This is Historic Times » Sketches

Capitalist Claus

deephurting — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 08:23:00 +0000

This really didn’t turn out as well as I thought it would.

The drawing’s decent, but the gag just doesn’t seem to quite be hitting. I think a large part of that might be that it’s only vaguely topical, instead of being connected to a specific person or event.

Some readers will probably recognize that I’ve borrowed a recurring device here from Tim Kreider, who draws The Pain. This cartoon is basically a poor imitation of his, which have included Jesus vs. Jeezus, Americans vs. ‘Muricans, and my favorite (as well as everyone else’s, evidently), Science vs. Norse Mythology.

My dissatisfaction with this cartoon probably has a lot to do with this, actually–there’s no way I could do any kind of gag Tim Kreider’s done regularly better or even as well as he has. My initial idea here was just “What if Santa Claus were more overtly capitalist,” and I figured this would be the best way to frame it. Unfortunately, in addition to being an imitation of somebody else’s better gags, this also has the unintentional side-effect of making Capitalist Santa look pretty cool, relative to regular Santa’s saccharinity, instead of just making him look selfish and threatening.

Anyway, I hope this has at least introduced a few people to Kreider’s cartoons, if nothing else. I encourage anybody that’s reading this to visit his website and check them out.

Reader Input

deephurting — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 01:29:48 +0000

Hi folks,

So I thought it might be fun to involve readers in my ideas while they’re in development. In doing so in various places online in the past, I’ve found that it happens more than rarely that somebody will notice a detail or something in a sketch I’m developing, and they’ll have some valuable input on a way to improve it. It makes the whole development experience more interesting for me, since I get readers’ insight, and I think it makes it more interesting for readers because they get to participate. This is one of the major strengths of the web environment versus print, after all.

Anyway, I have two ideas for different approaches to the topic of Obama’s budget, which passed Congress the other day with no Republican support.

Here’s the first:

The piece of paper in the first panel reads “Obama Budget”, in case it’s illegible in the sketch.

Here’s the second:

One of the knives is labeled “debt”, although it’s a bit hard to read here.

My gut instinct says to stick with the first idea, although I think I could find some better dialogue for the second panel. The gag is more direct and a little less convoluted. However, the main strength I see in the second is that it has some criticism of Obama as well as Republicans, in that his budget is something of a risky maneuver, which gives it a bit more depth and nuance than the first idea, in my mind.

What do you think? Post comments. I should have something new (either one of these, or something else) in perhaps a day or two, and depending on how this goes I may do it again with future cartoons.

The Bible (James Dobson, ed.)

pokeyman — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:38:24 +0000