Rosalynn

I recently completed a drive for new subscribers (newspapers and news sites) for my syndication business. Around midnight, one of them on the West Coast emailed asking if I was planning on doing a tribute or memorial cartoon for former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

In case you haven’t read the news, she died yesterday. You’ll be surprised how many readers don’t believe I ever read the news as I get about 15 links messaged to me daily. On Saturday, a reader sent me a link about Trump and his vermin comment, asking, “Have you heard of this yet?” It was at least three days after I drew a cartoon on it. Anyway…

My new subscribers have to get to know me. The old ones already know I’m weird. They learn about the Easter eggs and hidden objects, the crowd scenes, the Trump caricature (why does his mouth look like a cat’s butt?), and of course, Pizza Rat (that starts with, “Why is there a rat in this cartoon?” and goes to, “Why isn’t Pizza Rat in today’s cartoon?”). And they also have to learn that I’m not like other political cartoonists. They learn that my stuff can get really weird and off the wall. They also have to learn that I’m really not that nice.

They learn that I don’t do a lot of obit cartoons, where the cartoon honors and salutes the deceased. They learn that I don’t like Pearly Gates cartoons. I do them here and there, but I’m not really a fan of them. I like to use a death to make a point. Sometimes, I use them for levity which can be dangerous because there are always people without a sense of humor to yell at me. The biggest danger of obit cartoons is that so many people draw the same bad ideas.

Yesterday, famous and renowned illustrator and personal friend of mine Steve Brodner posted on Facebook, “To cartoonists planning a Rosalynn obit toon, be warned: the competition for the worst is already heating up. You will have to really work on this.” I either won big time or lost by a wide margin with this cartoon. Maybe Steve will let me know.

Back to the editor who asked for a tribute cartoon, I was like, “Yeah, but you’re probably not gonna like it.” I had already decided not to do one and just wait for Jimmy, who’s probably not far behind Rosalynn (I’m not trying to be morbid. He’s 99). But after I got his note, I started to reconsider.

I actually woke up a couple times thinking about what to draw on Rosalynn. After waking up, I decided to let it go. Let’s not take this request. There are plenty of other cartoonists doing sappy happy heaven cartoons on this today. And then this idea hit and I decided to do it. Then I got another idea, which was on Elon Musk and his antisemitism, and I decided to do that instead.

So I drew the Elon cartoon and sent it to my two lovely proofreaders before coloring. Proofer Laura started a conversation about that cartoon and at some point, I showed the rough for this cartoon. I was totally expecting Laura to say, “Egad! You made the right call. Put this in a garbage disposer and never show anyone and stop talking to me.” But no. She replied with an “OMG.” And, “That’s actually really good.”

So I was in a quandary. I think I’m using that word correctly. I need to draw a cartoon with a Thanksgiving theme for my clients tomorrow. But I knew I should do this Rosalynn cartoon first. So where does that put Elon and his antisemitism? I decided I’ll publish that one tonight and do the turkey cartoon tomorrow morning. I’ll just date the Elon cartoon before the turkey cartoon. Yeah, that’ll work.

I guess the moral of this story is, yeah…I’m not good with sweet and sappy obit cartoons and I also ramble a lot.

Update: I just got a reply from the editor who made the request. He likes it!

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