Loyal-Tea

This is so late I might as well not even bother with it, but dammit, the coloring turned out really nicely, so here it is!

I wanted to do something riffing on the “monster turning on its creator” angle of Eric Cantor’s recent election loss to a tea-bag challenger, without relying on the overdone “Frankenstein” metaphor, though some of my sketches did include references to gags from Mel Brooks’ version of the story (“Abby Normal” and “sedagive,” for instance).

I thought about doing a broader gag focused on the imagery of a mad dog devouring its owner, but I’ve had a lot of fun drawing on Heath Ledger’s interpretation of the Joker for political cartoons before, so I decided I wanted to do it again, even if it would probably result in a cartoon that fewer people would understand.

Besides, I’ve already done cartoons comparing the GOP’s tea party “strategy” to suicide bombing and snake handling, so if anyone needs anything from me with wider audience appeal, I’ve already got that base pretty well covered, on the topic!

In addition to Eric Cantor standing in on the GOP’s behalf for the Chechen, I hoped to make the “Tea Party Joker” recognizable as Glenn Beck, under all the facial scarring, clown makeup, and long, green hair/tricorn hat. I’m not sure I was successful, in that regard (he looks more like a weird cross between Lon Chaney and Jon Lovitz), but the detail isn’t really necessary to the main gag, so I’m not all that concerned about whether or not it clearly reads.

In retrospect, I probably should’ve made him look like Dave Brat, instead.

I’ve said this before, but I hope to return to a much more frequent update schedule with my next cartoon. Chief among the targets on my radar, at the moment, is alleged car thief, arsonist, insurance fraudster, and noted Congressional Asshole Darrell Issa (whom I’ve been wanting to attack directly since at least this time last year, if not before).