoons in August of 1983 in spite of not having a place ready to publish them. But I really liked this one, so I submitted it when the student paper at University of Wisconsin-Parkside resumed publication in September.

August, 1993

I drew this cartoon for the University of Milwaukee student newspaper, the Post, in August of 1993. I had just returned home from having attended a church secretaries' convention in Minnesota during widespread disastrous flooding of the upper Mississippi River and its tributaries that summer. The bus from Minneapolis to St. Peter was diverted so often by washed-out roads that I ended up missing a TV reporter waiting to interview the only male secretary signed up to attend the convention.

Perhaps that missed interview was still on my mind as I started my cartoon, based on the timeworn criticism of people who rebuild in disaster zones.

Unfortunately, the Post didn't publish any issues that August, so the cartoon has only appeared on your humble scribbler's blog.

I suppose the latest home of the poor fellow starring in the cartoon might be on Maui. But really, with climate change, he'd be in danger living just about anywhere in the world.

You gotta wonder why we keep rebuilding on this planet.

Business Journal, Aug. 22, 2003

Moving on to lighter fare: The Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee had its editorial nose out of joint over a gloomy article in the New York Times about Milwaukee, which the Times characterized as being a decaying, crime-ridden small city with third-rate sports teams and no future.

The problem with criticizing the Times's assessment, however, is that crime and urban decay have indeed been significant problems for Milwaukee. The halcyon days of its Socialist mayors was followed by the Freeway Era, when superhighways bulldozed their ways through vibrant neighborhoods and promoted the flight of the Middle Class, high-paying jobs, and their accompanying tax base into the suburbs.

Milwaukee has since done a lot to revitalize its downtown, converting old factories and warehouses into attractive apartment and commercial buildings. But it still suffers from outstate hostility, exemplified by former Governor Tommy "Stick It To 'Em" Thompson, Scott Walker's Act 10, and this year's wrangling over state aid.

The four Racing Sausage mascots pictured in the cartoon, Italian, Polish, Hot Dog, and Bratwurst, have since been joined by Sr. Chorizo, reflecting most of the predominant ethnic groups in Milwaukee. (Is there any encased ground meat that could represent the Black community?)

While you can find Norwegians everywhere in the state of Wisconsin, we haven't been prominent — or assertive — enough to rate our own festival on the Summerfest grounds, and certainly not our own racing sausage.

I think I should have had the reporter ask "Which one of youse is the lutefisk," though.

Q Syndicate, August, 2013

I had been sending colorized cartoons to Q Syndicate for a year by August of 2013, but I decided that this reference to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho had to be in grayscale only.

The news story behind the cartoon was the ruling of the California Supreme Court rejecting an appeal by the antigay interest group ProtectMarriage. ProtectMarriage wanted the court to overturn an appeal court judge's ruling that the so-called Definition of Marriage Amendment passed by Proposition 8 in 2008 was unconstitutional.

Much as I dislike drawing buildings, I remain mostly pleased with how this cartoon turned out.

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I have to apologize here for a post consisting entirely of rerun material. (I can't even blame the writers' strike.)

But in fact-checking this post, I did run across some stuff that I have not posted before. I'm still hunting through my archives for the original artwork, and hope to have new reminiscences here next Saturday.