This Week's Sneak Peek

Here are a couple of preliminary sketches for this week's cartoon... Par for the course.

Comic Caper: Part I

I usually like to have these Saturday posts planned out well enough in advance to have done the necessary research; but due to family matters, I've fallen a little behind schedule. Never fear, however. Serialback Saturday herewith begins the first of a series of my juvenalia.

Way back when I was drawing editorial cartoons for the UW-Parkside Ranger, I tried my hand at a continuity strip. It started with a murder almost foul.

Around the time of the bicentennial, the Racine paper ran a cartoon called Sgt. Stripes ... Forever!
Its central character looked nothing like this sergeant, but did favor ellipses.

The victim in this murder mystery was a not-particularly-well disguised character from a comic strip then running in the Racine newspaper, Brutus P. Thornapple. Brutus is the central character in The Born Loser, created by Art Sansom, and continued today by his son Chip. By the second episode, I began widening the story's reference material.

"The Funny Paper Caper" appeared every week in the UW-Parkside Ranger, a single strip until midway through the academic year I realized that I had paced the thing too slowly. Having such short episodes helped to get people to read the thing at first, and with any luck, get hooked on the story. Longer form cartoons would have run the risk of discouraging students with busy schedules from taking the time to engage from the beginning.

If I were drawing this same strip today, I'd probably try to mimic the comic noir style of the black-and-white Dick Tracy of the 1970's and '80's. The funnies of the time didn't use a lot of cross-hatching, save for those in which the syndicate would apply dot or hatching screens to areas indicated by the cartoonist. The serial strips, in the interest of appearing more realistic, relied less on that flat technique, although such as Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer were able to use mechanical shading while still maintaining the illusion of three dimensions. Color, of course, was for Sundays only.

Originally, Wilberforce Thornapple had a Little Lord Fauntleroy hairdo.

Well, there you have the episodes for the entire month of September. Tune in to some future installment as the plot, and the plagiarism, thickens.

Cost Comparison

Mike Peterson posted this graph on his blog today. I can't tell where he originally found it, although the graphic includes his source's source material. (They don't work as links, however.)

Military Transgender Healthcare Costs, with Perspective

I've added a few graphics to the graphic just to save some readers from eye strain.

Q Toon: The Eyes of Texas

Here I thought over the weekend, as I settled at my drawing board to work on this week's Q Syndicate cartoon, that I'd be able to get ahead of the news cycle by drawing about Texas's "Bathroom Bill," which was passed by the state Senate late Tuesday night, 21 to 20.

Well, thanks to the Twit in the White House, there's a much bigger LGBT issue dominating the news cycle.

In a series of three tweets, written in more formal language than we are accustomed to seeing from him, mercurial American President Donald "Bone Spur" Trump abruptly halted the Pentagon's progress toward welcoming transgender service men and women in the U.S. military.

“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow ... Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming ... victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you”

As others have pointed out, the "tremendous medical costs" of transgender service members are dwarfed by the medical cost in our military budget of boner pills. Since the estimates of the numbers of transgender service members vary widely, their "medical costs" to the military range widely as well -- but it's still only .001% of the Pentagon's overall budget.

By analyzing private health insurance data on gender transition-related expenditures, (such as hormone therapy or surgical treatment, for instance), researchers found that Military Health System costs could increase by $2.4 million and $8.4 million per year if it were extended to cover the estimated 1,320 to 6,630 transgender people in the military. This amount pales in comparison to the Department of Defense's $49.3 billion health care expenditures in 2014, for example, and would represent between 0.005% to 0.017% of the department's overall health care costs, according to the study.
Overall, the study estimated that only 29–129 service members would seek gender transition–related care per year, and 30 to 140 personnel would seek hormone therapy. Another 25 to 130 personnel would seek surgical treatment.

Perhaps Mr. Trump – or Mike Pence, or one of those hand-laying evangelicals from last week, or whoever had spoken to Donald Duce last – has his panties in a wad that once the U.S. military opens itself to transgender recruits, gender reassignment surgery will suddenly rocket in popularity from sea to shining sea.

Ahem. This blog post was supposed to be about the Texas Bathroom Bill, and I've practically ignored the topic altogether.

Another tweet, this one from comedian Mark Agee, brings the two topics back together:

"Sorry I was led to believe that trans people were so skilled in combat that I should fear being alone in a bathroom with them."

As the newsmedia cover Trump's ban, members of the Texas legislature might want to keep in mind that those manly guys being interviewed as representatives of transgender soldiers and veterans are the very men that Senate Bill 3 requires to use the ladies' room. Your womenfolk are not going to appreciate that.

The line for the ladies' room is long enough.

Liar Governs By Tweets

The latest from mercurial American President Donald "Major Bonespur" Trump.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Tune in later this week for this week's cartoon about a talking building.

And a rude one at that.

The Reign in Spain

Taking a break from today's dismal headlines, Sovereignback Saturday returns yet again to a more innocent time: namely, World War I. In the summer of 1917, we find the crowned heads of Europe shaking in their boots.

"Help!" by Harry Murphy in Chicago Examiner, September 13, 1917

1917 is remembered as the year Russia threw off the yoke of Romanov rule, only to have its attempts at establishing a liberal democracy thwarted.

Political upheaval was not limited to Russia, however. The Greek King, Constantine I, had tried to maintain his nation's neutrality while World War I raged about the country on all sides. Constantine denied the Allied and Central powers permission to use Greece as a landing base, and stymied moves by his Prime Minister Venizelos to bring Greece into the war on the side of the Allies.

Allied leaders suspected Constantine of harboring sympathies for Germany. After all, his wife was Kaiser Wilhelm's sister — but then all the crowned heads of Europe were related in one way or another.

"Family Troubles" by Billy Ireland in Columbus Dispatch, 1917

On June 10, 1917, backed by the threat of an Allied landing in Piraeus, Venizelos forced King Constantine to go into exile. But since the European Entente powers weren't interested in "making the world safe for democracy," they passed up the opportunity to return democracy to its cradle; Allied Commissioner Charles Jonnart opened casting calls for another member of the royal family to take the throne. Constantine's eldest son, Crown Prince George, was too pro-German for the Allies' liking; so after Constantine's brother (also named George) refused to take the throne out of loyalty to his brother, Constantine's second son, Prince Alexander, was chosen to become the new monarch.

"I Remember Those Boys..." by Rollin Kirby in New York World, 1917

After King Alexander died from an infected monkey bite (would I make something like that up?), Greek voters approved a plebiscite to recall Constantine — who had never actually abdicated anyway —to the throne in 1920.

At the other end of the Mediterranean, there were rumblings beneath the throne of Spain's King Alfonso XIII. Spain, too, maintained neutrality in the war, but Alfonso's sympathies leaned more toward the Allies than Constantine's had. Alfonso's queen, moreover, was British, a cousin of George V.

"Alphonse and Gaston" by Cy Hungerford in Pittsburgh Sun, 1917

Outside observers perceived democratic inclinations in the Bourbon monarch. The Washington Star editorialized that

"...liberalization of the government has been along definite and practical lines for years, and the republican party has grown until, since the Spanish-American War, it has been a powerful factor in Spanish politics. ...
"Complaints against the courts are bitter, especially in the matter of appointment of officers of the army. Favoritism is the rule. So insistent are the demands for reform that the government is at a crisis of decision."

"Another One of the Boys on the Run" by Billy Ireland in Columbus Dispatch, 1917

As it turned out, Alfonso remained King until 1930, his popularity eventually worn away by a six-year war to maintain Spain's territories in northern Africa, his support for the leaders of a military coup in 1923, and the worldwide Great Depression as the 1920s roared to a close.

Returning to the summer of 1917, Belgium's King Albert was in exile from his German-occupied country, as were Serbia's Peter, Montenegro's Nicholas, and Romania's Ferdinand. In Allied propaganda, the German Kaiser was due to be toppled from his throne any day now.

"Come, Junkers" by Jan Sluijters in De Nieues Amsterdamer, 1917

Cartoonists who did not accept the role of cheerleaders for their government saw no reason to presume that the havoc of war would limit itself to Europe's autocracies. Socialist Kenneth Chamberlain, drawing for The Masses, predicted the war dragging on for another three years, but the principal powers (including the U.S. — foreground) having spent themselves utterly.

"1920 — Still Fighting for Civilization" by K.R. Chamberlain in The Masses,  August, 1917