This one from 2016 had a good reader response. It’s upbeat on the surface, though I’m mocking the local media’s description of hipster van-living as a “lifestyle option” rather than an income-based necessity. Unfortunately, the toon is still relevant. I recently saw quite a number of battered campers parked on the perimeter of Vancouver’s Jericho Park.
Nothing upbeat about this one. After the events in Ferguson and elsewhere, I felt compelled to do a toon about the black experience in America and the insanity of unrestricted gun ownership.
Premier Gordon Campbell, along with the local investor class that he fronted for, laboured mightily for the IOC to choose Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games (The Olympics is a moveable feast that vectors wealth upward through debt-leveraged infrastructure projects). So in this cartoon for Macleans magazine I rendered him as the Gollum figure from Lord of the Rings - “Gord of the Rings” - with crumbling/sold-off public assets in the background. I can’t remember why, but I was requested to put a picture frame around the image. Perhaps because it was sooo beautiful.
Of course, once you’ve got a hold of a meme as an artist you MILK IT TO DEATH. Macleans was perfectly happy to have me revisit this one.
I had great fun with this 2011 toon for Common Ground. I capitalized on a widely circulated pic of prime minister/android Stephen Harper doing the politician-holding-the-baby shtick.
From 2005. After the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten invited Danish cartoonists and illustrators to draw Muhammad “as they see him,” a global shitstorm resulted with their publication of a dozen drawings under the headline “The Face of Muhammad.” It’s blasphemous in Islam to picture Allah or his spokesunit from the Koran in any fashion at all, which the editors knew, of course. One rendering in particular, of Muhammad with a bomb for a turban, really didn’t go over well among Muslims, surprisingly enough. Though this was hardly just a tempest in an inkpot - deaths and injuries resulted - I inflated the fallout into a full-on apocalyptic event (exaggeration is what we cartoonists do). Most importantly, riffing on the Book of Revelations gave me a rare chance to draw some horsies. I think they turned out well, though the donkey looks a bit dubious.
Speaking of Islam, here’s one of those little historical ironies people forget. Only a few years ago the Canadian government had issues with women masking up. You might say they made an exception for Green party leader Elizabeth May, who had to fight to get included in the televised Leader’s Debate.
And it wasn’t just burkas and niqabs causing concern. Thanks to the Harper government, a bill outlawing masks at protests became Canadian law in 2013. So you can no longer wear a mask to a protest, but if you do protest you are expected to wear a face mask. C’mon, it’s not so difficult, whaddya need, a pandemic decoder ring?
Finally, from 2005, when it was estimated the avian flu epidemic could kill between 5 and 200 million people, and vaccines might run short. Far be in from me to draw any comparisons between then and now.
I love the Stephen Harper one. What is he doing now, I wonder? I guess what most creaky old robots pushing dinosaur fuel do, getting oiled!
These are amazing. All of them are great! Jess