Happy Threesgiving!

For this week's Graphical History Tour, I rummaged through my own stuff through the decades, and dug up a few that I still like for one reason or another.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Nov. 3, 1983

I kicked off last month's panoply of my old cartoons with one about the deadly bombing of the U.S. Marines' barracks in Beirut in 1983, so I'll start today's with Ronald Reagan's military incursion of the small Caribbean island of Grenada weeks later.

Grenada's Prime Minister, Maurice Bishop, a communist who took power in a 1979 coup, was resisting pressure to share power with his Deputy Prime Minister, resulting in protests in the streets by followers of one and the other. Bishop was put under house arrest, escaped, and ended up executed by a firing squad; his body has never been found.

Citing danger to 600 U.S. citizens attending medical school on the island, Reagan sent a force of 7,600 Army Rangers, Marines, and Navy SEALs. The U.S. students were whisked away to safety, the new government was overthrown, and several political prisoners were freed. The invasion was condemned by several foreign governments, but its anniversary remains a national holiday on Grenada.

But does anyone in this country ever pause to honor the veterans of Operation Urgent Fury? Nosiree, mon!

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., Nov. 18, 1993

Now, let's face it. Nobody likes some outsider coming in to their workplace telling them how to do their job.

Especially cops.

I had to scour the internets to refresh my memory of the news story behind this cartoon. Milwaukee's Police Chief Phillip Arreola had just reinstated a police officer to the force. The officer had been suspended after a Sept. 29 incident in which he was videotaped kicking the groin of a 17-year-old suspect who was pinned to the ground by other officers.

Now that you have that image in your head, I am not going to tell you the race of the officer or the suspect, save to bet that many of you have some part of it wrong.

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, Nov. 28, 2003

I don't remember what the editorial this cartoon accompanied was about, and I'm sure I've rerun it before; but a Thanksgiving cartoon is de rigueur this week, so here mine from 2003.

Besides, like the Ed's Donut Hole cartoon, I like the characters I created for the cartoon. 

The Business Journal editorials were almost exclusively about state and local issues, so I suppose this one had something to do with a disagreement over where a Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, or Winnebago casino should be built or expanded. That's just a guess, but I'm sticking with it for now.

for Q Syndicate, November, 2013

Well, it's already too late to draw any Thanksgiving cartoon for syndication this year, so I'll sign off with this 2013 cartoon, and wish you any happy holidays of your choice.