Roughs, Volume 194

Most of these in this batch of roughs were drawn last Friday, August 11.

This rough, and the next one, were drawn in the middle of last week after that Alabama Riverboat brawl broke out. At first, I wasn’t just trying to draw something on racism in general, and instead, focus on Alabama racism. However, I felt this got a bit complicated with all the labels. But other than the riverfront brawl, Alabama has recently refused to create a second congressional district with a black majority despite being ordered to do so by the Supreme Court (shit. Alabama’s more racist than our current Supreme Court?), and a small town in the state is refusing to recognize a black guy won its race for mayor.

On another note, it can be kinda hard to draw something as simple as a folded chair. I saw a few cartoons where it was obvious that the cartoonist had traced a photo of a chair.

I thought this was OK and it probably would have been popular. I eventually went back and drew my first idea on the subject, though I have a few reservations about championing the chair thing.

Using a chair as a weapon as if you’re on Vince McMahon’s payroll is one thing when you’re outnumbered. My problem with the way it was used in this brawl is in one instant when a man used it to hit a woman on the head while she was sitting down, and unarmed. Yes, white people started the fight and outnumbered one black guy, but I’m not sure the woman was ever actually fighting, but she definitely wasn’t when the chair shot occurred. She could be the most vile racist lady in Alabama, but I don’t think the chair shot flat on top of her head was right. I don’t think the chair should be a symbol of black power, or anyone’s power if it’s going to be used to bonk unarmed defenseless women on their heads.

With all that said, using the chair metaphor was still fun to use in a cartoon.

I thought of more than one way to draw this one but I couldn’t sink the shot and I let it go.

After having this sit on my shelf for a week, I finally drew it today. Check it out. I thought this was really weird and absurd, which is right up my alley. Funny thing though, I wrote the idea before news broke that Judge Chutkan and grand jurors in Atlanta were threatened by MAGAts.

This was the choice for the CNN Opinion newsletter. My editor trusted me on this one and that readers would understand all three of the Hawaiian words. This was NOT my favorite of the Maui cartoons I drew but I still liked it very much.

I really liked the imagery of this but it was definitely not in the spirit I was searching for. It was while drawing this that I got the Eddie idea which was an “oh snap!” moment for me (I got “oh snap” after one of my nieces used it in a Facebook message with me).

This was my favorite of the cartoons on Maui and it’s one that’s not just personal to me but also to many people from Hawaii and others who’ve experienced the islands. I actually didn’t know if I wanted CNN to select it because if they had, then only they would have had it which is still a huge audience. But I also wanted all of my clients to have a shot at using it too. I wasn’t surprised too much when they didn’t pick it because most readers wouldn’t be familiar with it. I wasn’t surprised that The Week chose not to run it. I offered it to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser (where I worked for its former incarnation, the Star-Bulletin, in 1997/98, and was a little surprised they didn’t run it. I even offered it for free. I think that’s a huge failure on their part.

This cartoon became more special over the next few days as I received so many messages from people who were touched by it. I even received one message from a person claiming he was a friend of Eddie’s. How cool is that?

It’s like I said before, one of my best cartoons is one that most readers will not understand.

Which of these are your faves?

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