Q Toon: Fire and ICE

I really do have to wrap up this story arc, and soon. Berkeley Breathed is taking over the job of sentencing a comic character to languish in a Trumpster gulag, and I would rather not risk my Leo and his Opus the Penguin reaching for the same jokes.

Or running into each other.

I’m sure that Breathed will handle the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime’s suspension of human rights under the U.S. Constitution deftly and with insight. After all, the 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial cartooning could have centered his concentration camp story on Bill the Cat, which would just be damned silly.

For the benefit of any readers who have entered the theatre late, Leo is the liberal half of a gay Odd Couple; his partner, Max, has fallen under MAGA’s sway. In February, Leo was swept up in an ICE Gestapo raid and disappeared to Trumplinka Prison. A guard there misinterpreted a tattoo on Leo’s buttocks as an MS-13 insignia, which has now landed him and some fellow detainees on a third world airport tarmac.

Where a civil war is underway. 

I am confident that neither Emperor Trump nor Cruella de Noem nor Oberbefehlshaber Tom Homan nor what is left of the State Department would know nor care what is going on in this unnamed country. I imagine that its head of state agreed to accept custody of American non-persons in exchange for buying up our overstock of Trump Sneakers.

While we wait for the next exciting installment of this gripping saga, let us hope that the government and rebel soldiers fighting over control of the airfield have all learned their marksmanship from the Imperial Storm Troopers of Star Wars Inc., and that Leo is presently rescued and returned to his Max, to argue happily ever after about tariffs, climate change, and Konservative Kancel Kultur.

This Week's Sneak Peek

The celebrities I grew up with are dropping like, well, old people these days.

I happened to have listened to my Tom Lehrer album the day before he died, and I have to say that his nearly 60-year-old satire still stands up pretty well. "National Brotherhood Week" mocks taking a break from prejudice and bigotry for seven days out of 365:

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Moslems,
And everybody hates the Jews. 

I memorized "Pollution" as a child:

See the halibuts and the sturgeons
Being wiped out by detergents.
Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly,
But they don't last long if they try. 

Even proto-woke folk singers came in for some zingers:

The tune don't have to be clever,
And it don't matter if you put a coupla extra syllables into a line.
It sounds more ethnic if it ain't good English,
And it don't even gotta rhyme. 

The "Vatican Rag" is absolutely hilarious:

Do whatever steps you want if
You have cleared them with the pontiff
Everybody say his own
Kyrie eleison
Doin' the Vatican Rag

And of course, who could forget "New Math," his ode to his chosen academic field?

[T]he book that I got this problem [342 minus 173] out of wants you to do it in base eight. But don't panic! Base eight is just like base ten really— if you 're missing two fingers!
Shall we have a go at it? Hang on. ..
You can't take three from two,
Two is less than three,
So you look at the four in the eights place.

Now that's really four eights,

So you make it three eights,
Regroup, and you change an eight to eight ones
And you add 'em to the two,
And you get one-two base eight,
Which is ten base ten,
And you take away three, that's seven.
Ok?
Now instead of four in the eights place
You've got three,
'Cause you added one,

That is to say, eight, to the two,
But you can't take seven from three,
So you look at the sixty-fours —
"Sixty-four? How did sixty-four get into it?" I hear you cry.
Well, sixty-four is eight squared, don't you see?
Well, you ask a silly question, you get a silly answer!

From the three, you then use one
To make eight ones,
You add those ones to the three,

And you get one-three base eight,
Or, in other words,

In base ten you have eleven,
And you take away seven,

And seven from eleven is four!
Now go back to the sixty-fours,
You're left with two,
And you take away one from two,
And that leaves?
Now, let's not always see the same hands...
One, that's right. Whoever got one can stay after the show and clean the erasers. 

Traffic Report

Detail from "Smitty" by Walter Berndt, distributed by Chicago Tribune July, 19, 1925

It's time to buckle your seat belts, because today's Graphical History Tour destination is July, 1925. Let's hit the road, shall we?

"Right of Might" by Winsor McCay in New York Herald Tribune, ca. July 18, 1925

The automobile had gone from novelty to everyday life in the space of a single generation, wresting  roadway dominance from horses and pedestrians. Once upon a time, if a pedestrian's destination were directly across the street, one crossed then and there. Children played in rural roadways and city streets. Horses, unless they were at full gallop, easily went around them.

Carriages, horsed and horseless, couldn't maneuver quite so easily. With the ubiquity of the automobile came a nationwide push for laws against what was now called "jay walking": crossing the street anywhere other than at a controlled intersection.

"Will It Come to This" by Orville P. Williams in New York American, July 14, 1925

Nor were the new regulations of pedestrian traffic a strictly American feature:

"Ein Zukunftsbild" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, July 12, 1925

Besides pedestrians, cross-country motorists had to contend with a patchwork of local roadway systems. U.S. numbered highways did not yet exist. Anyone with the time and sufficient buckets of paint could mark "auto trails" on power poles and name them whatever they wanted. Some, like the Lincoln Trail and Dixie Highway, actually crossed country; others were local, like the Three C Highway, which connected Cleveland to Cincinnati. A transcontinental highway might follow an old wagon trail, such as the Oregon Trail route, or a railroad, as the Union Pacific Highway for example.

Upkeep of the auto trails was largely up to the localities they passed through. A trail set up by some entrepreneur hoping to lure travelers to his tourist trap, on the other hand, might turn out to be a deeply rutted dirt road taking you through creeks instead of over them.

"Let's Build These Highways" by Orville P. Williams in New York American, ca. July 30, 1925

In 1925, the Joint Board on Interstate Highways, in cooperation with the American Association of State Highway Officials (founded in 1914), began work on creating a national numbering system for what would become U.S. Highways. Implementation of their project began within two years.

"Another Badly Needed Road" by Winsor McCay, ca. July 21, 1925

The super highways envisioned by Orville Williams on behalf of eager motorists would still be several years in the future. In the meantime, Winsor McCay offered another recommendation of a needed road. (Note the hat impaled on this guy's fender.) 

"Read Them And Weep" by Denis McCarthy, ca. July 12, 1925

Driving the point home, Denis McCarthy drew a cemetery shared by reckless drivers and careless pedestrians.

(When I last posted cartoons by Denis McCarthy, he seemed to have begun working at the Fort Worth Record after leaving the New Orleans Times Picayune; but his work wasn't appearing in either newspaper by the summer of 1925. I find his cartoons in newspapers that also ran the work of Hearst cartoonists, so I surmise he may have joined Hearst's syndicate.)

"Out Where the Worst Begins" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, July 3, 1925

On the more automobile-friendly side, Tom Foley observes that roads do not remain in pristine condition very long, which is especially true in the land of ice and snow. Why Minnetonka Boulevard had more or deeper potholes than, say, Hennepin Avenue or Lake Street I don't know; perhaps it just happened to be the route Foley took to and from work every day.

"First Impressions Are Lasting" by Arthur G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, July 28, 1925

Old-fashioned cobblestone streets, while picturesque, are not very automobile-friendly. (I doubt that they got along all that well with horses, either.) Say what you will about them, however, they were probably more effective at depressing traffic than stop signs on every block, roundabouts, or those "Your Speed" monitors, which explains why speed bumps are becoming so popular with urban planners these days.

"Sing Ho, for the Wide Open Spaces" by Denis McCarthy, ca. July 19, 1925

If pedestrians were confounded by ordinances telling them how to cross a street, Denis McCarthy spared some sympathy for motorists baffled by restrictions on how and where to park their car.

🚗

I can't leave today's topic without first checking what was going on in the quintessential autophile newspaper cartoon, "Gasoline Alley" 100 years ago today:

"Gasoline Alley" by Frank King in Chicago Tribune, July 26, 1925

Alas, the gang wasn't gathered around their cars that particular Sunday. Instead, Walt Willet was wandering the great wide open spaces with his foundling son, Skeezix, on foot.

🚙

P.S.: Yes, I know that seat belts were not a thing until 1959.

Q Toon: Attention Get Her

Rosie O'Donnell, whom I haven't cartooned since she had her own talk show, once upon a time said something nasty about Donald Joffrey Trump — and probably true, whatever it was — setting off a celebrity feud with the thin-skinned whiny snowflake.

The rest of the world has forgotten their feud, but petty tyrant Trump nurses a grudge like it's Baby Jesus. So when he somehow convinced a majority of U.S. voters to return him to the office he had not been able to hold onto by force, promising to wreak vengeance upon all his enemies, perceived, imagined, immigrant and transgender, Ms. O'Donnell decided it was time to take her wife and their genderqueer child and hie them to the Emerald Isle.

That was months ago, which didn't stop Trump from taking to his social media app (which I refuse to call by its very misleading preferred noun), foaming at the mouse that he will issue a presidential proclamation stripping O'Donnell of her U.S. citizenship. 

I had completely finished drawing this cartoon and cleaned my pens when I checked my own phone and learned that Little Lord Trump le Roi had added to his list of presidential priorities unrenaming the Washington Commanders and Cleveland Guardians. Because as far as he's concerned, they're genetically Redskins and Indians, and they had better not get caught using Commanders and Guardians rest rooms if they want funding for their new stadiums.

Fortunately, Photoshop means I didn't have to try drawing over half a bottle's worth of Whiteout.

The additional distractions Mr. Stable Genius has come up with after my Monday morning cartoon deadline — teasing irrefutable proof of Barack Obama's sedatious impudistry, releasing J. Edgar Hoover's files on Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., sending cabinet members to tour Alcatraz, gloating over CBS cancelling The Late Show with or without Stephen Colbert — and wait, I need a whole new paragraph for this next one —

promising “We will have reduced drug prices by 1,000%, by eleven hundred, twelve hundred, thirteen hundred, fourteen hundred, 700, 600,” which means that drug companies will pay customers huge sums of money to take their products, which Trump will achieve by threatening to ban the import and sale of Volkswagens, BMWs, Volvos, and Lamborghinis —

— all that will have to wait for another day. By which time he will have declared covfefe a vegetable, accused Hillary Clinton of masterminding Hurricane Katrina, named son Barron permanent Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and babbled obsessively to the Prime Minister of Iceland about Arnold Palmer's penis.

This Week's Sneak Peek

We'll be taking another break from the Leo & Max Saga this week.

In case you glanced at the thumbnail and thought that Donald Joffrey Trump was going to involve himself in the case personally.

Verdict of the Planet of the Apes

The Graphical History Tour has one more stop to at the Scopes Monkey Trial today. We've got exciting courtroom drama, a momentous verdict, and an unexpected twist at the end <Law & Order .wav>!

"The Monkey Hasn't a Word to Say" by W.A. Rogers in Washington Post, July 9, 1925

Given that President Coolidge, Congress, and the Supreme Court were all on their summer vacations, little Dayton, Tennessee became the center of the editorial cartooning world when the trial convened on July 10, 1925. Some cartoonists, such as Edmund Duffy, J.P. Alley, and Carey Orr, drew two or three cartoons per week about the trial.

After all, if there were only so many gags to be drawn about monkeys, the conflict between science and the Bible was a great source of inspiration — so too was the creationists' ardent defender William Jennings Bryan.

"The Volunteer Fireman" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 14, 1925

On the other hand, there were a few, for example Grover Page at the Louisville Courier-Journal, who did not produce a single cartoon about the trial during the entire month. I suppose that on this issue, Page might have had strong disagreements with his editors or publisher. Or his wife. 

"Fame" by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, July 14, 1925

The Baltimore Sun — hardly a disinterested bystander, its publisher having put up the $500 (almost $9,200 in 2025 bucks) for teacher John T. Scopes's bail — sent their editorial cartoonist, Edmund Duffy, to cover the trial in person.

Courtroom sketches by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, July 16, 1925

In addition to his regular editorial cartoon, Duffy provided his newspaper with occasional sketches of the trial principals, witnesses, and by-standers.

"The Dayton War Cry" by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, July 15, 1925

There is a rough, sketchy quality to Duffy's cartoons from Dayton. He didn't stick around to witness the second week of the trial; this next cartoon is more typical of his usual output.

"Let There Be Darkness" by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, July 19, 1925

Cartooning for the prosecution, the Memphis Commercial Appeal's J.P. Alley defended his state's anti-evolution law and biblical inerrancy. 

"They Ought to Submit a Few 'Exhibits' to the Supreme Court" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, July 1, 1925

Alley correctly but disapprovingly noted that teacher John Scopes freely admitted having broken the law by teaching Darwin's theory of evolution, and that the defense's intention from the very beginning was to attack the law itself as unconstitutional.

I have noticed that all cartoonists gave John Scopes the title of "Professor," although those who drew him tended to cartoon the 24-year-old teacher diminutive and even childlike.

"4.4 Stuff" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, July 14, 1925

Here Alley twitted the out-of-state journalists and movie men descending upon little Dayton, Tennessee. Was the trial as disappointing as 4.4 ABV (alcohol by volume) beer? Alley may have been alone in that perception.

(4.4 ABV is light beer to you and me, but considerably more potent than the legal Prohibition limit of 0.5 ABV.)

"Darrow's Paradise" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, July 15, 1925

Tell us what you really think of "Dangerous Darrow," Mr. Alley.

"Her Bodyguard" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, July 20, 1925

Bravely staking out the middle ground, Carey Orr (who started his cartooning career in Tennessee) offered a defense here of religious faith, but dismissed anti-evolutionists as being of any particular importance to it. We shall get to Orr's regard for its chief spokesman presently.

"Sweet Punishment" by Ed LeCocq in Des Moines Register, July 22, 1925

In the last days of the trial, Darrow cross-examined Bryan on the stand — testimony later stricken by Judge Raulston — and Bryan in turn announced the questions he would have posed to Darrow had the judge allowed it.

Pressed by Darrow, Bryan proclaimed that he believed every word of the Bible to be true, although he couldn't answer Darrow's question about where Cain found a wife, how recorded Chinese history could be millennia older than biblical estimates of the planet's creation, or how the snake got around before God condemned it to crawl on its belly ("Do you know whether he walked on his tail or not?").  By the time Darrow brought up the creation of rainbows, both he and Bryan were shouting and pointing fingers in each other's face.

Darrow answered Bryan's questions outside the court. He did not believe in miracles, he said; asked whether he believed in the immortality of the soul, he answered, "I have been searching for proof of this all my life... and I have never found any evidence on the subject." 

Responding to other questions, Darrow said he found "much that is of value in the Bible" but that it was not divinely inspired; and that "the Christ prophesied in the Old Testament was a great Jew who should deliver his people from their physical bondage, and nothing else." 

"The Verdict" by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, July 22, 1925

In the end, Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 ($1,837 adjusted for inflation), which came nowhere near covering the cost of the trial. In addition to routine court costs exceeding $300 and hundreds more spent by the prosecution, Scopes's defense lawyers had spent $20,000 to $25,000 bringing expert witnesses to Dayton, some of whom were barred by Judge Raulston of ever offering their testimony.

"Will the Gun Hurt" by Michael E. Brady in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 26, 1925

"When Shall We Three Meet Again" by Ed Gale in Los Angeles Times, July 22, 1925

Emboldened by the Scopes verdict, fundamentalist legislators elsewhere proposed laws similar to Tennessee's. A government clerk, Lauren Wittner, brought suit in Washington D.C. against the teaching of evolutionary theory in the nation's capital on the theory that an appropriations bill passed by Congress forbade the district from using federal funds "to teach disrespect for the Bible." 

"Migrating" by Ed LeCocq in Des Moines Register, July 25, 1925

The question appeared destined to be argued all the way to the Supreme Court. Darrow, however, gave notice that he would not represent the evolutionists any further.

Which leaves us with William Jennings Bryan.

"A Chip Off the Old Block" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, July 12, 1925

Bryan had been a prominent public figure for thirty years by the time of the Scopes Monkey Trial — a lifetime for some of the cartoonists our Graphical History Tour features today. Carey Orr, age 35 when he drew this cartoon, could therefore be forgiven for thinking that Bryan had been around since the Garden of Eden.

"Our Greatest Actor" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, July 17, 1925

Or if not since Adam and Eve, Orr suggested, how about these other Old Testament figures?

"Any Port in a Storm" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 19, 1925

First elected to Congress in 1890, Bryan was the Democrats' presidential nominee in 1896, 1900, and 1908. He was Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson, resigning in protest of U.S. entry into World War I. An active proponent of Prohibition, he remained at his party's center stage during their years in the political wilderness.

"You May Not Be For Him..." by Billy Ireland in Columbus Dispatch, ca. July 26, 1925

"You may not be for him, but nevertheless, there he is," cartooned Billy Ireland as the Scopes Monkey Trial drew to a close. But suddenly, after thirty years on and off America's front pages, he wasn't.

"The Great Commoner" by Guy R. Spencer in Omaha Evening World Herald, July 28, 1925

Still in the town of Dayton, Bryan died on Saturday, July 26 in the home of Richard Rodgers, his host there during the Scopes trial. Bryan had given a stirring speech to townspeople that day, to great acclaim according to press reports. Telling friends that he had never felt better, he enjoyed a hearty meal and retired to his room for a nap. He succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage around 4:45 p.m. and was discovered by his chauffeur about 20 minutes later.

"Onward, Christian Soldier..." by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, July 28, 1925

As one would expect, cartoonists who defended Bryan, such as Guy Spencer from his home state and J.P. Alley, responded to his death with heartfelt eulogies. Even some dyed-in-the-wool Republicans heaped praise upon the longtime Democratic leader ....

"The Crusader" by Bill Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 28, 1925

"Epitaph for a Crusader" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, July 28, 1925

...even if not necessarily for his politics.

"To the Highest Court of All" by Jesse Cargill for King Features Syndicate, ca. July 28, 1925

I have not included all of the cartoons eulogizing William Jennings Bryan, but I must note that many of the cartoonists who had been lambasting him just days earlier, opted in lieu of drawing something nice to draw nothing at all. Of the cartoonists included above, Nelson Harding appears to have left on vacation as soon as the Scopes trial was over. Edmund Duffy, Ed LeCocq, and Michael Brady devoted their work for rest of July to other topics.

Carey Orr had yielded the editorial cartoonist's space on Chicago Tribune's front page back to John T. McCutcheon, but he still had to produce a cartoon for syndication. So he doffed his hat and took a bite out of it.

"Sorrow in the American Home" by Carey Orr syndicated by Chicago Tribune, July 31, 1925

It has been an extra long Graphical History Tour today, and I thank you for reading this far. Please remain seated until the tour has come to a complete stop, and make sure you have all your personal belongings with you as you disembark.

Toon: Coming to CBS Late Nights!

CBS announced yesterday that Late Night with (and without) Stephen Colbert will be cancelled as of May next year — supposedly for “purely financial” reasons.

Well, yeah. The Tiffany Network can't afford to shell out $16 million every time the petty dictator currently in the White House gets his fragile ego chipped.

CBS's parent company, Paramount Global wants to sell itself out to Skydance Media, which will require FCC approval under Trump's transactional regime. It has already sold itself out to Trump, surrendering to his nuisance lawsuit, a complaint that editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris somehow damaged the Marquis of Mar-a-Lago.

Ah, well. Kowtowing to Republicans offended by left-leaning satire ain't nothing new to CBS.

"Why, That Nut Was Trying to Water My Desert" by Bill Sanders in Milwaukee Journal, April 9, 1969