"Your Eyes Are Burning Holes Through Me"

So tomorrow marks the beginning of my foray into political humor. I have high hopes for the series--I think what I've written so far is pretty damn funny, and that this will actually be a worthwhile series.

I've never really liked political cartoons all that much. Most of them strike me as uninspired and bland. Worse, I think nine-tenths of them are simply an excuse for partisan bickering. Most of the time, a political cartoonist espouses his or her point of view not by making any sort of concrete statement about it, but by deriding the opposing point of view. In short, political cartoons are too reactionary. They're inert. They don't do anything except go, "hur hur, I made fun of so-and-so's opinion; that makes me topical and witty. Hur hur." Mind you, most of them wouldn't know what a semi-colon is (or how to use one), so that was my addition.

Admittedly, reaction is a big part of humor. Without something to react against, I wouldn't have made many comics, and I'd have only come up with one or two for the OU Daily. Reacting against something provides a context for the comic--the comic is really at its most amusing when you know what it's in response to. But the problem is that most political cartoonists respond in such an obvious, formulaic manner--so-and-so did this, so it must be stupid, let us attempt to make fun of it. Let us stand in shock and awe at what ignorant thing such-and-such a politician did yesterday in Congress. My, gas prices are high, let's do a comic where the price sign at the gas station says "Arm" and "Leg" instead of listing prices. That'd be original. I bet no one is doing anything like that.

But I'm thinking my series will actually be different. For one, I'm not responding to any particular incident in current affairs or politics. Rather, I'm responding to the general state of affairs in politics in America, poking fun at the way we conduct our electoral process (which is in need of an overhaul, I think), and hopefully provoking some thoughtful examination of what politics and politicians ought to be doing for the American people.

Yeah, that's a lot of work to make a comic which is usually about smiting and stealth bussers do, but I think my characters and my setting are flexible enough to pull off the trick. We'll have to see, I guess.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Regular Joes, "Money Blues"