Caricature sketches from my scratch book last night ..read more

It's that time of the month again! I've rummaged through my old cartoons from 40, 30, 20, and 10 years ago for today's Graphical History Tour. UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., April 26, 1984 This 1984 cartoon starring Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler, was probably the first one I drew of the AIDS crisis (not this one). We still didn't know what was causing the terrible new disease that was apparently targeting otherwise healthy young gay men, Haitians, and patients who had received blood transfusions. Reagan had made no public comment about ..read more

We don't have Starz TV in our home, so I haven't seen their current in-and-out-of-costume drama, "Mary and George," a series about Mary Villiers' scheming to secure her son George as King James I's royal boy toy. For the benefit of American readers whose knowledge of British history is gleaned exclusively from television, I have to explain that the Queen Anne in my cartoon is not the one portrayed by Olivia Colman in "The Favourite," but James's wife, Anne of Denmark. She was still very much alive when James began his dalliance with the young George Villiers; in fact, it is thought tha ..read more

Some 15 of you got a sneak peek at Saturday's Graphical History Tour when I inadvertently published it Thursday night while shutting my computer down.  It was a mistake I realized only as I was leaving the room. I couldn't turn right around and unpublish the unfinished post, because I had given the computer permission to install one of those Microsoft updates as it shut down; and I discovered that I couldn't unpublish the post on my phone. It was late, and I was tired, so I decided to take care of things in the morning. By then, the post had garnered 15 views, which is a bit more than mo ..read more

Every editorial cartoonist was expected to crank out cartoons about the solar eclipse and the passing of Orenthal James Simpson this week, most of which were slight variations on the same couple of themes. If you saw one, you'd seen the rest. Other "Yahtzees," as we call them, often happen after truly major news stories that cannot be ignored. And then there's... "The Great National Question" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 9, 1924 For some reason, 100 Aprils ago, editorial cartoonists across the country took to their drawing boards to address the burning issue o ..read more

I told my editors I was looking for a cartoon topic this week that wouldn't be about the GOP. But if you've been paying any attention to the news over the past couple of years, you know which party has decided that DEI — i.e., Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — is academia's latest threat to their homogenous worldview. Inspired by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas's Greg Abbott, it's Republicans who can't abide diversity, detest equity, and loathe inclusion. Utah Governor Spencer Cox even called them "bordering on evil." Last year, Republicans in Madison in my home state held u ..read more

Actually, in lieu of a sneak peek at this week's cartoon, here's my obligatory Total Eclipse cartoon for sharp-eyed readers ..read more

Today's Graphical History Tour takes us to April of 1924 to visit some of history's notorious villains. "Down and Out Club" by T.E. Powers for Star Company ca. April 4, 1924 The Teapot Dome scandal continued to take its toll on holdovers from the Harding administration with the resignation of Attorney General Harry Daugherty. T.E. Powers depicts him walking past the "Little Green House on K Street" where many of the Teapot Dome deals were reportedly made; then meeting disgraced Interior Secretary Albert Fall, Gaston Means, and Dr. Frederick Cook.  Finally, Daugherty escapes ..read more

Today's Graphical History Tour returns to some of my own cartoons celebrating their decennaries this month, but I'm going to shake things up a bit this time and not take them in chronological order. I'll start with this cartoon drawn for one of the more liberal of the student newspapers at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.* in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., March 3, 1994 UWM has long had two vocal student groups advocating against each other for Palestine and Israel. The pro-Palestine group posted an inflamatory poster in the student union atrium in response to the Cave of the ..read more

Retired Senator and Al Gore's running mate Joe Lieberman (D/I-CT) has died. Lieberman ran lukewarm and cold with mainstream Democrats and others on the liberal side of things, so here's the one cartoon I drew of him that best exemplifies that relationship: for Q Syndicate, December, 2009 ..read more