Auchtoon!

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, September 24, 2011

It’s ArtPrize time again in Grand Rapids. Definitely worth your while to check it out!

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, September 17, 2011

Yeah, nothing like a personal property tax cartoon to enthrall and split the collective side of my reading public. Did you get it? Those darn assessments on business equipment, amortization, schedules, depreciation, and whatnot. What a hoot! Next week perhaps some wry barbs involving annuity calculations….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, September 10, 2011

Ah! You see here the span of my artistic abilities: the first panel, a fairly good concept left wanting for somebody with more patience and skills to properly execute it; the second panel, right in my wheelhouse for minimalist caricature. Mix it all in with deeply sarcastic commentary on Grandville’s own Dave Agema most recent effort to protect us righteous white people, and I give myself a solid “B”.

I just completed a cartoon today on the 10 year anniversary of the September 11th attacks. (Check out this Saturday’s Grand Rapids Press.) I thought I’d post the ones I did the week of the attack and the five year anniversary. See below:

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, September 11, 2006

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, September 17, 2001

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, September 3, 2011

It seems the only words used when describing Dick Cheney are either “love” or “hate.” (A step up, I suppose, for what passes for public discourse these days, which is generally just “hate.”) For me, it’s “disappointment.” Cheney was an integral part of the Ford administration, and I guess I have always hoped some more of Gerald Ford would have rubbed off on him. You know, the part about being an intelligent, fair-minded, approachable, thoughtful person. (Same goes for Donald Rumsfeld.)
 
So Mr. Cheney has written a memoir and in the book he opines about the automaker bailouts, specifically General Motors. He didn’t write exactly what I have in the first panel — I rearranged the order — but they are all his words.

What bothered me was the hypocrisy. Not so much the Halliburton thing (let’s face it, that’s the low hanging fruit). More his shtick as a man above it all — that nobody else could possibly understand all that he knows and has experienced and so it is not worth his time to answer questions or be accountable. Which might just be true in a lot of areas, but seriously, what does Dick Cheney really know about the automotive industry? I would say very little if he claims to have been willing in 2008 to let it implode just to make an ideological point.

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, August 27, 2011

Still haven’t figured out from the GOP — am I supposed to hate government all the time or just when they tell me to?