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There are a handful of guys doing
nice animated editorial cartoons, Forever
Dada's Dunn and Campbell and Mark
Fiore draw a new animated cartoon every week. Don
Assmussen does two or three a year. But there is little or
no business incentive to create animated web cartoons. Web sites
rarely commission original content. Editorial cartoons continue
to be drawn for a print audience. November 15, 2003
Sorry, I missed a few days. I
was busy with other stuff. Don't worry, nothing happened on any
of those days. November 8, 2003 The lead item on our site this week was a column by Michael Reagan and cartoons on CBS's cancellation of the Reagan movie. This created an interesting contrast with the lead article on Slate titled, "Saint Ronald," by Chatterbox author Timothy Noah, who castigated CBS for cancelling the movie. Noah followed up the next day with another Reagan bashing article, "Saint Ronald Part 2." Point/Counterpoint, huh? The editors at Slate are very nice about giving me editorial freedom, although the front page contrast is seldom so obvious. My e-mailbox is usually filled with venom from conservatives bashing me as a "liberal cartoonist," and "just what (they) would expect from that liberal rag, Slate." The Reagan article and cartoons turned my e-mail box around by 180 degrees. Now I'm derided as a conservative. Here is an example:
November 6, 2003 Today I tried something new.
I posted a column by Presidential son and Talk Radio host, Michael
Reagan, about CBS cancelling the Reagan movie --and I posted
it at the top of the front page, rather than here in the BLOG
where words usually reside on this cartoon site. Cartoons are
usually used as art to spice up a page full of words. I'd like
to see words used to compliment an article full of cartoons.
Cartoonists have always felt that their graphic opinions predominate
over the "sea of text" surrounding their images on
the page; I wonder how the equation works out when the words
illustrate the cartoons. Take
a look at the "article" and let
me know what you think. Should we include words with our
cartoons? Years ago, when I was a Geology student at Tehran University, I started drawing caricatures of my professors. The result was failing grades! After a few months, I was working as a professional cartoonist and I became a threat to my professors. Once, one of them gave me some useful advice. He said: "Don't forget! We are living in a country where no one tolerates criticism. In Iran, we know critics as harmful people who only humiliate." I paid no attention to his advice. Eight years later, I drew a cartoon that didn't have anything to do with any particular cleric or official and I was threatened by the hardliners. A large gathering of clergy students in the holy city of Qum called for my death. They believed that I had made fun of a famous cleric, Ayatullah Mesbah-e Yazdi. In a cartoon, I had drawn a crocodile that was killing a journalist, and crying crocodile tears, pretending to be hurt by the poor journalist (who I drew as my "Sick Nick" character). I had named the crocodile in this cartoon, "Ostad Temsah" (Professor Crocodile). Unfortunately, the names of crocodile and the cleric rhymed. My newspaper, voluntarily stopped publishing for a week. I was arrested and sent to prison on February 6th, 2000.
I was free on bail after six days, and I got permission to draw again ten days later. This was a terrible experience for me and for my family, and it was a great burden for a guy who had only tried to draw funny pictures. I then had to prove that I was innocent to the people who hated me. My mother, who lives in another city, received threatening letters, from hardliners who threatened to kill me. Thirteen months later I wrote a letter to the famous cleric whose name rhymed with the name of the character in my cartoon. In the letter, I wrote that I didn't mean to be disrespectful and that I only wanted to draw a simple cartoon for my audience. I wrote: "Your Excellency, if you or any of your followers have been harmed and humiliated by my cartoon, I really feel sorry, and I apologize." I sent it by fax and I received an answer ten minutes later. The cleric had accepted my apology and he asked me to pay more attention next time. I thought all of my troubles had gone away, but in a few weeks, the judge, now famous for the Zahra Kazemi case (The Iranian-Canadian photo journalist who was killed in the same prison where I had been held) ordered me to appear before him in court. I felt tremendous stress after I received this summons. I even had to stay at the intensive care unit of the hospital because of my heart problems. Since drawing the crocodile cartoon I have felt like there was a sword of Damocles hanging above my head.
I then received a threatening letter. telling me that my name was on a "death list." A group of hardliners who live in the shadows, and who have killed writers and intellectuals in the past, had threatened me with death. A friend told me that there was a plan in the works for the courts to arrest a few journalists again, and that my name was also on a new list of people to be arrested. Thank God that I was invited by the Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists (ACEC) to attend their convention. The ACEC helped to exhibit my anti-war cartoons in Canada. My journalist colleagues had been arrested, and I would have been too, if I had not been away in Canada. A week ago, I received yet another death threat. My name had appeared just below the name of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Shirin Ebadi, on an assassination list issued by the same militant Islamic group that had threatened me before. Iranian President Khatami's brother is also on this list. The group posting the newest death threats hasn't executed anyone since the late 90's, but some speculate that their credibility may be at stake now. A recently concluded agreement with United Nations nuclear site inspectors has infuriated hardliners who see the agreement as a threat to their influence. The hardliners have threatened to kill the people on their list for the good of Islam, wherever in world they find them. Now my family blames me for all
the problems they face. I just wanted to be a good cartoonist.
That's all. November 1, 2003
I just heard that Nick Armington
died. Cartoonists know Nick as a regular visitor to our National
Cartoonists Society conventions where Nick was filming a documentary
for PBS about the comics. Although he wasn't a cartoonist, Nick
had a passion for cartoons. He got to know all of us, and he
eagerly filmed interviews with us. Nick died while scuba diving
off of California's Channel Islands at the age of 41. He was
a great friend of the cartoonists and we will miss him. Click
here to read a story from the scuba diving site, CDNN. Click
here to visit Nick's film company site, "Alchemedia."
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November
23, 2003
November 16, 2003
Looking back three
or four years, before the crash, when the dot-coms were flush
with money, it seemed like a Renaissance for editorial cartoonists.
Bill Mitchell was doing great animated editorial cartoons for
CNN. My favorite animated editorial cartoonist was Mike Lester,
who drew a daily, animated cartoon for Dow Jones-Work.com. The
crash brought Mike's web animation career to an end, before a
large audience could see his innovative work. Unlike the other
cartoonists who made Flash animations, Mike made small, simple
animated gifs that told short stories, with clever timing and
a cast of characters that regular readers could get to know.
November
9, 2003
November
2, 2003
This
wasn't the first time that a cartoonist was imprisoned in Iran,
but my imprisonment was big news, coming just before the parliamentary
elections. Almost everyone in Iran took notice of my arrest.
I was lucky because I was treated well in prison, unlike other
journalists who were sent to prison after me.
Whenever
another Iranian cartoonist would draw a cartoon that was pushing
on the bounds of what was acceptable, I was scared, because everyone
thought I was the one who drew every cartoon like that.