Even I'm Confused

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I got a lot of questions about the beer cartoon, primarily because it is rather opaque and not particularly well done. Some people tried to make it a complete sentence – "I bean my mug" – others were unsure what it was in the first place – "I (rock? bean?) my coffee."

It doesn't make a sentence, it's just that I replaced the usual heart with a kidney to refer to how quickly beer goes through you. I know, it doesn't really make much sense. I may have been drunk when I drew this one.

The next cartoon was one I wondered if people would understand but I didn't get any mail from confused readers after all. I'm still guessing some people just thought the guy was exasperated because the printer was out of ink. But I intended to show that he was "low" on ink, the way a person might get "high" on something. The way I originally drew this was rejected because it was felt that if I showed someone drinking, eating, or inhaling an ink cartridge, some kid would try it and die and I'd be accused of corrupting the public. If you promise not to try this because I'm telling you right now it might kill you, I'll show you the original image.

That's all for today, have to walk the dog now.

Offspring

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Here's a fun story. The color cartoon shown here is what appeared in my client newspapers but it is not the way I originally wrote or drew it. The black and white cartoon below was my first attempt.

My editors at the syndicate didn't understand the original cartoon (I don't blame them) and thought that it might be seen as racist, and they were undoubtedly right. As those of you who have read my blog regularly know, people will complain about racism if given even a sliver of an opportunity. Complaints to newspapers are bad for business, so I changed the gag to a ventriloquist theme, which is a better cartoon anyway.

The original gag was supposed to be that a couple of white ladies see a middle-aged black lady walking a blond baby in a stroller and think she has adopted him. Their comment is meant to imply that they see this sort of thing all the time. What they are actually seeing are nannies, of course. I don't know about other parts of the country, but here in NYC one regularly sees middle-aged women-of-color walking white kids. Evidently, lots of rich white folks don't raise their own kids and who can blame them? Making babies is so much more fun than making sure they don't grow up to be scourges on society.*

*This statement is sarcasm.