From the Toon Archives: Dead Rock Stars, Weird Erections and Batshit Craziness
A succession of music stars popped their clogs in 2016. Here I acknowledged the loss while taking a sideways swipe at a former US vice president (with the accent on vice).
In Canada, testimony in the Jian Ghomeshi court case got into surreal tales about his all-hearing teddy bear, “Big Ears.” I used this meme to highlight a bigger, but less sexier story involving surveillance on a national scale.
Around the time of Ghomeshi’s downfall, Toronto mayor Rob Ford was having his own spiral out of control. Even Batman wasn’t responding to his calls.
And speaking of batshit crazy…
All the media attention, good or bad, around everything Trump said or did translated into what he considered ‘high ratings.’ Though in the long term it probably didn’t do much for his brand’s desirability.
I shuddered to think that the Trump Tower in Vancouver was just the beginning of his local erections. But it was all grist for the mill.
During the 2016 US election campaign, the clown and the witch tried to tar each other with their supposed connection to Julian Assange and Vladimir Putin, respectively.
Trump Steaks were actually packaged like this - but later I felt I went overboard with my rendering of the clown’s base as savage dogs. A bit much; the converse would be rendering the witch’s base as mindless sheep.
That said, in 2008 I portrayed the supporters of the Democrat presidential candidate as religious zealots. Without too much ironic distance, either…at first, I was among them myself!
Meanwhile at home, we had a secretive, secluded leader with the batshit crazy habit of publicly and woodenly singing classic rock standards in a band. Not often - but often enough to drop jaws from St. John to Tofino. To me, it was just another gift from the Cartoon Gods.
Thank you, Cartoon Gods.
Muzzling federal fisheries scientists, taking an axe to social programs, kowtowing to Israel and selling out to America…Harper was a piece of work.
A real piece of work.
Then along came his Liberal challenger, who won the 2015 election and went on to undo some of his successor’s damage. But how was he going to juggle the contradictory elements in his platform without dirtying himself?
The results were sadly predictable, and then some. Needless to say, this toon remains true today. I never thought there could possibly be a worst Prime Minister than Stephen Harper. Yet Justin Trudeau is arguably the most divisive, discriminatory and dangerous leader Canada has ever had. (At least until World Economic Forum trustee and deputy Prime Minister/finance minister Chrystia Freeland has a crack at the position!)