2013 in review

At the close of every year for the last four decades, I've taken a picture of newspaper headlines from the year gone by. These pictures originally served as a sort of bookmark in my photo albums, back when using rolls of film limited the number of pictures I'd take, and I'd put every photo into an album.

I don't do that with my thousands of digital photos, but I've kept up the habit of taking these headline photos. Here's to 2013:

You can click on the photo to embiggenify it; even then, that New York Times headline about the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1964 is pretty tiny.

In closing, if your 2013 has been in any way less than you had hoped, I wish you a happier and brighter new year.

This Week's Sneak Peek

I was actually struggling to come up with an angle to approach the Utah marriage equality story until I saw the National Organization for Marriage's Brian Brown on Up yesterday morning.

I'll be back when my newspapers have had a chance to get this cartoon out in print.

Q Toon: Regnum Anatium

One could argue that highlighting Duck Dynast Phil Robertson's antigay comments in GQ Magazine only serves the purposes of Sarah Palin, talk radio, and all the Foxsters out there complaining that A&E is trampling his right of free speech. Not that they ever came to the defense of free speech rights for, say, Martin Bashir, Alec Baldwin, or Keith Olberman.

His opinions regarding African-Americans are the more ridiculous and worthy of censure. But I draw for the LGBT media through Q Syndicate, so I'm afraid I must leave to others his claim that Blacks were happier before civil rights and antipoverty programs ("No one was singing the blues"). I would, however, like to assuage Mr. Robertson's fears that anatomy poses an insurmountable difficulty to gays' and lesbians' ability to have and to enjoy sex. We really are not bothered by it anywhere near as much as he is.

Meanwhile, this Greek chorus of conservative American Catholics makes its second appearance in my cartoons this week. (Here's their first appearance, in September.)

This Week's Sneak Peek

Since this week's cartoon is meant for publication after Christmas, I assure you that this is not Santa Claus.

Some Children See Him (1992)

This is a front-page cartoon I drew for the UWM Post back in 1992. Sadly, this oversized sheet (slightly larger than the actual front page of the newspaper) is one of the pieces which suffered water damage when our basement flooded this spring. But I present it as another example of Messing With Santa:

Merry Christmas -- Season's Greetings -- Are You Lonesome Tonight?

Q Toon: Some Children See Him

Hey, we want in on the fun, too.

This isn't the first time I've drawn a cartoon outing Santa Claus, which shouldn't surprise anyone who realizes that I've been drawing for an LGBT media syndicate for 16 years. The owner of the syndicate back in the '90's (a traditionalist Jew, as it happens) thought that one such cartoon would offend Christian readers. I guess he figured that Santa Claus was a religious figure to some people.

Yes, I know he's sort of based on St. Nicholas, the Anatolian Christian from the third and fourth Century. But as far as I know, no Christian sect believes that Hagios Nikólaos lives at the North Pole with his cadre of elves and flying reindeer, temping at Macy's and sliding down chimneys in the middle of the night.

Except, perhaps, the Palins.

This Week's Sneak Peek

This week's cartoon is for the polar bears.