“WE GOT US A LIVE CARTOONIST”
So read the proud headline on the Arizona Daily Star opinion page Jan. 5, 1986. Above the column introducing me to the readers like a prized marlin was my first cartoon, predicting that this new phenomena — global terrorism — would dominate the news.
Thirty-plus years, 47 paper cuts and 9,000 cartoons later I am the luckiest “live cartoonist” I know, syndicated globally, and still afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted in a field vanishing faster than a popsicle on a Tucson sidewalk in June.
There were more than 200 political cartoonists in the country back when I was drawing Ike on my nursery wall with a crayon. Today, the 40 of us could hold our annual convention in a Teardrop camper. Make that 39. Oops. 38.
As long as I can remember I've wanted to be a political cartoonist. Or a desert garden landscaper. Or a preacher. Or an obstetrician, according to an essay I wrote when I was at Myers Elementary School, a fine public school where my delightful 5th-grade teacher, Mr. Archie Burke, taught me how to draw a witty caricature of Lyndon Baines Johnson out of his initials. This feat won the heart of the girl who sat next to me drawing unicorns, flowers and butterflies. I was hooked on drawing presidents. And Boris and Natasha.
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My next crush was on Ms. Teri Bagwell, my 7th grade history teacher. Catching me sketching when I should have been paying attention -- for the millionth time -- she asked me if there was something amusing I’d care to share with the rest of the group. I froze, imagining my furious father, the Master Sergeant, at home.
I gulped, panicked, foresaw a life in prison, and desperately tried to hide the evidence.
Confiscating that masterpiece, the loveliest educator in all of Naylor Middle School suggested I might redirect my disruptive knack for cartooning in a more positive direction. “Give the yearbook staff a try. After school. They could use a cartoonist.” It was that afternoon, in that place, where I found my kith, my kin and my avocation: nerds and newsrooms.
My first editorial cartoons were published in the “Rincon Echo” at Rincon High School.
At the same time my anti-war cartoons were welcomed in a local underground paper, “The Frumious Bandersnatch.” The founder, the late Hugh Holub, told me the FBI kept files on us.
As the Sixties were rioting to a close, Mr. Freeman Hover at Rincon taught us, issue after issue, to appreciate why journalism and the truth were so important to the health of our democracy.
I didn’t get it then. I get it now.
When I was a freshman at the University of Arizona, drifting between media majors and heading into ROTC, I was surprised to get an unsolicited invitation from the Arizona Daily Wildcat to be their staff cartoonist. My mother — how embarrassing! — had secretly submitted a portfolio of my work.
Thanks, Mom.
The idea carnival comes to town
I wake up every day to NPR. I get up, brush my teeth and channel surf MSNBC, FOX and CNN until my fake sausage is microwaved. I join my wife at the table so I can steal sips from her coffee and study the Arizona Daily Star like a Talmudic scholar.
A brisk walk around my neighborhood -- my answer to the daily commute ritual -- stirs the blood and the cauldron twixt my ears that’s bubbling with cartoon ideas.
By the time I’m back everyone’s off to school or work. I head down the hall to my silent studio where I binge on internet news, the latest tweets and Facebook postings.
And then I stare at the blank paper on my drawing board.
On most days cartoon ideas roll out of my head like chocolates on a conveyor belt in a Lucille Ball comedy sketch. Sometimes riding my bike, or driving my car invites the cartoon idea carnival to town.
I like to begin with at least 5 or 6 good concepts percolating, which I can take to the drawing board, doodle into cartoon life, refine or reject. I’ve never missed a deadline. For every cartoon that makes it to print there are reams of duds in the recycling basket.
By mid-morning I will have found an idea I want to draw. I’ve decided on the characters, the plot, the dialogue and the setting. I like to start with the eyes because I can reveal so much with the eyes.
I use Eberhart-Faber flexible nib pens, a responsive pen that allows me to draw with flourish, creating the illusion the drawing was inked into existence in seconds by an old Warner Brothers pro.
When I first started drawing I drew in a tedious photorealistic style that relied on pointillist dots and took hours. Today I love drawing in a graphic and bold Hanna- Barbera retro style. It’s fun to cloak unpalatable sedition in sugary sweet modernist imagery right out of the all-American Jetsons and Flintstones visual vocabulary.
On a good day I’m the fastest draw west of the San Pedro. On other days I’m slower than a desert tortoise, taking six to eight hours to produce a drawing that has just the right color, punch, composition and appearance of spontaneity.
Without such correspondence
A cartoonist may suffer despondence
At my first cartoonist’s conference I whined to the old cartoonist at the bar about getting hate mail. “Some readers actually hate my cartoons.”
The old grizzled ink slingers looked at me like I was a complete failure. One of the older ink stained doodlers muttered, ”That’s your job. To provoke a reaction.”
So, yes, I get hate mail. And, yes, I love it.
The question I am asked most often is “Why can’t you be fair?” which roughly translates into “Why can’t you stop picking on my political heroes for once and instead attack your own!” Good luck with that idea. Send the same pleas to Rush Limbaugh or Jon Stewart and imagine their response.
When I got my first of many hand-scrawled death threats I was astonished that mere lines on paper could provoke violent reactions.
I’ve never regretted a cartoon and will never defend or explain one. If a cartoon does not speak for itself it is a failed cartoon.
It’s true, keen observer. I am unfair. I will not argue points of view with which I disagree. I draw only what I believe. I feel no need to be charitable toward opinions and actions I find repugnant.
I shall be a progressive voice harping on reforming immigration, lifting up public education and spotlighting social injustice until they pry my pen from my dead, cold ink-stained fingers.
Holy jalapenos
You can see my personality in my Arroyo Cafe characters, and in my desert rats, the nerdy quail and the goofy javelina. To varying degrees they are all self-portraits. What we all share is a deep love for the Old Pueblo and this extraordinary desert.
When I graduated from the University of Arizona in 1977, Steve Auslander, then the Editorial Page editor of the Arizona Daily Star, told me there was no budget for a cartoonist.
I would be in exile for a decade, sending my political cartoons and letters of inquiry off to oblivion by night, and, by day, working at newspapers as a mapmaker, then a photo re-toucher, then an illustrator, typographer and graphic designer.
After bouncing around the country, the Arizona Daily Star caved to my relentless campaign, which had been propelled by unmitigated homesickness.
I finally returned to the place I love.
Tucson is salsa. The rest of the world is mayonnaise.
