Everything New Is Old Again

I've been noticing something coming up again and again in some cartoons on the internet. See if you can figure it out.

Exhibit A:

Cut Stone Pizzeria Facebook post, May 2, 2025

Exhibit B:

Unknown on @DOD Rapid Response, May , 2025

Exhibit C:

Devin Duke? on @sirdukedevin, May 4, 2025

Exhibit D:

by "Thorne" on Disobey In Advance, May 1, 2025

Exhibit E:

by Darrin Bell on Disobey in Advance, April 25

Exhibit F:

by Dario Castillejos on Cagle.com, May 3

These are but three examples of a filtering style that I've been seeing on social media platforms over the past couple of weeks. At first, I was sure that they were being created by Artificial Intelligence — as the first two examples, from an area pizzeria and the Pete Hegseth fanboi page most certainly are. (While it wouldn't be unusual for a pen-and-ink or stylus-and-pixel cartoonist to draw a U.S. flag with 12 stripes and 37 stars, I doubt any human would have painted Hegseth's pinky the color of his suitcoat.)

I found Exhibit C on the X page of one Devin Duke, and it may be his work or just some meme he reposted from somewhere else. AI either way? I'll save my internet sleuthing for other things.

Exhibits D through F are the work of actual flesh and blood cartoonists* whose professional colleagues would almost unanimously look down upon them if they were caught resorting to AI. (I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they have not done so.)

"The Modern Arnolds" by J.S. Pughe in Puck, June 17, 1908

Now, I know that filters to give your photo an old-timey look are readily available on Instagram and any two-kilobit photo editing software since the DOS-it-yourself days.

My question is: what is the thinking behind actual flesh-and-blood cartoonists deliberately tinting their work to look like it fell through a hole in time to be published in one of the illustrated magazines of over a century ago? Is it supposed to convey the sense that we have returned to a Second Gilded Age?

Or are the Trump tariffs on Canadian paper forcing cartoonists to draw on old newsprint?

___________

* I know nothing of this "Thorne" behind the cartoon published on Darrin Bell's Disobey In Advance Substack. I apologize if I am jumping to unwarranted conclusions here: while I can understand why Mr. Bell might wish to have his opinions considered without being tainted by his current legal troubles, a number of us cartoonists are on record as having ridiculed another editorial cartoonist — at the other end of the political spectrum — who published while hiding behind the pseudonym "Rivers."

There is a long history of political cartoonists signing their work with pen names other than their given names, especially out of fear of retaliation by a repressive government (and the current Trump regime qualifies as such). The reasons for adopting a pseudonym might have been much less serious; I think of Wayne Stayskal moonlighting as a sports cartoonist "Trim"; and Tom Curtis drawing for National Review as "Obadiah," perhaps to sidestep an exclusivity arrangement with the Milwaukee Sentinel.

Heck, cartooning under a nickname is an honored tradition in Britain — Poy, Trog, Dyke White, Kem, Tac, Thack, Lees, Wal, Pix, and Hengest, to pseudoname but a few.

But in the case of "Rivers," the man had cartooned for years using his own name before deciding to pretend to be someone else. Frankly, it had the faint odor of dishonesty about it, which lingered over everything he drew. It's not as if the rest of us ink/pixel slingers couldn't recognize his handiwork.

Alias at your own risk.

Cartoons Across the Millennial Divide

It's Swingback Saturday again! A couple more things I wanted to mention about this month's AAEC Convention: Kevin "KAL" Kallaugher moderated a discussion with Michael Alexander Kahn and Richard Samuel West at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum on the cartoons of the political magazine Puck (1871-1918). Kahn and West have written a book of Puck's cartoons, chiefly by Joseph Keppler, Bernard Gillam and Fredrick Opper.

Chances are that if you've seen any colorized editorial cartoons from the period, they are from Puck (or its Republican rival, Judge). The most famous toons include "The Tattooed Man," in which Gillam satirized "Phryne Before the Tribunal" by depicting a disrobed James Blaine tattooed with various scandals, and Keppler's "Here I Am Again, What Are You Going to Do with Me," in which an enormous dragon labeled "Surplus" (with a tail labeled "Tariff Question") sits in the well of the Senate to the consternation of the legislators. (I should have bought the book, but I'm still reading the book about Jay N. "Ding" Darling we were offered when we arrived.)

One is impressed by the proportions of the cartoons, which could span two pages of the magazine, and by the process involved in making them: the cartoonist had to make separate prints for each of the colors that would go into the cartoon.

I was also impressed by a display among the Billy Ireland exhibit's of World War I cartoons of a Winsor McCay animation of the sinking of the Lusitania. The propaganda piece took months to complete and shows just about every second of the ocean liner's demise, with explosions, and victims tumbling off the wreck and bobbing in the ocean. The museum has it available to watch on a tablet if you have 20 minutes to spare. A very different experience from his "Gertie the Dinosaur" or his print comics.

Because of my interest, springing from the R.C. Bowman cartoons I've posted here, in the McKinley administration and the Spanish-American War, I also appreciated Steven Brodner's preview of his work for an upcoming book on American Presidents of the 20th Century. Brodner has an uncanny knack for pushing caricatures beyond what ought to work yet somehow rendering them instantly recognizable, and I'm definitely going to buy that book when it comes out.

But I don't have any pictures of those things, so here's a picture of a magazine in the Billy Ireland Library instead.

Last night, I went to the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning, where I was particularly interested in seeing Darrin Bell. Bell draws the cartoon strips "Candorville" and "Rudy Park"; he is also one of the very best editorial cartoonists in the biz today. I was going to say "young editorial cartoonists," but there really is no need to qualify that judgment with an age restriction, and Ethel Kennedy will back me up on that.

Tom Racine (above right) interviewed Bell on his career, and I was surprised to learn that Bell had actually given up on editorial cartooning for a while. It took the shooting of Trayvon Martin to renew his dedication to the editorial page (although it had occasionally shown up in "Candorville"), for which, I suppose, we must grudgingly thank George Zimmerman.