I come to the paper with a different voice, as all writers have their own voice and their own vocabulary. I come from a background of poetry writing. I am riding into journalism saddle-free and barefoot from the wild. I come from the free verse side of poetry, with no rules, no form, no rhyme — only metaphor, only images.
With a new voice for readers I also bring a few skills and interests that are unique to me. I will as often as I can create cartoons, political and non-political for the paper. I may even create a regular, recurring character-based cartoon looking at the ironies of life in general.
My intent with my cartoons and any other editorial content like movie reviews is to generate original content for you, our readers — to create variety and give you something extra, something you are not going to read elsewhere.
As for my political cartoons, I will poke fun at both sides in comics because both sides do things that make good comedy, and some of the best material comes directly from the mouths of politicians. Actual quotes will be a theme in my political comics. This week’s cartoon features an actual quote from Nancy Pelosi in response to allegations that she is polluting the Democrat brand and that she needs to step down. Her verbatim response was, “I’m worth the trouble.” Her message to critics in her party was the equivalent of Marie Antoinette’s, “Eat cake.”
Cartoons allow us to visualize the ironies of words and use the symbolism of society’s many icons to create metaphors (Lady Liberty, Lady Justice, Uncle Sam, etc), and cartoons allow us to laugh. I do not want readers to feel like I am unfair to one side or the other. I promise to be equally savage to both sides. Readers need to be able to laugh at their own tribe.
I will use a minimalist, expressive style of illustration for my comics with super-deformed figures, exaggerated bodies, and emotive faces. This allows me to communicate the identity of a character and their mannerisms more easily in a single frame, and it makes the making of the comics practical for me.
A simpler style makes for cartoons that are easier to revise and enlarge on a fresh page without losing the energy of the original sketch. I will not rule out more complex or multi-panel cartoons in the future, but for now I will keep it simple and in black and white.
My quote bubbles will be written on the page by hand. I prefer the imperfection of free-hand lettering in cartoons over using computerized text. Hand-written letters have small variations and carry over the same line quality of the illustration into the words.
As one artist in Hattiesburg told me of comics, people are forgiving of art. What is important is that the writing is on-point.
