Travel back in time with me for some of my own cartoons which celebrate their decennials this month.
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| for Q Syndicate, May 19, 2014 |
Ten years ago, University of Missouri defensive lineman Michael Sam made sports headlines as the first openly gay NFL draft pick. In his senior year, he led the SEC in quarterback tackles and sacks; he forced a fumble that was run back for a touchdown in Missouri's 2014 Cotton Bowl victory over Oklahoma.
He came out as gay to his college teammates that senior year, and went public after graduating in December.
Cameras were rolling when he was selected by the St. Louis Rams in the seventh round of the 2014 draft and shared a celebratory kiss with his then boyfriend, Mizzou swimmer Vito Cammisano, and it was broadcast live on television. President Barack Obama was among those sending Sam congratulations, but the kiss also provoked backlash and pearl-clutching from homophobic football fans and non-fans who object to gays anywhere not being furtive about it.
Alas, Sam only ever got to play for the Rams in the pre-season. Cut from the roster at the end of August, he later spent some time on the Dallas Cowboys' practice squad, then joined the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League. He missed several games with the Alouettes over mental health issues or simply being unhappy there — he quit after playing only one game, in fact — and is currently a defensive football coach in Poland for the Panthers Wrocław.
Continuing with the sports theme, I could have sworn that I've posted the next one on this here blog before, but I'm not finding it.
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| in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, May 15, 2004 |
This cartoon from May, 2004 is the one and only cartoon of mine that ever won an award.
Well, second place, actually, from the Milwaukee Press Club. First place in the editorial cartoon category that year went to Stuart Carlson of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It's not as if there were a crowded field of contenders in 2004, but I'll accept what praise I can get.
The editors at the Business Journal had entered my cartoon for consideration, and I only learned anything about it after the fact. I probably missed a swell dinner. And perhaps some networking opportunities.
The topic of the cartoon, and of the editorial that it was drawn to illustrate, was the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team running up against the Major League Baseball salary cap as they hired some big names for a rebuilding year (having been in rebuilding years since 1982). It has paid off; the Brewers have been in contention off and on since 2008.
The original Brewers mascot, of course, was an anthropomorphized beer barrel swinging a baseball bat. It was replaced in the late 1970's by that mb/catcher's mitt logo, which I still think is the best and cleverest logo the team ever had. Barrel Guy does have his successor in Bernie Brewer, a mustachioed fellow who rides a slide down from his chalet to celebrate home team home runs.
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| in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., May 5, 1994 |
I'm going to skip right past the "Dr. Death" Kevorkian verdict, and the next two panels, which weren't based on any particular news story, to the two guys "just doing investigative journalism."
A reporter for the UWM Times, the upstart, right-wing rival to the UWM Post, got caught voting multiple times in the student government election that spring. His defense was that he was actually doing an investigation for the paper about election fraud. Unable to find any real election fraud, he committed the fraud himself.
It's a tactic that continues to this very day: right-wing conspiracy fabulists sound the alarm about waves of voter fraud, but the voter fraud that is uncovered is committed by their own side.
The student provocateurs staff at the Times are the very generation of Republicans who have grown up to concoct the imagined conspiracies that get in their way at election time: of busloads of Mexican aliens, transgender feminazis voting once as a man and a second time as a woman, and hordes of zombies rising from the grave.
Speaking of the grave:
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| "Before We Lay the Dearly Departed to Rest" in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Sept. 1, 1984 |
This cartoon posed something of a mystery. I dated it May, 1984, and the compositor's notation on the back indicates that it was published; but it was not in either the May 3 or May 10 editions of the UW-Parkside Ranger published at the end of that school year.
I couldn't have drawn it thinking that there was a May 17 edition. In addition to my weekly cartoon on the Ranger's editorial page, I was also drawing a continuity comic strip, a loose parody of The Maltese Falcon, which I hastened to wrap up for the May 10 issue. (The epilogue episode echoed the first strip of the series.)
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| "The Funny Paper Caper," episode 30, in UW-Parkside Ranger, May 10, 1984 |
Since I didn't write "UW-P Ranger" on the editorial cartoon, I probably drew it for my own practice or amusement.
Looking back, I assumed that I had drawn the cartoon after audio went public of President Ronald Reagan quipping during a mic check in preparation for a radio address, "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
But that took place in August. Which explains why the cartoon was relevant when the Ranger's first edition of the next semester came out.
I guess I was just lucky that Soviet President Constantin Chernenko (seated in the foreground) wasn't dead quite yet.
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