Editorials: Dick

The gift that keeps on giving (almost as inexhaustible a wellspring of material as Palin) (almost): Cheney keeps shambling out of the mess he was instrumental in creating, as broken-record harbinger of doom, a political Prince of Darkness. His latest tour of media appearances brought to mind the last VP with similar popularity, or "favorability ratings," Dan Quayle. Equating the two makes sense to me, and I trashed all the captions that reinforced the association, keeping it simple at the risk of obtuseness. Visually linking them in the same context hopefully links the equal regards their respective input on anything: please STFU? In fact, I seem to recall Quayle at least having the good graces to be humble enough (shame?) to fade away, as opposed to whoring any opportunity on the national stage.
On the other hand, I love having him still around to draw; the caricature I carry inside will never die either. And regardless of how lousy a job one does trying to get Quayle, it doesn't matter long as those memorable phrases are included, and it's not too subtle a shift to what the Republican old guard is up to with their incessant drumbeat message in the background. Similar to the related semantic emphasis on referring to Obama as "Hussein," another favorite dog-whistle tactic.


Normally I don't spend all that much time on national topics - Alaska's got everything a regional political cartoonist could ever possibly need, and then some. But still, everyone needs to take a little break sometimes and do some zombies. Can't go wrong. Except here. Damn. Worth a laugh if only for the funniest typo ever: one would expect the common keyboard error "teh" to pop up in text, not in handwritten words (a definite sign I'm spending too much time on-line). Basically bad composition doomed this one from the start (and an obscure quote), but I still kicked it around for a while before eventually trashing it. That's advice I frequently suggest to students; never underestimate the value of giving up, and moving on. Perseverance mostly winds up creating a much bigger mess than if I'da just bailed out at the beginning. Win some lose some. Even among the experienced, artists routinely "waste" considerable amounts of time & energy on pieces that never go anywhere or are ever seen, just goes with the territory and eventually makes for better product further down the line, frustrating as it may be. Habitual success usually means I've actually fallen into a routine rut of predictable and repetitive work.
Besides, what with Terminator Salvation out now, they/he probably should be robots anyways.
Still salvaged one little element from the original TIF scan, which ought to make an OK spot illustration somewhere...