The Winter of Our Recycled Content

Daffodil shoots are poking through the slowly melting snow in the garden hereabouts. While Spring hopes eternal outdoors, today's Graphical History Tour parades through four decades of my March cartoons from 1986 to the present. 

Yes, I said "the present."

1986

in UW-P Ranger, Somers Wis., March, 1986

Ronald Reagan had campaigned for the presidency in 1980 promising to rein in spending and to cut the federal deficit. Instead, thanks to tax cuts and increased defense spending, the deficit climbed year by year, topping $220 billion, not quite 5% of gross national product, by 1986.

Republican Senators Phil Gramm and Warren Rudman, joined by South Carolina Democrat Fritz Hollings (left to right in my cartoon), put forth a scheme to force future Congresses to slash spending or face automatic budget cuts beyond their control. Gramm-Rudman-Hollings passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law in 1985, but the Supreme Court found it unconstitutional in 1986.

Gramm, Rudman, and Hollings later came out with a revised bill addressing the Court’s objections to Gramm-Rudman-Hollings I. Coupled with a tax hike, social spending cuts resulted in some reduction of the federal deficit, but it was right back to $221 billion by 1990.

A propos of nothing, $220 billion happens to be the amount Secretary of Special Military Operations Pete Hegseth wants over and above the Pentagon's 2026 budget in order to continue the Excursion in Iran.

1996

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., March 7, 1996

I really liked this cartoon, partly because it was my first truly successful caricature of Pat Buchanan.

Its problem lay in that it relied heavily on references to the 1995 film version of Richard III, which reset Shakespeare's play about England's last Plantagenet king into the late 1930's, depicting Richard as a murderous fascist grasping onto his usurped throne. I took the boar's head banners directly from the film (a white boar having been the actual heraldry emblem adopted by Richard himself).

Had there been more of an audience for updated Shakespeare histories, those references might have worked better. And why wouldn't audiences have flocked to see Ian McKellen, Annette Bening, Robert Downey, Jr., and Dame Maggie Smith bringing the bard from the 1480's into the 20th Century and the murders from offstage onto the screen?

I had been reading all of Shakespeare's history plays at the time, starting with Richard III, spurred on by first reading The Daughter of Time by Dorothy Tey. In her novel, Tey's detective, Alan Grant, is laid up in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound in a previous adventure, and passes the time investigating the murder, supposedly by Richard III or on his orders, of Edward IV's two sons.

I even bought the DVD.

Which sits unopened on the DVD shelf, still in its plastic wrapping from Barnes & Noble. 

It ain't exactly Date Night material.

2006

for Q Syndicate, March, 2006

Another problem with the cartoon about Buchanan was that the newspaper headline in it was kind of small. It was passable in a university newspaper, read by young adults with generally good vision. I couldn't foresee people reading it on an itty bitty phone screen; nowadays, I would have had to put the newspaper more in the foreground. or the headline in a "News Item" text box.

The church window in this 2006 cartoon has the same flaw. I had plenty of room to make the window much bigger, and I think the cartoon would have been improved if it were at least taller.

I don't think I was intentionally referencing this illustration by Maximino Cerezo Barredo of the biblical story of Jesus's temptation by the devil, although I was aware of and probably influenced by it:

"Cuaresma 1C" by Maximino Cerezo Barredo

The Temptation of Christ is read in Catholic, Lutheran, and Episcopal churches every year on the first Sunday in Lent: after Jesus has fasted in the wilderness for 40 days and nights, the devil tempts him with power and glory. Liberation Catholic theologian Cerezo Barredo depicts the devil in clerical garb, offering Christ cash, a crown, and satellite communications, in what I interpret as a slam against televangelists.

2016

Sadly, this brings us to some 2016 election cartoons, as the tragic trajectory of how we got where we are today begins. Call it Act One, Scene One.

for Q Syndicate, March 2016

In a more recent election cycle, I thought of using the boar's head from Richard III as a leitmotif in my cartoons of Donald Dickon Trump. I was already drawing him with a pig snout by then, so why not just add the boar tusks?

The answer is that I tried it once, and besides being even more obscure than it was in 1996, it just complicated the caricature. Besides, the real Richard III was a capable soldier and commander in battle, in spite of developing scoliosis, whereas Trump claimed bone spurs to avoid the Vietnam draft (when he wasn't playing tennis and squash at Fordham).

I was still developing a caricature of Trump at this point; he has one of those faces with too much of a muchness, defying cartoonists to choose which feature to fixate upon. The pout? The ridiculous comb-all-over? The eyebrows? The wattle? The overlong tie? The tiny hands?

As for Hillary Clinton, considering how long she has been in the public eye — as First Lady, senator, Secretary of State, presidential candidate, and Republican bête noire — it annoys me that I have so few cartoons where I feel I have drawn her successfully. This is not one of them.

2026

Wait, what?

The Graphical History Tour doesn't usually make a stop at Yesterday Afternoon, but you've been such a wonderful tour group, you all deserve a little treat.

Trump's hand-picked Commission of Fine Arts revealed controversial designs for new dime and gold dollar coins to celebrate the nation's semiquincentennial and Trump himself. 

The dime kicks Franklin Roosevelt to the curb; instead, its eagle grasps the arrows of war but has dropped its olive branches of peace. The dollar coin features Donald Render-to-Caesar Trump.

for this blog post, March 21, 2026

This is not the design proposed by the commission, but perhaps you remember this little episode from when Time magazine wanted to get some campaign photographs for a cover story on Trump.

Federal law has long prohibited putting living persons on U.S. currency, but a special exception was made for coins commemorating the nation's 250th anniversary. I'll give you exactly one guess which president signed that legislation into law.

Can you imagine any previous president getting his own mug on golden dollar coins while he was still in office?

Can you imagine Donald Imperator Trump passing up the opportunity?

February Shorten Suite

Today's Graphical History Tour steps back forty, thirty, twenty, and ten Februaries ago to check out what I was drawing back then.

1986

in NorthCountry Journal, Poynette Wis., February, 1986

I can't remember the exact point of the editorial that accompanied this cartoon in the environmentally-focused NorthCountry Journal, but it's not difficult to guess the general drift. 

Drawing architecture is not one of my favorite pastimes; I must have used a straightedge to draw so many parallel lines, and somehow managed not to smear any wet india ink. There is, miraculously, no white-out on the original of this particular cartoon.

1996

Rummaging through my cartoon files from 30 Februaries ago, I first found a cartoon likening reactionary GOP presidential contender Pat Buchanan to Nazis — which I still think is valid — but then I came across this one.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee, February 29, 1996

Lamar Alexander, a former Governor of Tennessee and Secretary of Education in the George H.W. Bush administration, was dubbed by the professional punditry one of the moderates in the GOP presidential field.

Which just goes to show how long the positions he espoused in my cartoon have been mainstream in the Republican Party. Abolishing the Department of Education since became GOP platform boilerplate, so the Lawless Trump Regime's destruction of the DOE is no longer anything new or surprising.

Alexander's proposed "new military department responsible for drug enforcement" and "dealing with illegal immigration," put forth more than five years before 9/11, is now the Lawless Trump Regime's Department of Homeland Security.

2006

for Q Syndicate, February 2006

But enough about politics.

Awards season affords a welcome opportunity to step away from the news out of Washington and whatever politician is trying to capitalize on homophobia at the moment. Movies with Oscar nominations in 2006 included Brokeback Mountain, TransAmerica, and Capote, promising one of the most LGBTQ-centric ceremonies since, well, 1960. 

By the way, do I have to explain now where these women are and what they are doing? Naah, not gonna do it. Go ask your mother.

2016

for Q Syndicate, February, 2016

Staying with Hollywood, my cartoon ten Februaries later remarked how straight actors win praise for playing LGBTQ roles, but out LGBTQ actors can get pigeonholed having to play LGBTQ roles exclusively.

There have been some notable exceptions to the practice in the last ten years, notably Jonathan Bailey as Bridgerton heartthrob Anthony, Neil Patrick Harris as How I Met Your Mother's Barney Stinson, Jim Parsons as Big Bang Theory's Sheldon Cooper, and Matt Bomer in role after role after role.

Theater has a long history of white actors playing Parts of Color (from Othello to The Mikado to Apache), but that's decidedly out of fashion these days.

There are some who advocate that only LGBTQ actors should portray LGBTQ characters; but there is little chance of that as long as actors such as Rami Malek, Nick Offerman, Brendan Fraser, and Ewan McGregor keep winning awards for gay roles.

🌈

Rev. Jesse Jackson passed away this week, so I'll close today's Graphical History Tour in his memory with one of the cartoons I drew of him during his 1984 presidential campaign.

January, 1984

My cartoon, drawn after Jackson led a delegation of Black faith leaders who secured the release from Syria of U.S. Navy Lt. Robert Goodman, seems not to have been published. The UW-Parkside Ranger instead printed a cartoon I drew in which a stack of papers on Secretary of State George Schultz listed a number of pending foreign policy issues, including suspended nuclear disarmament talks, yellow rain, a Korean passenger plane shot down by the U.S.S.R., and the 241 Marines killed in a Beirut suicide bombing.

One might argue that the 52 U.S. hostages freed by Iran on Reagan's first hour in office outweigh the one seaman freed by Syria; but I would argue that Reagan was responsible not for achieving but for delaying the Iran hostages' release, so that doesn't count.

In any event, freeing Lt. Goodman, who had been shot down over Lebanon, captured, and taken to Damascus, established Rev. Jackson as more than a special interest candidate in the 1984 Democratic primaries. He was among the front runners for the nomination four years later, then concentrated on leading his PUSH/Rainbow Coalition.

In spite of being visibly afflicted with Parkinson's disease, Jackson came to Kenosha to march in a Black Lives Matter protest a month after the 2020 riot there, and spoke at the church where I was working at the time. I did not get to meet him, but here's a photo of him at Grace Lutheran Church with an assistant and Greater Milwaukee Synod (ELCA) Bishop Paul Erickson, and another of some of the local television coverage.

I Guano Wish You a Merry Christmas

Hi there! You're just in time to join another Graphical History Tour through the archives of your humble scribbler's December cartoons, carefully aged in our ancient wine cellar, each evidencing floral legs with notes of winter stone leather and an earthy finish.

2015

First off, let's get into the spirit of the season with a couple of classic Christmas movies.

We watch a fair number of classic movies in this household, especially at this time of year. After a while, the plots do seem to get mixed up in my head. Did we just witness a miracle on 34th Street, or did it happen on Fifth Avenue?

One thing that I've always liked about parodying old movies like this is that I don't have to spend the usual time making separate grayscale and full-color versions for syndication. Nope, just save the grayscale version, convert it to CMYK, fill in the pink triangle, and voilá! The colorized version is already finished!

Which reminds me, I think tonight we're watching Dudley the Angel show up to help Charlie Brown find the true meaning of Christmas in Frosty, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

2005

Speaking of whom...

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, Dec. 9, 2005

Do I remember the point of the editorial this cartoon was meant to illustrate? No way. It had something to do with corporations securing "air rights" above ground level for such things as skyways connecting buildings on opposite sides of a street. 

That was the fourth-to-last cartoon of mine in the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee. At the end of the year, they decided that they didn't want to run cartoons on the editorial page any more, in favor of a weekly thumbs-up / thumbs-down listicle.

I got more appreciation from the Chicago Free Press that December, which used a cartoon of mine on the front page of their year-in-review edition.

in Chicago Free Press, December, 2005

The Chicago Free Press was a client of my cartoons for their entire run, from 1999 to 2010; this caricature of Dubya Bush was actually from a cartoon I had drawn in August, 2003.

1995

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., Dec. 21, 1995

Christmas week does generally not suit itself to cartoons about the beach hereabouts.  

The city had hired an expert from the National Water Research Institute to determine the source of  fecal coliform bacteria that had forced the city to close North Beach several times during the summer. Human feces were the prime suspect, but in December, the expert reported that preliminary studies pointed instead to gull droppings.

Dad was on the Racine Board of Health back then, and still is, so I get the inside poop on any matters related to public health here. And yes, gull droppings have been a factor in beach closings: they crap on the sand, and that stuff washes into Lake Michigan when it rains.

But human shit was also a major part of the problem. As a result, Racine extended its sewage outflow further out into the lake. The study cast much of the blame on Milwaukee's sewage system; during heavy rains, untreated sewage had to be released into the lake in order to minimize it backing up into everyone's basements.

Since then, Milwaukee's Big Tunnel project has largely addressed that particular problem. This past summer, Racine only had to close North Beach one time (but did have to issue advisories on two other occasions).

1985

I had drawn a couple Christmas issue cover cartoons for the University of Wisconsin at Parkside student newspaper by 1985, making oversized editorial cartoons for them. With the 1985 edition, I decided to make a simple, straightforward holiday greeting.

in UW-P Ranger, Somers Wis., Dec. 12, 1985

I also departed from usual by drawing exclusively in charcoal. This meant I couldn't erase anything if I didn't like it, and having to be extremely careful not to smudge the drawing. The original drawing is too large for my scanner; if I could have posted the original drawing here, you would be able to see all the blue pencil underneath the charcoal.

The medium of charcoal did not afford the Ranger editors much opportunity to add color to the drawing. This was well before PhotoShop and other quick and easy artistic tools; to add color, someone would have had to lay a halftone transfer sheet over the drawing and cut with an Exacto knife the desired shapes for each area where the color should print.

I  had created the Ranger flag that year, and every shape you see in green, I made using that same halftone cutting process. (Ignore the yellow; that's just the discoloring of 40-year-old newsprint, or however old it was when the UW-P library scanned it. I Photoshopped out the yellowing from the Peace on Earth drawing for this post, but not from the flag.)

Well, heck, why don't we go back yet another ten Decembers just for gits and shiggles?

1975

in Park Beacon, Dec. 19, 1975

That takes us all the way back to my high school days. This cartoon was something I drew to illustrate someone else's (possibly Executive Editor Joel Krein's) Twelve Days of Christmas list.

The principal surrounded by garbage, and the school nurse, by the way, were caricatures of real persons. And I'm quite sure that none of my fellow students caught the reference to a running gag in "Fibber McGee & Molly," a radio comedy that was well before our time. Before Assistant Principal McKee's time, too.

Somehow, the school administration let us get away with this cartoon. If I remember correctly, the Park Beacon had to yield to administration censorship once in the two years that I was on staff. An installment of Kevin Cacciotti's "Being Cool in School" comic strip included advice to "destroy school property," and Principal Thompson made us black the cartoon out of every copy with magic markers.

Except for the copies we saved for ourselves.

✍

Well, that's the Graphical History Tour for this week. Thanks for coming along, and have a Merry St. Lucy's Day!

Q Toon: A Message from Don Trumpleone

Just when I hoped I could take a break from drawing cartoons criticizing the Trump regime, they pull me back in...

In the spirit of March Madness, the Trump Maladministration has been doing a full-court press against academia, arresting and deporting students and faculty.

Of particular interest to LGBTQ+ collegians (and perhaps my readers at Philadelphia Gay News), the Trumpsters also successfully pressured the University of Pennsylvania to reverse its policy allowing a transgender athlete to compete as her true self.

WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration has suspended approximately $175 million in federal funding for the University of Pennsylvania over the participation of a transgender athlete in its swimming program, the White House said Wednesday. [17.5% of UPenn's total federal funding]

The Ivy League school has been facing an Education Department investigation focusing on in its swimming program. That inquiry was announced last month immediately after President Donald Trump signed an executive order intended to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls' and women's sports.

But the federal money was suspended in a separate review of discretionary federal money going to universities, the White House said. The money that was paused came from the Defense Department and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Education Department, or what little is left of it, has also opened reviews of San Jose State University volleyball and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association.

UPenn is the alma mater of swimmer Lia Thomas, who won a Division I title for the school in 2022. Having begun the process of gender reassignment after the onset of puberty, she has since been barred from further athletic competition by World Aquatics, and has been ineligible to compete in  trials for next year's Olympic games. Trump maladministration diktat will, of course, force all transgender youth to wait until adulthood to align their outer gender with their inner one.

Another Trumpster offer UPenn couldn't refuse resulted in the firing of Lecturer Dwayne Booth, who draws under the nom de toon Mr. Fish. Booth has incurred right-wing ire for publishing cartoons critical of the Netanyahu government's wholesale slaughter of Palestinians — especially the one in this blog post. (Nota bene: If one is going to draw Israeli government officials drinking wine, it had better be Chablis or Pinot Grigio.)

The above is only a hint of the authoritarian police state that the U.S. has now become under Trump. His ICE is now disappearing legal residents of this country who have deigned to speak up on behalf of the Palestinian people: Khalil Mahmoud at Columbia, Badar Khan Suri at Georgetown, and Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts for just three examples (Mahmoud for organizing campus protests; Suri because of his father-in-law's former association with Hamas; Ozturk merely for co-authoring an op-ed). 

The Trumpsters promise more such extra-judicial arrests, and want universities to ban the wearing of masks in order for police surveillance to identify anyone else attempting to exercise their right of free speech. Only the arresting agents from Homeland Security are entitled to keep their faces hidden.

For now, they have been disappearing foreign-born protesters and op-editorialists who mistook the United States for a free country. But at some point, the shadowy, masked government goons jumping out of black vans will be abducting native-born citizens for daring to voice thoughtcrime, too.

Q Toon: Deck the Hallmarks

I've got time for just one more Christmas cartoon this year, so here goes:

Five years ago, my cartoon on this subject lampooned a Christian Nationalist trouble-maker who, in a fit of pique and self-promotion, had presented the Hallmark Channel with a petition demanding that it cancel production and broadcast of Christmas Holiday movies with LGBTQ+ central characters.

Controversy and outrage erupted in conservative circles after a November 15 interview with Hallmark Channel CEO Bill Abbot for The Hollywood Reporter's TV's Top 5 podcast. Abbot stated that he would be "open" to the idea of a gay-themed Christmas movie, although the channel has yet to produce one and has no immediate plans to do so. The channel is said to be releasing over three dozen Christmas-themed films this year, none with gay major characters.

Since then, Hallmark has added LGBTQ+ fare to its holiday offerings at every year, as has Lifetime. Netflix joined the party in 2021.  

Hallmark has cut back somewhat on making the Yuletide gay this year, however. I'm told there is only one holiday feature that includes a LGBTQ+ couple, and only as one plot line among several in a sequel about some sort of AirBnB/Vrbo/hostel where love is in the air ducts. 

That's one couple, in one movie, among 50 new Hallmark holiday movies this season. With a repressive regime in complete control in this country next year, I wouldn't expect any gay-friendly Hallmark treacle for Christmas, 2025.

So, of course, the Hallmark movie in my cartoon is completely made up, as are Ty Askew and Casey Rossera. The Catholic Censorship League would have a fit over any TV show depicting a closeted priest succumbing to the charms of an atheist guy under the pagan mistletoe; perhaps Ron Reagan Jr. and the Enforced Freedom from Religion folks would file their complaints as well.

Unless the professional complainer class decides it's not worth it to give the Christmas movie factories the free publicity of a formal protest. It's not as if any of what Hallmark, Lifetime, or Netflix has actually extruded for the holiday is apt to rival Shakespeare anyway. Or Dickens.

Whether The Bishop's Wife or Die Hard or Elf or Red One is more your style, we wish you a merry Christmas.

Beethoven's Birthday's Sneak Peek

Instead of the usual rough sketch or snippet from this week's cartoon, here's the first panel from one that came up in my Facebook Memories the other day:

Sondern laβt uns angenehmere anstimmen, und freudenvollere!

Januaries '4eign and Domestic

It's time to ease back on the wayback machine just a little bit, so here are a few cartoons I drew in Januaries of years ending in -4. (Which was coincidentally the high temperature here the other day.)

1984 was a presidential election year, of course; and like today, the United States was bedeviled by hostilities in the Middle East.

The U.S.S. John F. Kennedy had been on patrol off the coast of Lebanon after the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, in which 241 soldiers had died. In response to some hostile fire, the JFK launched a bombing raid on December 4. The plane of Navy Lts. Mark Lange and Robert Goodman was shot down by a Syrian ground missile. Lange did not survive; Goodman was taken captive in Damascus.

Unwilling to accede to the conditions set by Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad that the U.S. withdraw forces from Lebanon, the Reagan Administration's efforts to win Goodman's freedom were getting nowhere. Then a delegation led by by Rev. Jesse Jackson went to Damascus, and Jackson, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, succeeded where Reagan had failed.

Jackson nevertheless came in seventh place in the Iowa caucuses. Go figure. Must have been because there are no naval bases in Iowa.

I drew the above cartoon for the January 12, 1984 edition of the University of Wisconsin - Parkside student newspaper; but they still had an unused cartoon from December and ran that one instead.

Moving on to 1994, and the aftermath of more U.S. soldiers killed in a far-off civil war:

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., Jan. 24, 1994

President Clinton's first Defense Secretary, Les Aspin, resigned at the end of 1993, tacitly taking the fall for the Blackhawk Down incident in Somalia. Clinton's nomination of Admiral Bobby Ray Inman as Aspin's replacement was greeted initially with bipartisan praise — save for New York Times columnist William Safire, who alleged that Inman was biased against Israel. 

Inman withdrew his name from consideration at a stormy press conference, where he blasted Safire and complained that Republican Senators Bob Dole and Trent Lott were out to get him. Both Senate leaders expressed surprise and shock at Inman's accusation, and the White House was taken totally off guard.

Clinton's subsequent nomination of William Perry to the post went off smoothly. There was later speculation that Inman was actually trying to head off being connected to a scandal at International Signal and Control, where he served on the board of directors.

for Q Syndicate, January, 2004

I don't have a cartoon from January of 2004 that fits with the general topic of today's post; so instead, I'll include this homage to P.T. Bridgeport, a recurring character in Walt Kelly's "Pogo" whose dialogue always appeared in late-1800's advertising fonts. 

Lettering dialogue is usually my least favorite part of drawing a cartoon. This was an exception.

for Q Syndicate, January, 2014

Returning to foreign issues, I chose this cartoon from ten years ago because it gives me an opportunity to address a cartoon I haven't drawn this month.

On December 29, the President of Burundi, Évariste Ndayishimiye, was asked about respecting LGBTQ+ rights.

"For me, I think that if we find these people in Burundi they should be taken to stadiums and be stoned, and doing so would not be a crime," he said.

If any U.S. politician had spewed such hate-filled bile in the no-news week between Christmas and New Year's, I would have been all over that story in that week's cartoon. But doing so about a politician none of my readers had ever heard of from a country that many could not find on a map (present company excepted, of course) with a history of Western colonialism and yada yada is fraught with danger.

Would it be possible to condemn Mr. Ndayishimiye without risking accusations of racism and cultural imperialism?

We could debate whether homosexuality existed in Africa before Christian and Islamic missionaries preached anti-LGBTQ+ persecution there. Western colonizers did everything they could to erase local culture and history wherever they went; yet it beggars belief to imagine that homosexuality existed only in Europe and in scattered Native American nations before Christopher Columbus, Vasco de Gama, and Francis Drake set sail.

Mr. Ndayishimiye, as it happens, is Roman Catholic, but with some glaringly apparent differences with the current Pope.

My 2014 cartoon attempted to argue that institutionalized homophobia rather than homosexuality is the Western export to Africa (at least as far as Christianity is concerned). Not that I have never leveled criticism at African politicians —viz. here and e.g. here — but I don't have much of a readership in Burundi, Uganda, or Kenya.

Or anywhere else on the continent.

Lo, mbaya sana. I'm better off sticking to cartooning politicians my readers can vote for or against.

One reference to The African Queen in that regard is probably my total allotment, anyway. At least until I manage to draw a better Katherine Hepburn.

Q Toon: Technically, Awards

Theatrical Awards Season is upon us: that joyous time of year when all of Hollywood, Broadway, Bollywood, and Baftaway gather to celebrate the wonder that is themselves, emceed by a comedian whom everyone agrees afterward was the worst possible choice.

The award shows are televised, and they always run too long in spite of the orchestra director's best efforts to drown out the thank-you list of the winner of Best Animated Documentary in a Foreign Language. So the folks whose names are scrolling up the screen as the audience exits the theater (or while the TV network crunches the sped-up scroll down to a corner of the screen to make room for Limu Emu, Doug, and that Jardiance lady) have a separate, non-televised award ceremony of their own at the local Marriott.

All the buzz in 2023 was about Barbie, and Oppenheimer, and Succession, and Maestro, and Killers of the Flower Moon.

Well, almost all the buzz.

Anyone following LGBTQ media, either professional or social, heard and saw plenty about Red, White, and Royal Blue; Fellow Travelers; and Saltburn — certain hot and heavy scenes in particular.

It used to be that movies targeting a gay and queer audience had to keep the action strictly G-rated in order to hold onto an R rating. These days, we've moved way beyond a glimpse of stocking.

It also used to be that being cast as a gay character was ruin for an actor's career, especially if he wanted to be taken seriously in future leading man roles. But now, even straight actors, eager to demonstrate range (or at least wokeness), are happy to get in on the action. We have intimacy coordinators — the professionals whose job it is to keep filming respectful and the actors comfortable — to thank for that.

So if there isn't an award for our heroes in intimacy coordination, don't you think there ought to be?

Q Toon: It's Rom-Complicated

Red, White, and Royal Blue is a movie adaptation of a book by Casey McQuiston streaming this month on amazon Prime. The romantic comedy stars Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galatzine as, respectively, the son of an American President and the second-in-line to the British throne, who initially can't stand each other. But they are thrown together by the protocol / damage control teams of the White House and Buckingham Palace after they accidentally destroy the seven-meter-tall cake at the wedding of Prince Henry's older brother.

And, of course, they end up falling in love with each other.

I haven't read the book, but I've seen the movie, and oodles of social media click-bait about it. LGBTQ media seem to be much more impressed with it than any straight media I've read. The thing LGBTQ media seem most impressed by, however, is that First Son Alex and Prince Henry are shown making out in the missionary position, which I guess straight people didn't know was a thing before. (The scene earned RW&RB an R rating, even though it's much tamer than much of what you'll see in heterosexual rom-coms. No butts or genitalia. Or grunting and groaning, for that matter.)

I'm not giving away the plot with that, by the way. A big difference between this rom-com and the standard heterosexual ones is that it's less about Will They Or Won't They than it is about Wait Till This Gets Out.

As with any rom-com, a certain suspension of belief is required. It's hard to imagine how the two could carry on their intercontinental love affair as long as they do without it showing up in the British tabloids. And a Democratic President —even one from Texas— letting her son convince her reelection team to focus on the Lone Star State to the apparent exclusion of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and several other swing states? Really?

And some things in the film are overly precious. Not only is the American President a woman, so is the British Prime Minister, who is Black and Caribbean to boot. Also, there is always someone with a Pride Flag in the paltry crowds at Alex's campaign appearances, even before he comes out as bisexual to his parents. I suppose that suggests that 10% of voters just have very good gaydar.

Naturally, fans are hoping for a sequel; the entertainment industry being what it is, if the movie is deemed successful, amazon won't leave well enough alone. In that case, a sequel about impeachment proceedings might not be any more far-fetched than anything in the original.

In any case, I would fully expect the sequel to include yet another wedding cake disaster.

Q Toon: Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge, and ... Action!

It's common for some little kids to want to grow up to be movie or TV stars. Those with an artistic bent might dream of creating the set design, mattes or special effects, or perhaps the costumes. Budding musicians may look forward to composing film scores someday.

But if you've ever sat after the movie waiting for that Motion Picture Association of America logo to float up the screen, you know that there are a whole host of people working behind the scenes in jobs you've never heard of. Do kids fantasize about becoming a gaffer or key grip someday? Or is landing the job of best boy something adults strive for in a desperate effort to cling to their childhood?

Frankly, I have no idea what qualification one needs to become an intimacy coordinator.

They're the people responsible for making actors comfortable on set when called on to film a sex scene (or, I suppose, any nude scene whether it's a sex scene or not). All those gaffers, grips, best boys and girls, set dressing drivers, assistant location managers, assistant hair department heads, craft servicemen, and traffic captains are ushered off the set (presumably by the executive set usher and assistant), and the intimacy coordinator gets to work coordinating the intimacy.

The intimacy coordinator is responsible for making the actors comfortable getting naked in front of the director, camera man, and whatever the name of the job of the person with the clapboard is, then pretending to have sex with each other. That's even if the sex in the film wouldn't be comfortable in real life: perhaps it's not supposed to be consensual, or it takes place on a burning tugboat off the coast of North Korea.

Someday, the young man in this cartoon is going to run into someone who is interested in learning more about his career aspirations. Are there college courses to prepare you to be an intimacy coordinator? Or is that something you pick up on the street? What does a producer want to see on your résumé? Is there on-the-job training? Do you get your start off-Broadway?

And what do you say after long hours of coordinating a whole bunch of intimacy and you go home and over dinner your significant other asks, "So how was your day?"

Q Toon: True Crime

Just because it's a cartoon doesn't mean it's supposed to be funny.

When I emailed the description of last week's cartoon to my editors, I commented that I didn't want to opine about a movie — in that case "Bros" — I hadn't yet seen. This week, I'm opining about a TV miniseries that I do not intend to watch.

I didn't know anyone in Milwaukee's LGBTQ community when Jeffrey Dahmer was on the loose, but that episode in history is still too raw for me. There are people who were directly affected whose story may well deserve to be told, but I have no desire to see how Hollywood treats this dark moment in Milwaukee history.

One hopes that their miniseries is done respectfully and not as a Grand Guignol spectacle. It may become a classic alongside such headline-to-screen fare as "Psycho" and "Rope," two renowned, sensational Hitchcock films that arguably fed on real people's pain.

I'm not arguing that this miniseries should never have been filmed, even if I don't intend to watch it.

What I am upset by are the memes that have begun to show up in my Facebook and Twitter feeds using screenshots from the miniseries to make frivolous comments on other stuff.

The families of Dahmer's victims can avoid watching the Netflix show, which will be done and gone in some months. It's not as if there's likely to be a sequel.

But these stupid memes stay around forever. Many of you are too young to have seen that I'm Not Saying It's Aliens guy, but he's still popping up on everyone's screens. Ditto the Real Houswives Dinner Kitty, who ought to well onto its second or third life by now.

Yes, there were Dahmer jokes before social media took off.

They weren't funny then. And adding a picture of Evan Peters doesn't make them clever now.

Q Toon: Getting to First Base

We are told that Amazon Prime's adaptation of "A League of Their Own" into a television series will not shy away from the presence of lesbians in the teams of the wartime All-American Girls Professional League (AAGPL).

There was no acknowledgment of that in the 1992 movie. In fact, director Penny Marshall specifically instructed actor Rosie O'Donnell not to portray her character, Doris Murphy, as lesbian. (O'Donnell shows up in Amazon Prime's version as the proprietor of a drinking establishment catering to customers who, in the parlance of the day, "played for the other team.")

The new version also addresses issues of race that you might have missed in the original. DeLisa Chinn-Tyler played an unnamed spectator who returns an overthrown ball to Geena Davis's character with impeccable speed and accuracy, a scene Marshall had written into her movie to point out that there were no Black players in the AAGPL. But you won't find Chinn-Tyler in imdb.com's list of the cast, either.

In a twofer role in the 2022 series, Chanté Adams plays "Max" Chapman, a Black lesbian pitcher who is barred from trying out for the league on account of the color of her skin. Her story line in Season One never merges with those of the characters who do make the Rockford Peaches' roster, but if the series ends up lasting longer than the AAGPL ever did, perhaps we'll see some historical revisionism.

Heck, CBS's "M*A*S*H" outlasted the Korean War long enough for Major "Hot Lips" Houlihan to become a women's libber and Captain "Hawkeye" Pierce to develop what we would now call "wokeness."

All of the Amazon "League of Their Own" characters are fictional, so I suppose their careers can go in any direction the writers fancy. If Max Chapman doesn't end up in the AAGPL, perhaps she will join Mamie Johnson, Connie Morgan, and Toni Stone, three real-life women who played in the Negro Leagues during WWII. As long as she doesn't marry her girlfriend at St. Mary Oratory, pilot the Enola Gay, and get elected Governor of Illinois, I'm willing to grant the writers some poetic license.

CBS, by the way, attempted a series based on "A League of Their Own" back in the 1990's, recasting all but two of the roles. It lasted for only three episodes, so it never had a chance to introduce any lesbian or Black story lines — as if that were particularly likely. 

Getting back to today's cartoon: as longtime readers have probably figured out by now, I try to include diversity, racial and otherwise, in my cartoons whenever possible. Given attitudes of the 1940's, including a non-White person in this week's scenario didn't seem realistic, even for a cartoon. And even considering that the blonde in the pink dress is clearly not a ballplayer.

In hindsight, however, perhaps a will-they-won't-they romantic relationship with one of the Rockford Peaches is how the writers will eventually integrate Max into the series.

Assuming it lasts more than three episodes this time.

To Talk of Many Things

"News Note..." by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, March 27, 1922

Today's graphical history tour pays homage to the human interest stories and other distractions from the Truly Great Issues Of The Day.

Even cartoonists who aspire to become the Nast or Daumier of their day will, from time to time, settle for the inspiration provided by such trivia as the painting of a tree in Cleveland, Ohio.

"You Dirty Boy" by Wm. C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, March, 1922

Since we have been flooded as of late by cartoons inspired by a certain movie star slapping that comedian, here's a Hollywood cartoon about Will Hays, who resigned as Warren Harding's Postmaster General (a cabinet position in those days) to become the first chairman of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. The Presbyterian deacon would institute the infamous "Hays Code" in reaction to clergy complaints about hedonism and sin in the movies, and such scandals as the rape and murder trial of comic actor Fatty Arbuckle.

"Grandpa Hears a Strange Language..." by Leo Bushnell for Central Press Assn., March, 1922

The exploding popularity of radio didn't escape the attention of cartoonists — or of the federal government, which wasn't about to let the airwaves become the den of iniquity it believed movies had become. Especially because the kids those days could and did build their own radio sets.

"Merrell Shudders Every Time He Thinks of It" by Dorman Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., by March 29, 1922

Dorman Smith's crystal ball didn't quite get the future of radio right, but he did sort of foresee the boombox and the cell phone.

"Spring Fiction" by Magnus Kettner for Western Newspaper Union, by March 31, 1922

But since the iPhone was still 82 years in the future, Americans ignoring each other at the dinner table had to make do with newspapers and magazines.

"Keen Disappointment" by Dorman Smith for NEA, by March 28, 1922

'Twas spring, and a young man's thoughts turned lightly to thoughts of Prohibition. And trying to find some new joke to make about it three years on.

"When East Meets West" by Burt Thomas in Detroit News, by March 20, 1922

Henry Payne's predecessor at the Detroit News has left us this car toon, and an object lesson in cartoon structure. Whereas the punch line in Dorman Smith's maple syrup cartoon is so large that it attracts the reader's eye well before the lead-up to it does, the text in Burt Thomas's cartoon is easily overlooked.

Meanwhile, there was still no shortage of serious issues for cartoonists to tackle. Coal miners went on strike on April 1 after negotiations with the mine owners stalled. Since most American homes were heated by coal, a lot of cartoons expressed the obvious opinion that John Q. Public would be adversely affected.

"The Initial Shock Won't Hurt Him..." by Billy Ireland in Columbus Dispatch, by March 30, 1922

Any cartoonists inclined to depict the United Mine Workers as unreasonable socialists might have had second thoughts because seventeen miners working for the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company were killed in an explosion on March 24.

"Anxiety at the Shaft" by Callaghan (?) in Oklahoma Leader, March 27, 1922*

I have not yet uncovered any information about the Callaghan who drew the above cartoon, save that he produced a number of pro-labor cartoons in this period. I found the cartoon in the Oklahoma Leader, a solidly pro-labor newspaper published in Oklahoma City from 1918 to 1928; the Leader often credited syndicated cartoons to their source, but I have so far not found it including a byline with any of the Callaghan cartoons it ran. It could be that, like John Baer drawing for the labor publication of train workers, Callaghan drew for a similar newspaper for a miners' union.

"Watchful Waiting" by Harold M. Talburt for Scripps-Howard News Service, by March 31, 1922

What interests me about this Harold Talburt cartoon is that I had been accustomed to his cartoons drawn with grease pencil and charcoal, whereas this early work is in pen and ink. 1922 is the year that Talburt began working for Scripps-Howard; he would be their chief editorial cartoonist until he retired in 1963, being awarded the editorial cartooning Pulitzer along the way in 1933.

"The Last of the Barons" by Winsor McCay for Star Company, April, 1922

Anyway, we'll come back to this strike on future Saturdays. The miners' strike was to last for several months, and the prediction by Talburt's cartoon officer Harding, "Wait'll they begin to shoot," would come true.

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* In Minnesota Daily Star, March 20, 1922. See D.D. Degg's comment below.