Caricature Books

This is an amusing look at writers with blocks, finicky readers, moody editors, and a wry sideways glance at promotional stunts and desktop publishing. While it's not sidesplitting funny, it certainly is an amusing little collection around its theme and good for more than a chuckle or two. If you are in the writing or publishing business you'll recognize all the characters and situations and it will be a lot funnier for you than for most.

In "the more things change the more they remain the same department" the back cover of this collection of Doonesbury strips from 1971-73 has an editorial from the "Dallas Morning Star-Telegram" explaining how for the second time in a month "Doonesbury" was not appearing in the comic section. Last month "Doonesbury" was moved from the comic section to the editorial page of my local newspaper. The excerpt from the editorial explains G.B. Trudeau had not provided a "comic" but rather "an unrestrained violent editorial comment on the war in Vietnam" of "an intemperate nature we don't use on the editorial page."

The rationale provided by my own newspaper for moving Trudeau's strip had to do with the plotline in which B.D. loses a leg in Iraq (not to mention his helmet) and returns home to rebuild his life. It should also be pointed out that this year is an election year and as things heat up between President Bush and Senator Kerry, we expect Trudeau to do the same. "But This War Had Such Promise" is a line spoken by B.D., who volunteers to go to Vietnam to fight the Commies (and to get out of having to write a term paper), and finds out the war is not all he had hoped it would be. Given what is happening with B.D. today, going back to read again Trudeau's assault on the war in Vietnam is, to say the least, ironic.

This is the third of the classic "Doonesbury" collections, following "Still a Few Bugs in the System" and "The President Is a Lot Smarter Than You Think." Trudeau's drawing style is quite rudimentary compared to today; if you have seen any reprints of the strips Trudeau did on John Kerry October 21-23, 1971 these are done in the same style. No, those three strips, including one where B.D. attacks Kerry as a "flaming hypocrite" for throwing away his medals because of how much they cost the government, are not in this particular collection and do you not think that it is ironic that Trudeau has "flip-flopped" on Kerry in the last thirty-plus years?

The strips with B.D. in Vietnam. where he first meets Phred the terrorist, are the highpoint of "But This War Had Such Promise" and makes everything else pale in comparison, such Bernie playing Jekyll & Hyde with magic formulas and young Rufus Jackson trying to work the system. But you also have the establishment of the commune at Walden Pond, so there are strips of historic value as well in addition to the intemperate politics of sending cartoon characters off to a war in Southeast Asia. It would be interesting for Trudeau to put together a collection of all of the Vietnam related "Doonesbury" strips, as well as a "Nixon" collection, but that would make sense so I doubt it would be done anytime soon.

The American revolutionary war was an unusual fight. There were many in the colonies that wanted to remain under the English crown and there were many in England who were content to let the colonies go. The colonists had a difficult time in fielding armies, had the British been more determined to prevail they most certainly would have. Mercenaries hired from some of the smaller Germanic states did a great deal of the fighting on the British side, as the British found internal recruitment difficult. The end result was assured when Spain, France and Holland all entered the war against Britain, ostensibly to aid the colonists, but in reality their goals were to try to win some British territory. Spain wanted Gibraltar, France some of the Caribbean islands and the Dutch wanted to prevail in the East Indies.
This book is a collection of cartoons that appeared in Britain and America during the revolutionary war. It is ironic that while there was a great deal of censorship of the press, cartoonists were given fairly free reign. A great deal of explanation is given for the cartoons, and those explanations are essential. Without them, it would be impossible to understand them. American colonists are generally depicted as Indians, the British as a female Britannia, and the Dutch as merchants.
The British cartoons often show a government divided over policy. While King George III was by then a constitutional monarch, he still had a great influence over policy. There was a great deal of incompetence among the British government and military and as is always the case, politics still operated, even in the midst of a war.
The American cartoons are easier to understand, although I could not have followed them without the explanations. I could recognize many of the people in the drawings and had some idea as to what they signified but in most cases could not be sure what was being represented. By modern standards, the cartooning was sometimes crude, as the exaggerated features of a caricature were not used.
This book is a history lesson, complete with the figures that helped drive the opinions that created the history. It reinforces an aspect of the American revolutionary war that is underappreciated, namely that it could have easily gone the other way. A little less incompetence on the British side and the British would have retained control of North America, at least for a while longer.

When Boss Tweed was being assailed by what his critics were writing in the newspapers, he dismissed it by saying, "My constituents can't read." However, when cartoonist Thomas Nast turned his drawings against Tweed, it was the beginning of the end of Tweed and the power of Tammany Hall. As even Tweed admitted, his constituents could understand the pictures.
Throughout the history of the United States, political cartoons have been a powerful force in the shaping of public opinion, both for and against specific foreign policy proposals. This book is a collection of some of the best to appear in the first 100 years of the United States. They are presented in chronological order, and a few paragraphs of explanation accompany each image.
Wars, the reasons to fight them and the reasons to stay out of them are the most common theme. Until the middle of the twentieth century, the strong isolationist trends backed by the two wide oceans on each side kept the United States from being involved in foreign entanglements. There was even a point in the late nineteenth century when the United States had no navy and almost no state department.
If you are interested in how public opinion about what was going on outside the borders of the United States was shaped, then this book will explain a lot. However, you will need to read in order to truly understand the point of the cartoons.

Here are more of Harris's brilliant cartoons. This time, the theme is the medical world and all of the weirdness around it - lord knows, that gives plenty to work with.

Even though these cartoons are almost thirty years old, as of this writing, plenty in them is quite up to date. There's that doctor addressing an overweight patient, for example: "Let me put it this way: you're an addict and your grocer is a pusher." Another one is still as fresh as this morning's junk email. In it, an alchemist says to his apprentice "Gold and silver from base metals is OK, but what I'm trying to transmute is angelica root, mugwort, and tincture of marigold into an effective aphrodisiac." Or the poor blond child at dinner with his brunette family, his father saying "Son, I hear you failed genetics."

How Harris manages so much lasting humor in such fast-changing fields is beyond me, but he does it consistently. Give it a try - laughing is good for you.

-- wiredweird

An excellent guide for the beginner or amatuer producer looking for some sources and a basic guide to techniques for making cards, posters, or anything on which they want to use public domain art -- a wonderful source of material to make your own coloring books for the children! Table of Contents / Subject Index / Section I consists of 1011 black and white drawings ready to scan or copy and use as is or color in, organized topically in 14 categories: National and Religious Holidays; Social and Commercial Announcements; Sports and Leisure Time Activities; Foods and the Culinary Arts; Circuses and Carnivals; School and Education; Trades and Professions; Flowers, Plants and Gardening; Antiques and Nostalgia; Toys; Travel and Geographic Landmarks; The Performing Arts; Pictorial Representation of Abstract Concepts; and Potpourri / Section II: 1. Supplies and Equipment; 2. About Lettering and Typography; 3. Layout and Composition; 4. Notes on Commercial Printing Processes; 5. Methods of Copying and Transferring Artwork; 6. Preparing Paste-Ups and Mechanicals; 7. Technical Shortcuts; 8. Studio Tips / Glossary of Terms Used in Art and Advertising / Publishers and Suppliers of Ready-to-use Art for the Trade / Metric Conversion Factors. Pages 287 and 288 have some sample title texts that can also be used.

Somehow I always wind up first whenever I get a book that I'm sure dozens of other reviewers would be all over, like white on rice! This book, a serious and academic study of four New Yorker cartoonists, I would have thought would be a natural. Maybe people got turned off by the cover, a particularly grisly Charles Addams sketch in a drab, battleship gray color. And yet, the sketch itself, a crowded movie theater packed with weeping, intensely uncomfortable viewers, in the middle of which you see one of Addams' trademark characters watching whatever is happening on the screen (a death?) and chuckling happily--yes, the sketch itself encapsulates some of Topliss' thoughts about the position of spectatorship vis-a-vis the New Yorker artists he covers.

We see ourselves in Uncle Fester's grin, for we feel we too are different than the rest of the crowd, and that we have a privileged and superior position to what is being displayed on the screen. How these four artists managed to animate their own, very different sense of the "unique," is Topliss' subject.

He won't make you want to read much more about Peter Arno, the aristocratic playboy for whom comics were decidedly slumming. Of William Steig, Topliss shows us how first Karen Horney and then Wilhelm Reich animated his thinking about creativity and the act of drawing. His was a fascinating life, but again, I'm not so sure he was so utterly a genius at his art. Addams and Steinberg come off the best, although Topliss' "fame" angle on Steinberg made him sound a little like those celebrities who complain about the paparazzi even when they're courting press attention.

Topliss sees US culture, New Yorker division, through the distant, cold eyes of an Australian. Sometimes the onlooker sees more of the game, and there's a sense in which one of our better academics might be the best candidate to write about the classic Australian cartoonists of the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. Turnabout is fair play, and in the writing game, objectivity is nearly everything. He has a rousing salute to Melbourne at the end of his introduction, in which he also explains why he seems to ignore the contributions of two other excellent cartoonists from the same period and venue, namely, Thurber and Hokinson. His salute to his hometown is worth the price of the book, though it's a little odd. Perhaps he could write another book about the "tall poppy syndrome" and why people in Melbourne are both proud of, and dismissive of, their celebrated comic muse, the one and only Kylie Minogue.

Plenty of books on cartooning are suffering from the same disorder, if you will - cookie-cutter-ism (Hello, Mr. Hart).

This book is a bit different - it won't teach you absolutely anything (hardly any book can), but its still very useful. It contain plenty of rules and tips on how to break them, as well as ideas on computer equipment, how to draw hands, feet, faces etc. etc.

All in all, very good resource on cartooning, way better than many other similar titles.

This middle-aged plus cartoon lady's brow is eternally furrowed. Her mouth snears with disdain. Maxine is rarely without her tote bag, her cigarette, or her coffee mug. She taunts her pets, annoys her neighbors, and comments sarcastically on every subject imaginable. If we don't personally know a Maxine, we recognize the cynicism we all feel at one time or another. Maxine tells it like it is. The few dollars spent on this humorous little cartoon book is money well spent. Any book that makes me laugh out loud every time I open it, is priceless. Long live Maxine!

This surreal little volume allows one to wander through increasingly subversive snippets of two seperate(?) topics, at once both unnerving and delightful in their irreverent seriousness. The sections of the book, specified in the title, diverge in feeling as well as content: the dancing cats serving as the light side to the darker, and more snidely witty foray into the realm of neglected murderesses. As always, Gorey's spindly, expressive drawings are at the top of their form in completing the numerous shadowy verse vignettes that make up each half of the book.