Oliphant's Veeps

"Promises, Promises" by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, April 1968

How many vice presidents do you count in the above cartoon?

I recently mused that since "Oliphant's Presidents" has already been done (you can buy the book at amazon), I could have commemorated Pat Oliphant's passing by collecting his Vice Presidents. Well, his career spanned several of them, so here they are.

"Click" by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, October, 1968

Lyndon Johnson picked Hubert Humphrey as his running mate in 1964 to shore up his support with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. To Baby Boomers too young to remember the Minnesotan speaking out on behalf of Black Americans' civil rights in 1948, however, Humphrey came to be seen as errand boy for the man sending that generation to fight and die in a far away forever war in southeast Asia.

Running for president in LBJ's place after Johnson withdrew from the race, Humphrey found it difficult to distance himself from the administration's unpopular war while promising to continue advancing its Great Society ideals.

Of course, Johnson qualifies as a former Vice President in this cartoon, too. I suppose it is possible that Aussie Oliphant penned a cartoon of LBJ sometime before November of 1963; John Kennedy's Vice President could well have said or done something to catch the attention of the Adelaide editorial pages.

"Our Earth Contact, Spiro, Is Pushing for a Landing Here by 1986" by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, September 1969

Humphrey lost the 1968 election to Richard Nixon, whose first Vice President, Spiro Agnew, served as the new administration's attack dog, speaking out against the media, liberals, antiwar activists, and the nattering nabobs of negativism.

Oliphant has some fun with one of Agnew's less controversial pronouncements in this cartoon, just two months after the first manned landing on the moon.

There has not, in case anybody is wondering, been a manned mission to Mars as of this writing; but NASA landed a craft on the Red Planet ten years before Mr. Agnew predicted.

Agnew was easily the most caricaturable of the Veeps we're looking at today — at least of the ones who never got promoted to the top job — so five versions of him show up in Oliphant's single-panel cartoon.

Did you remember to count Nixon as a former Veep at the top of this post?

"The Lone Ranger" by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, May 1974

Of course you did.

Less than nine months into Richard Nixon's second term, Agnew pled no contest to charges of bribery  and resigned the Vice Presidency, bringing about the first exercise of the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Passed and ratified after JFK's assassination, it provided a mechanism to fill a vice presidential vacancy.

Gerald Ford was quickly named and confirmed as Agnew's replacement at a time when the President had some legal problems of his own. Yet, while Agnew cartoons were instantly recognizable, six months into Ford's vice presidency Oliphant still found it necessary to write Ford's name on his chest.

"I'd Like You to Meet Our New Vice-President" by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, December 1974

No such problem with Nelson Rockefeller, the former Governor of New York who had run for the presidency in 1960, 1964, and 1968.

He did not make a lasting impression as Ford's second in command, however. Not long ago, contestants on Jeopardy! needed to come up with the name of the vice president who followed Gerald Ford, and none of the three knew who it was.

I'm sure my very intelligent readership had no problem spotting him in the cartoon at the top of today's post.

"Ah Plan a Highly Important Staff Role" by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, January 1977

The vice presidency is notoriously a thankless make-work job. John Nance Garner likened it to a bucket of warm spit, or something that rhymed with it. Thomas Marshall joked about two brothers, one of whom went to sea while the other was elected Vice President, and neither was heard from again. Julia Louis-Dreyfus's Selina Meyers in Veep was a character study in constant frustration and humiliation.

Jimmy Carter actually followed through with his promise to give Walter Mondale a substantial policy role in his administration. Mondale, the first vice president to have an office inside the White House, was Carter's adviser and trouble-shooter, the Georgian's conduit to Capitol Hill Democrats.

"There Is No Truth Whatever in the Rumor" by Pat Oliphant, October 10, 1988

There was nothing fair about that purse Oliphant always drew with Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush — Oliphant went further than almost any other mainstream editorial cartoonist in exploiting Bush's so-called Wimp Factor.

Having criticized Ronald Reagan's "voodoo economics" when Bush was a rival for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, Bush served as a major cheerleader for Reaganomics and the rest of that administration's policies. Behind the scenes, Bush continued the Mondale model of the vice presidency: an experienced advisor who didn't seek credit for administration successes. By the same token, he also avoided the limelight during the Iran-Contra scandal.

The purse, and the Wimp Factor, disappeared once Bush as President dispatched troops to overthrow the government of Panama.

"How Come Is It" by Pat Oliphant, January 9, 1992

Young and handsome J. Danforth Quayle presented cartoonists with a real caricaturing challenge, which Oliphant answered by drawing him as a child. The vice presidency didn't lend Quayle much opportunity to dispel the cartoonists' depiction of him as a callow, inexperienced goofball; attempting to correct a schoolboy's flawless spelling of "potato" didn't help him.

It was a case of peaking too soon; he might have been taken more seriously after a few more years gave him a face fit for presidential central casting. I wouldn't have recognized him in the second pew at Dick Cheney's funeral over three decades later if he hadn't been sitting next to his wife.

"Where Do We Put Mr. Gore" by Pat Oliphant, November 8, 1993

Oliphant leaned into Al Gore's wooden reputation here, a product of the Vice President's extremely careful, measured, parsed, and deliberate speaking style. If Dan Quayle came off as a not-too-bright schoolboy skating by on his looks, Al Gore could have been the guidance counselor patiently explaining the importance of responsible life choices to a school assembly full of Quayles.

"The Energy Show" by Pat Oliphant, May 1, 2001

Dick Cheney was a completely different animal than any previous Vice President. Oliphant consistently portrayed him as the real power behind a frat boy President who got the job on the strength of having been a legacy student who made it to graduation because Dad's name was on a wing of the administration building.

Chief of Staff for President Ford, Congressman from Wyoming, and Defense Secretary under Bush the Elder, Cheney was more recently Chair of the Halliburton Corporation, a multinational oil service conglomerate. Tapped to find Bush the Younger a running mate in 2000, he found one in the mirror.

"I'm Smilin' Joe Biden and I'm Running for President" by Pat Oliphant, January 23, 2013

A commenter at Daily Cartoonist regretted that Pat Oliphant had never drawn Joe Biden. True, Oliphant's eyesight had failed him by the time Biden won the presidency; but he had drawn Biden as Vice President (and as Senator).

Which is where this Graphical History Tour must wrap things up. I know of no Oliphant cartoons of Mike Pence or Kamala Harris, and it's highly unlikely that he ever drew J.D. Vance.

On the other hand, I could have included cartoons he drew of former Vice Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Harry Truman, and there is probably one of Teddy Roosevelt somewhere along the line. But this post is already long enough.

And I could never be certain that I hadn't missed a cartoon featuring William Rufus Devane King or Charles Curtis.

The Good, The Bad, and The Cheney

A special Graphical History Tour bulletin: former Vice President Dick Cheney passed away this week. Since the man was often the subject of editorial cartoons, not least by your humble scribbler, this week's installment is dedicated to his memory... for better or worse.

Cheney, then a Congressman from Wyoming, was President George H.W. Bush's second choice for Secretary of Defense, after his first choice, powerful Texas Senator John Tower was forced to withdraw over a drip, drip, drip of allegations of womanizing and heavy drinking.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., March, 1989

No, there were no such pesky rumors against Mr. Cheney, who had not cultivated the kind of resentment among his colleagues that Mr. Tower had. 

As Defense Secretary, he oversaw the Bush administration's military overthrow of General Manuel Noriega's regime in Panama; and later, Operation Desert Storm. The latter successfully repulsed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, but Cheney allowed General Norman Schwarzkopf to be the public face of the military action.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., Sept. 23, 1991

Operation Desert Storm was one of the Bush administration's many foreign policy wins, even though it left Saddam Hussein in power; the international coalition behind Operation Desert Storm would not have held together for an advance on Baghdad. By the time I drew the above cartoon, the Soviet empire was crumbling, reformer Boris Yeltsin was the hero for thwarting a hardliners' coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, and the U.S. had extended Most Favored Nation trading status to Communist China.

Moving on to the year 2000, I've got a couple cartoons that I drew but didn't submit for publication:

August, 2000

After George H.W. Bush lost the presidency to Bill Clinton, Cheney was in charge of energy conglomerate Halliburton. Then Republican nominee-presumptive George W. Bush tapped him to lead the search for his 2000 running mate. After vetting several potential vice presidents, Cheney found the perfect choice staring back at him from the mirror.

I didn't submit the above cartoon for publication because I was not satisfied with how this cartoon came out visually; a vertical format might have worked better than this horizontal one.

Every once in a while, a cartoonist gets an idea that is too mean to publish, but too wicked not to draw.

November, 2000

When Dick Cheney suffered one of his five heart attacks while the outcome of the 2000 election was still being decided in the courts, I drew this take-off of the running gag in the TV cartoon South Park. I posted it to the GeoCities page I had at the time, and nowhere else.

The joke here was that the Kenny character got killed off in every episode only to reappear in the next. Yet aside from being such an insensitive cartoon, the one other problem with it is that no Republican then (or now) would pronounce the "ic" in "Democratic bastards!"

As for worrying that the level of political discourse had sunken so low, none of us a quarter century ago would have imagined a President of the United States posting a video on line of himself literally bombarding citizens of an American city with a planeload of shit.

February, 2002

I think this was another unpublished cartoon, but only because I didn't have a market for it: not local enough for the Journal Times, not addressing LGBTQ+ issues for Q Syndicate, and not aligned with a Business Journal editorial. I apparently expended quite a lot of ink on it anyway.

The cartoon comments on Cheney's efforts to intercede for California energy provider Enron from his position as Vice President. When mismanagement from the top forced the company to go belly-up and under-the-table deals between the company and government came to light, any association with Enron could have been injurious to one's political career.

March, 2003

I drew this one for a former editor of mine from In Step days, Jamakaya, who liked my conceit of a Journal of Faith-Based Statistics. The imaginary magazine's medical advice has since come to fruition in the Health Department of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy the Lesser.

Cheney would be the most forceful advocate for achieving the unfinished task from twelve years earlier of overthrowing Saddam Hussein, but unlike so many of my colleagues, I didn't draw any cartoons depicting his role in Iraq War II (or, for that matter, any cartoons about the famous incident when he accidentally shot a friend in the face while quail hunting. What could I possibly draw for publication a week later that outdid what all the other cartoonists and late night comedians put out the next day?).

Q Syndicate, January, 2004

Instead, I drew a series of cartoons highlighting how his daughter Mary living openly with her partner, Heather Poe, left Cheney in the awkward position of having to support President Bush's advocacy of amending the U.S. Constitution to define marriage as existing only between one man and one woman (at a time, one presumes) despite how it directly affected his own flesh and blood.

His rival for the vice presidency in 2004, Senator John Edwards, attempted to needle Cheney about this during their televised debate.

for Q Syndicate, Oct., 2004

John Edwards: "I think the Vice President and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And and you can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It's a wonderful thing. And there are millions of parents like that who love their children, who want their children to be happy. ...." (He went on to criticize the GOP's Definition of Marriage constitutional amendment.)

Moderator Gwen Ifill: "Mr. Vice President, you have 90 seconds."

Dick Cheney: "Let me simply thank the Senator for the kind words he said about my family and our daughter. I appreciate that very much."

Ifill: "That's it?"

Cheney: "That's it."

At another point in the debate, Cheney dismissed Edwards as an empty suit: “I’m up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they’re in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.” When Edwards's running mate, Sen. John Kerry, brought Mary Cheney up during the next presidential debate, Cheney told reporters that "I am a pretty angry father," and his wife, Lynne, accused Kerry of "a cheap and tawdry political trick."

for Q Syndicate, February, 2007

Mary and Heather welcomed son Samuel into their family in 2007, so I supposed that Dick and Liz were still tight-lipped on a subject about which most grandparents are more than happy to regale passers-by. Drivers-by, too.

This cartoon broke free of my clientele of LGBTQ+ niche publications, catching the eye of my esteemed colleague Joel Pett, who put together weekly editorial cartoon round-ups for the Sunday Los Angeles Times in those days. (February 11, page M2, at the top of the display, for gosh sakes! Thanks, Joel!)

I did check with my syndicate editors in case having the cartoon in the LA Times might scoop a subscriber in the local LGBTQ+ press. They gave the go-ahead.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2007

Early in the 2008 presidential campaign cycle, some genealogist with lots of time on their hands determined that Dick Cheney and Democratic candidate Barack Obama are ninth cousins once removed. It was a news story that didn't stop certain other people from making up stories about Obama being born in Kenya. Nor did it get Cheney and Obama to invite each other to family reunions.

for Q Syndicate, 2013

By the time Cheney's other daughter, Liz, ran for Congress, Dad had mellowed on the question of marriage equality. Liz, however, campaigned on a platform of anti-LGBTQ Republican orthodoxy. But she and her father deserve credit for putting country above partisanship after Donald Trump's attempted coup on January 6, 2021. Unfortunately for them and the rest of us, the MAGA Kool-aid has proved thicker than TEA.

That, ladies and gents, would be my last cartoon of Mr. Cheney, except that I have drawn one more. See you next week.

Toons of Thankfulness and Praise

I hope you have saved some room for some leftover Thanksgiving cartoons today. Our Graphical History Tour has whipped up a tasty dish from the editorial and comic pages of 1924.

"Mr. Coolidge Breaks His Silence" by T.H. Webster for N.Y. World's Press Pub. Co., Nov. 27, 1924

Calvin Coolidge, in keeping with longstanding tradition, officially proclaimed that year's national day of Thanksgiving on Thursday, November 27, the last Thursday of the month. The troubled tom in T.H. Webster's cartoon would have waited in vain for a presidential pardon to save him from the butcher's axe.

The tradition of presidents pardoning a turkey or two at Thanksgiving was apparently inaugurated by John F. Kennedy (reports of meleagristic pardons by Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman are not supported by presidential records). The first official presidential pardon granted to a turkey was by George H.W. Bush in 1989.

"If We All Don't Get Our Share This Year It Won't Be Because the Turkey Isn't Big Enough" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Nov. 27, 1924

Prosperity Triumphant was the theme of editorial cartoons in many a Thanksgiving Day newspaper in 1924. It was the midpoint of the Roaring ’20's, of course. The stock market was booming, employers were hiring, speakeasies were jumping, and flappers were, uh, flapping.

"We Have with Us Today" by William Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 27, 1924

Republican-leaning editorial cartoonists offered plenty of cartoons for the day crowing that Americans ought to be thankful to reelected President Calvin Coolidge for the apparently robust economy everyone was enjoying. 

"Even They Have Something to Be Thankful For" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Nov. 27, 1924

Democrats and Progressives, on the other hand, were still eating crow, and the editorial cartoonists who had advocated the election of John Davis or Robert LaFollette shied away from political ruminations for the holiday.

The Gumps by Sidney Smith for Chicago Tribune Service, Nov. 27, 1924

Speaking of unsuccessful presidential candidates: Andy Gump — whose campaign manager had neglected to file Gump's candidacy — used the holiday to wax philosophical about his loss.

"Me and Mine" by Clare Briggs for N.Y. Tribune Co., Nov. 27, 1924

Elsewhere on the comics page, even in 1924, one did not necessarily head home for the holidays. The ladies in Clare Briggs's cartoon agreed to disagree over the relative merits of a home-cooked meal and not having to clean up after one.

"Cap Stubbs" by Edwina Dumm for George Matthew Adams Service, Nov. 27, 1924

It has been a long time since our tour has checked in on one of the very few female comic strip artists of the 1920's, so here is Edwina Dumm, presenting her titular "Cap" Stubbs with one of his typical conundra.

"Your Own Nightmare" by Jim Ring in Washington Times, Nov. 27, 1924

Returning to the editorial page: I guess Jim Ring didn't particularly care for the Thanksgiving holiday. Or perhaps being called upon to draw something for the Washington Times editorial page at the last minute because the editors or publisher there didn't care for whatever it was that their usual cartoonist, T.E. Powers, had offered them for the day.

"And Here's Another Problem" by John Knott in Dallas Morning News, ca. Nov. 26, 1924

As if Jim Ring hadn't burdened you with enough Thanksgiving nightmares, along came John Knott to remind us that it's time to flip the page on the calendar.

So therefore we bid you and yule a fond au revoir, a happy post-Thanksgiving, a toilichte St. Andrew's Day, and a merry month to come.

Gobble fa la la: la la la la!

It's Always Something

Every once in a while when I'm cyberleafing through old newspapers in search of a topic for these Saturday posts, I run across a cartoon that makes me stop and wonder what could possibly have been in the cartoonist's mind.

"Jimmy Earl Carter's Camp David Quiz Show" by Pat Oliphant in Denver (D.C.) Star, April 1, 1978 

Well, this is not a post about that. (It's April Fools' Day. What did you expect?)

This is, instead, a book report on the latest addition to my library.

I found this 2020 book in the U.S. History section of my local Barnes & Noble. Liberally illustrated with Bill Mauldin's original artwork, pencil edits and all, from the Pritzger Military Museum and Library, the first half of the book consists of separate essays about Mauldin's life and work.

There is some overlap in subject matter in these essays, although each approaches the subject from a different angle.

Taken together, the essays take you from Mauldin's hard-scrabble youth in a classically dysfunctional family and his early attempts to sell his cartoons, through parlaying his fame and fortune drawing for Stars and Stripes into a storied career in St. Louis and Chicago. 

Many of the cartoons in this book are taken from the original drawings rather than the published product, so you get to see the edits and compositors' markings along the way. Some captions got tweaked here and there; at least one was changed completely from the original concept.

Awarded the Pulitzer at the age of 23 for his cartoons of infantry men in World War II (the youngest Pulitzer winner ever), Mauldin risked peaking early and fizzling out. Retooling his Willie and Joe grunts for a postwar gag panel lacked the qualities that made the characters so special. But he rediscovered his passion in politics, returning to cartooning after an unsuccessful run for Congress.

His cartoons argued forcibly for the rights of Japanese-Americans, Black Americans, and women (also gay rights, although that is missing from this book), earning him his second Pulitzer in 1958. The Chicago Sun-Times gave the cartoon he drew immediately after Kennedy's assassination the entire back page of the Extra edition, and many outlets sold that paper with the back page up instead of the front page.

His later years are more tragic; an essay by Charles Schulz's widow, Jean, describes how his fellow cartoonists stepped forward when, as featured speaker at the 2003 National Cartoonist Society convention, he was too drunk to take the podium. Hers is a sympathetic account; colleagues I've spoken to who were there recall the episode with some sadness.

(Many of us at last year's convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists were brought to tears watching the 2021 documentary about Bill Mauldin's life and work, If It's Big, Hit It. Alcoholism and Alzheimer's Disease in his last years should have been awful enough, but having a jeep fall on his drawing hand and his later suffering third degree burns from his habit of relaxing in a hot bath left him withdrawn and uncommunicative. The film doesn't end with that, so neither will I.)

One chapter that stands out from the typical book of any given cartoonist's work is Christina Knopf's "Bill Mauldin's Legacy in Military Cartooning," which profiles soldier/sailor cartoonists from the Vietnam War to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Some of the cartoonists in this chapter were inspired by Mauldin; one admitted never having heard of him. The works illustrating the chapter include one direct reference to one of Mauldin's Willie and Joe cartoons.

Mauldin's classic cartoon shows a cavalry sergeant about to shoot his own jeep to put it out of its misery because it has a flat tire. The tribute cartoon by Steve Opet depicts a soldier about to do the same to a computer because it's showing an "access denied" screen.

by Mill Bauldin in St. Louis Sun-Times, Sept., 2002

The same cartoon inspired one of mine occasioned by the financial controversies that terminated Palotta Works "AIDS Ride" fund raising bicycle marathon. I kind of screwed up, however, by drawing Mr. Palotta on the left side of the cartoon and his bike on the right — and the western garb took the whole idea back to the practice Mauldin was riffing on of shooting a wounded horse.

The other two times that I've referenced Mauldin's cartoons, I made more of an effort to mimic the source material.

by Dan Liliblum in Chicago Highways Stripes, November, 2016

So when the 2016 election inexplicably went to Donald Berzelius Trump, my cartoon based on the one Mauldin drew after JFK's assassination was in grayscale except for the barf bag and my signature, two items that didn't belong in the original. My medium was india ink rather than charcoal and grease pencil, but I deliberately tried to draw every line just the way Mauldin had.

The only other major difference was that his cartoon was portrait oriented whereas mine had to be landscape oriented.

by Ludmilla Nib in Arizona Post-Dispatch, March, 2021 

I decided to go ahead and add color to this 2021 cartoon. The Mauldin cartoon I based this one on is not in Drawing Fire; the original had the crow perched atop the flagpole and the eagle demanding his "seat back."

Using landscape orientation afforded me plenty of room to add the elephant to the scene. It did, however, force me to draw the eagle smaller than I would have liked.

Well, it wouldn't be fair of me to tease you with my own cartoons and not include any of Mauldin's, so I want to leave you with this one from toward the end of his career. He drew it at the outset of Bush the Elder's Iraq War, and although the book doesn't say so one way or the other, I think this is how Mauldin imagined Willie and Joe would look 45 years after returning stateside.

"Inside It Says the Pentagon Doesn't Want a Lot of Fuss" by Bill Mauldin in Chicago Sun-Times, January, 1991

Remembering Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last President of the Soviet Union, died this week, age 91; so for today's Saturday History Tour, here are some of my cartoons of one of the most transformative leaders of the latter half of the 20th Century.

in UW-Milwaukee Post, Nov. 14, 1989

With his election by the Politburo in March of 1985, Gorbachev became the USSR's fourth leader in as many years. Leonid Brezhnev's ill health had been kept secret for years before his death in 1982; his successor, Yuri Andropov, was felled by kidney failure after 15 months in office, aged 69. Konstantin Chernenko, a heavy smoker, was at death's door almost from the start of his 13-month administration, and died of emphysema and complications at the age of 73.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, March 21, 1985

Gorbachev came to power eager to make his mark. He signaled his willingness to negotiate arms limitations with the United States, a topic whose progress had ground to a halt after Ronald Reagan scrapped the talks begun under Brezhnev with Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, April 10, 1986

The West added two Russian words to our vocabulary under Mikhail Gorbachev: perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). The former was actually a policy begun under Brezhnev in 1979, but to which Gorbachev announced a renewed and firm commitment. His reforms decentralized governance and economic controls while lifting some of the secrecy enjoyed by Kremlin bureaucrats.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Sept. 7, 1989

What Gorbachev hadn't factored in was the desire of the citizens of Soviet client states and some non-Russian S.S.R.'s to break away from Moscow entirely. It's not as if independence movements were unknown; Poland's Solidarność movement had been a headache for the government in Warsaw since 1980, and memories lingered of Moscow's brutal suppression of revolts in Czechoslovakia (1968),  Hungary (1956), and East Germany (1953).

in UW-Milwaukee Post, Nov. 9, 1989

When the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe completely collapsed in November and December of 1989, there were too many dominoes falling at once for Gorbachev to seriously consider sending the Russian military into every countries quitting the Warsaw Pact.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Nov. 16, 1989

Rough seas for Gorbachev's Mediterranean summit meeting with U.S. President George H.W. Bush were the perfect metaphor for the Soviet leader's predicament.

in UW-Milwaukee Post, Dec. 5, 1989

(This was months before Bush would throw up into the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister, by the way.)

in UW-Milwaukee Post, Feb. 20, 1990

I still like this take-off on a scene from Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure, even though you could plug just about any politician going through a rough patch into this scenario. Similarly with this next cartoon. 

May, 1990. Unpublished?

Reunification of Germany certainly horrified the elder members of the politburo; Gorbachev was also old enough to remember World War II. This, as much as any other single factor, led to the hardliners' attempted coup in the summer of 1991.

August, 1991. Unpublished?

The coup met sturdy resistance from their own citizens. Moscow Mayor Boris Yeltsin emerged as the hero of the moment, representing liberalization beyond what Gorbachev had ever intended.

in UW-Milwaukee Post, Sept. 9, 1991

The end of the Soviet Union happened over Christmas break at the UW-M Post, and I don't have any cartoons about Gorbachev after that.

The memorial cartoons I've seen this week have all credited Gorbachev with bringing his country out of the oppression of the communist regime. Many have contrasted him favorably with Vladimir Putin, who has imposed a new oppressive regime of деконструкция and закрытость, and clearly believes that Gorbachev's administration was a disaster. 

I have not yet seen how any Russian cartoonists have responded to Gorbachev's passing. Are memorial cartoons even a thing there? If so, was Mikhail Gorbachev someone you can praise under Putin's regime without buying a one-way ticket out a sixth-story hospital window?