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Here from my dusty archives are a few political cartoons I have drawn or helped create, dating back to my Fort Wayne
Free Press days in the late sixties/early seventies. I should have gone to art school. One friend commented once that I
can draw "as good as any 3rd. grader." I can live with that.
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| Richard Nixon as a Jack-in-the-box |
I drew this cartoon of President Richard M. Nixon as a two-faced Jack-in-the-box for The Fort Wayne
Free Press (Volume I, Issue 11, November 2-18, 1970). Nixon had visited Fort Wayne on October 20, 1970 for a Republican
Party rally of 15,000 supporters at the indoor Memorial Coliseum to give the perception to Hoosiers and to the rest of the
country that the President of the United States had unopposed support for his administration and for his aggressive policies
in Vietnam. We ran a feature story about that rally along with a copy of an official police memo leaked to us that confirmed
that any person attempting to enter the Coliseum with signs unfavorable to Nixon on the night of the rally would be told that
he or she possessed a "counterfeit" ticket and would be prevented from entering the rally. Outside the rally, local police
arrested six people for disturbing the police. One of them was the co-founder of our newspaper, George Relue, whom police
pulled over a barricade and arrested while he was trying to hawk Free Presses to people arriving for the rally.
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| Alternatives for Peace |
The "Council Comics" cartoon strip (right), also drawn for The Fort Wayne Free Press (Volume II, Issue 14, July 29-August
11, 1971) that same summer under the pen name General Bull, was inspired by the "double speak" coming out of the Fort Wayne
City Council regarding their rationale for passing a curfew ordinance without public input. The curfew ordinance gave the
City more power to establish martial law in its inner city neighborhoods in the event of potential ghetto rioting. However,
a year earlier, a heavy police response to reported sniper fire in the inner city that resulted with subsequent rioting turned
out to be an over reaction by law enforcement to sounds not of gunfire but of railroad cars being coupled in an inner city
railroad yard, according to a subsequent investigation by Free Press reporters. City police never could produce the squad
car that they earlier had reported had been fired upon by unknown snipers.
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Using the pen name of "General Bull," I drew this cartoon (left) for The Fort Wayne Free Press (Volume II,
Issue 12, July 1-15, 1971) exploring certain peace and war themes related to the war in Vietnam and domestic unrest. "Up
Against the World" was the name of a regular newspaper column that I wrote, under this same pen name, for our bi-weekly paper.
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| Council Comics |
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| Meet my Chick |
I created this cartoon (right) with the illustration help of artist Whitney Abbott that was published in the Carpinteria
Coastal View News, circa 1996, regarding the aggressive public relations efforts at that time by local developers and
several City Council members to persuade the community that houses and condominiums were the "Best Use" for the Carpinteria
Bluffs. One of the networks had recently broadcast a new made-for-TV version of Gulliver's Travels, and this was the inspiration
for the play on words used for the title of our cartoon.
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| Political campaign cartoon from 1990 |
Arturo Tello, Roxie Lapidus and I also created this follow-up cartoon strip (right) for the 1994 City Council re-election
campaign of Michael Ledbetter, Donna Jordan and Brad Stein. Again, artist John Iwerks drew the strip, and we distributed
the final cartoon as part of our final campaign walk out piece. This reprint of John's original drawing shows some of the
ink bleed-through still visible beneath his last minute touches.
...if you want to browse the work of a real cartoonist -- one who actually knows how to draw! John has published
a number of wonderfully zany comics including a couple of acclaimed "How-to" books on silk screening. Check it out.
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Here is a cartoon (left) I drew for The Fort Wayne Free Press (Volume IV, Issue 2, January 11-25, 1973, poking
a bit of fun at the male-dominated ethos of our newspaper at the time of rising feminism.
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| Gullible's Travels |
I helped conceive and write this cartoon strip (left) with Arturo Tello and Roxie Lapidus for the 1990 Carpinteria City
Council election campaign of Michael Ledbetter, Donna Jordan and Brad Stein. Artist John Iwerks drew the strip, and we distributed
the final cartoon as part of our final campaign walk out piece as a positive antidote to whatever negative hit piece the opposition
candidates might put out (as they, indeed, did).
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| Political campaign cartoon from 1994 |
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