Free Republic

The arrest of a controversial Dutch cartoonist has set off a wave of protests. The case is raising questions for a changing Europe about free speech, religion and art. Amsterdam On a sunny May morning, six plainclothes police officers, two uniformed policemen and a trio of functionaries from the state prosecutor's office closed in on a small apartment in Amsterdam. Their quarry: a skinny Dutch cartoonist with a rude sense of humor. Informed that he was suspected of sketching offensive drawings of Muslims and other minorities, the Dutchman surrendered without a struggle. "I never expected the Spanish Inquisition," recalls the...

U.S. NAVAL STATION GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, June 13, 2008 – Army Sgt. 1st Class Vaughn R. Larson, a syndicated editorial cartoonist, arrived here two months ago as one of 20 members from the Wisconsin Army National Guard’s 112th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment. Army Sgt. 1st Class Vaughn R. Larson is a syndicated editorial cartoonist serving with the Wisconsin Army National Guard’s 112th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. U.S. Army photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Larson is the editor of The Wire, the official weekly publication for Joint Task Force Guantanamo, which handles detainee...

THE HAGUE, 21/05/08 - A broad Lower House majority yesterday requested an interlocutory debate on the arrest of cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot. Labour (PvdA), the Socialist Party (SP), the conservatives (VVD), Party for Freedom (PVV), leftwing Greens (GroenLinks) and independent MP Rita Verdonk all backed a request by centre-left D66 for a debate. As well as Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin, Education Minister Ronald Plasterk will be called to account. He is responsible for culture and media policy. The Christian democrats (CDA) and small Christian party ChristenUnie are much less critical than the Lower House majority, which considers that freedom of...

AMSTERDAM, 17/05/08 - Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin has attracted sharp criticism from a large part of the Lower House following the surprise arrest of cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot. He is facing charges of discrimination. The arrest took place last Tuesday. The well-known stand-up comedian Hans Teeuwen, a friend of Nekschot, said on TV programme Pauw en Witteman that around 10 police dragged the cartoonist out of his home in Amsterdam in a brutal manner. His computer and telephone were seized, according to a furious Teeuwen. The Public Prosecutor's Office (OM) in Amsterdam confirmed that Nekschot ('Neck Shot') was arrested for...

PHILADELPHIA - Cartoonist Ted Key, whose comic strip "Hazel" about a bossy maid went from magazine page to TV screen, has died. He was 95. He died Saturday at his home in the Philadelphia suburb of Tredyffrin Township after a 1 1/2-year battle with cancer, his son Peter Key said Monday. "Hazel" was a popular feature in The Saturday Evening Post from the time it debuted in 1943. It evolved into a prime-time series in 1961 that starred Shirley Booth and ran for four years on NBC and one year on CBS. Key also created the characters Mr. Peabody and...

“Living legend” is how Joe Simon is categorized on the list of special guests appearing at the New York Comic Con at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center this weekend. Mr. Simon, 94, has a different take on it. “I call it the old-geezer table,” he said during a recent interview at his Midtown Manhattan apartment. Mr. Simon will take part in the “Legends Behind the Comic Books” panel at 3 p.m. on Friday, one of numerous events planned at the convention, a three-day celebration of all things comics. Mr. Simon earned the “legend” title with his partner Jack Kirby...

Investor's Business Daily cartoonist and Senior Editor Michael Ramirez won a Pulitzer Prize on Monday, his second win of the nation's most prestigious journalism award and the newspaper's first in its 24-year history. Ramirez won the 2008 award for a "distinguished cartoon or portfolio of cartoons published during the year, characterized by originality, editorial effectiveness, quality of drawing and pictorial effect." In awarding Ramirez, the Pulitzer panel lauded his "provocative cartoons that rely on originality, humor and detailed artistry." We couldn't agree more. "Michael is in a league of his own and at the top of his game," said Wesley...

Today I was let go by my paper, The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. My cartoons, when I decide to do them (sigh) will still be availiable at editorialcartooists.com. Darn! And just when I was beginning to have fun with the Democrats again!

SOTO CANO AIR BASE, Honduras, Jan. 4, 2008 – It’s hard being only a figment of someone’s imagination. Just ask Air Force 1st Lt. Kenneth Dahl, an F-15 fighter pilot with the imaginary 809th Fighter Squadron. U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Austin M. May works on a character from his comic strip, Air Force Blues. May, a public affairs noncommissioned officer deployed to Soto Cano Air Base, Honduras, recently published a book of his comics, and the strip is slated to appear in an upcoming issue of Airman Magazine. U.S. Air Force Photo by Tech. Sgt. Sonny Cohrs   (Click...

Cartoonist Doug Marlette Dies in Car Accident By Dave Astor Published: July 10, 2007 2:23 PM ET NEW YORK Doug Marlette, who won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1988, died this morning in a single-car accident near Holly Springs in northwest Mississippi. He was 57. Marlette was with the Tulsa (Okla.) World at the time of his death. Prior to joining that paper in 2006, he worked for the Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat, Newsday of Melville, N.Y., The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer. His editorial cartoons were syndicated by Tribune Media Services, which also distributed Marlette's "Kudzu"...

Cartoonist Johnny Hart, who won awards and acclaim for creating the BC comic strip, has died at the age of 76. BC, which depicts a world populated by cavemen and dinosaurs, first appeared in 1958 and eventually reached more than 100 million people. Mr Hart also co-created The Wizard of Id, the story of a run-down kingdom ruled by a tyrannical monarch. Mr Hart's wife, Bobby, said he died of a stroke on Saturday while working at his New York home. "He died at his storyboard," she told the Associated Press. Richard Newcombe, the founder and president of Creators...

A Harvard student newspaper cartoonist has been suspended from the paper and two of her cartoons retracted after editors learned of their resemblance to ones published in other media outlets. Harvard Crimson staffers found four cartoons by Kathleen Breeden, a sophomore, bore striking similarity to cartoons shown on a website that compiles cartoons from around the world. Crimson editors found that two of the four cartoons were inappropriately similar to two on the website, one by Walt Handelsman of Newsday and another by Stephen Breen of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Breeden could not be reached for comment Monday. Both Handelsman...

BEIJING (AFP) - A Chinese cartoonist has been suspended for one month after drawing an image of a weeping President Hu Jintao, Hong Kong media said. Kuang Biao, a 40-year-old artist working for the New Express based in south China's Guangzhou city, said he received the order to temporarily lay down his pen on Wednesday, the South China Morning Post reported. The measure was taken two days after the paper printed the depiction of Hu, shedding tears while replying to a letter from the daughter of a university professor who recently died from overwork at the age of 48. "President...

The following cartoon appeared in the Lexington Herald-Leader on September 6. Joel Pett is a left-wing cartoonist whose cartoons frequently skirt the edge of offensive. Now, Joel has chosen to capitalize on the death of Steve Irwin to make yet another attack on Bush. If this makes you angry and you would like to contact the editorial board or Mr. Pett himself, here's some contact information. I do not advocate profanity, abuse, or anything that is or may be perceived as illegal. But Mr. Pett and the Herald-Leader deserve to hear from the numbers of us who are outraged about...

Garry Trudeau was inarguably the most famous person in the room Friday. But the man behind the long-running comic strip "Doonesbury" said he felt a little chagrined as he stood before about 400 Vietnam veterans and their spouses. "It's humbling to receive an award for storytelling in a room of people so filled with stories," the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist said. Trudeau was in Tucson to accept the President's Award for Excellence in the Arts from the Vietnam Veterans of America at the group's national conference, held this week at the Hilton El Conquistador Hotel, 10000 N. Oracle Road.

Sadistic irony By TrevorBothwell Jun 12, 2006 In the June 7 edition of its newspaper, The Arizona Republic published a repulsive cartoon by Steve Benson that desecrates the U.S. Marine Corps' Eagle, Globe and Anchor emblem and defames the USMC as a collection of wanton murderers. The source of Benson's vitriol? The alleged murders of 24 Iraqis at Haditha in November 2005. Normally I resist the temptation to reprint professional cartoons without first receiving proper permissions, and this time is no different. However, this cartoon truly must be seen to be believed. Simply go to Benson's page here, click on...

Conservative comic book publisher of Liberality For All, (which features bio-mechanically altered Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North fighting oppressive Liberals in an alternate U.N. dominated reality), is donating all proceeds from their website to victims in Bantul, Indonesia.

More than 50,000 people attended the funeral Saturday of a Pakistani student who died while under arrest in Germany for allegedly planning to attack a newspaper that published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. About three dozen people were injured in a stampede when crowds tried to enter the family's home in the Pakistani village of Saroki to see Amer Cheema's face, police and witnesses said. Mourners chanted "God is great!" and "We are slaves of Prophet Muhammad!" Some congratulated Cheema's father, kissing his hand and calling his son a martyr. German police say Cheema, 28, hanged himself in his Berlin...

The subscription site, STRATFOR or Strategic Forecasting, Inc. - issues almost daily a TERRORISM INTELLIGENCE REPORT with a self described "track record on accurate, insightful global intelligence and analysis earning itself a reputation as the world’s most respected private intelligence company". Strafor's Fred Burton updates the ongoing cartoon controversy (02.21.2006)as follows : "Fatwas and Rewards: An Inflection Point in the Cartoon Controversy" (I have highlighted key points received today via e-mail). "Two minor Shariah courts in India's Uttar Pradesh state have issued fatwas calling for the death of a Danish cartoonist who drew caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. The fatwas,...

Indian minister said offering $10m for beheading cartoonistBy Haaretz Service Last update - 08:38 19/02/2006 An Indian state minister has offered a reward of more than $10 million and a prospective killer's weight in gold to anyone who beheads one of the cartoonists who angered Muslims by depcting the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper, the London Sunday Times reported this week. The offer follows a Pakistani cleric's reward of $1 million and a car for the killing of one of the cartoonists. The new, larger reward was announced by Yaqoob Qureshi, minister of minority welfare in the Indian state...

A Pakistani cleric offered a 1.5 million rupee (€28,000) reward and a car for anyone who kills the cartoonist who drew Prophet Mohammed. Another Islamist leader was put under house detention, amid fears of more deadly demonstrations today, officials said.

NEW YORK Columnist Ann Coulter made a provocative remark Friday about "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau and editorial cartoonist Ted Rall. Trudeau is shrugging it off, but Rall is considering a lawsuit. Coulter reportedly said Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.: "Iran is soliciting cartoons on the Holocaust. So far, only Ted Rall, Garry Trudeau, and The New York Times have made submissions."

The Danish Islamic scholar who brought cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad to the attention of Muslim leaders around the world says he was only trying to boost his campaign to get an apology from the Danish newspaper that first published them. INDEPTH: Muhammad cartoons: A timeline Danish Islamic scholar Ahmed Akkari, right, and Carsten Juste, editor in chief of the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, which published cartoons depicting the Prophet, before a debate on Danish television, Sunday, Feb. 5. (AP Photo/POLFOTO, Carsten Snejbjerg) "I guess we took the illustrations to influential people so they could help," Ahmed Akkari told CBC News...

First they came for the funny ones Published February 1, 2006 Kathleen Parker Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of political cartoonists. Not this time for the ones losing newspaper jobs, but for those whose lives are literally on the line thanks to outraged Islamists offering a bounty for their heads. The cartoonists in question are a dozen Danish artists who drew Muhammad-themed cartoons last September for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten during an exercise to test the limits of free speech. The cartoon-a-thon was conceived in response to complaints from a Danish author...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 2006 – Award-winning satirist Garry Trudeau of "Doonesbury" fame visited the Pentagon today to meet with troops wounded in the war on terror and present them autographed copies of his book featuring the healing process of a comic character he said they inspired. Army Spc. Joey Kashnaw, a 4th Infantry Division soldier who lost his leg after being wounded in Taji, Iraq, in September 2003, meets with Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau at the Pentagon. Photo by Donna Miles  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. "The Long Road Home: One Step at a Time," tells the story...

The 213 Things Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the U.S. Army.... 1. Not allowed to watch Southpark when I'm supposed to be working. 2. My proper military title is "Specialist Schwarz" not "Princess Anastasia". 3. Not allowed to threaten anyone with black magic. 4. Not allowed to challenge anyone's disbelief of black magic by asking for hair. 5. Not allowed to get silicone breast implants. 6. Not allowed to play “Pulp Fiction” with a suction-cup dart pistol and any officer. 7. Not allowed to add “In accordance with the prophesy” to the end of answers I give...

... I first drew Bush as a monkey after his installation by the Supreme Court, exactly five years ago. It was by accident. I was trying to depict him as a spiritual heir to Ronald Reagan, another useless chump whose most celebrated movie hit was Bedtime For Bonzo in which he starred with a chimp. So Bush became a chimp before I ever realised how closely he resembles our hairy forebears. [...] Drawing him as a monkey, however, worked a treat. His four hands enabled him to get up to all sorts of interesting tricks, and also somehow fitted his...

<p>Ten years ago Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, left newspaper cartooning for painting. Since then, no new comic strip has matched the quality, longevity, or cultural dominance of Watterson's daily drawings about a boy and his tiger. There remain good strips, such as Jef Mallett's Frazz; acclaimed strips, such as Aaron McGruder's Boondocks; and venerable strips, such as Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury. But these days, the best-selling comics books tend to be either graphic novels or hardbound anthologies of the greats, such as Fantagraphics Books' The Complete Peanuts.</p>

Muslims march over cartoons of the Prophet By Kate Connolly in Berlin (Filed: 04/11/2005) A Danish experiment in testing "the limits of freedom of speech" has backfired - or succeeded spectacularly - after newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed provoked an outcry. Thousands of Muslims have taken to the streets in protest at the caricatures, the newspaper that published them has received death threats and two of its cartoonists have been forced into hiding. Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the cartoons a 'necessary provocation' Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's leading daily, defied Islam's ban on images of the Prophet by printing cartoons by 12...

ARLINGTON, Va. (Army News Service, Aug. 16, 2005) – The famous works of World War II cartoonist, Bill Mauldin, will be commemorated through Bill Mauldin’s War: Some Things Never Change. The publication of the book coincides with the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. Aug. 15 was Victory Japan or VJ Day and Sept. 2. is the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri. The National Guard Bureau’s Office of Public Affairs will publish the 50-page Mauldin book later this year. Featuring about 20 of Mauldin’s cartoons, the book will be...

Christoph Bangert/Polaris, f or The New York Times Abdel Rakhim Yassir and some of his work. BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 14 - Iraq is awash in carnage and politics, and Muayad Naama is on hand to help people laugh at it. Using jagged lines and potato-shaped figures, Mr. Naama, a 53-year-old cartoonist, tells the story of Iraq today. It is a place where people have become inured to street violence; state corruption exists on a giant scale; politicians argue endlessly. As violence has surged throughout Iraq, and in Baghdad in particular, over the last few weeks, Mr. Naama has sketched...

Go here http://villagevoice.com/news/0447,sutton,58615,9.html to see an utterly biased, disgusting characterization of those who are happy with President Bush's win as gap toothed, wife beating rednecks. I hesitate to post this in humor because it is NOT funny. Laura Ingraham is talking about this right now. I apologize if this has been posted. I did search but did not find it.

One of the seminal American comic artists. He also did training guides for the U.S. Army during WW2.

Minneapolis Star Tribune censors IPW cartoonist IowaPresidentialWatch.com’s political cartoonist, Linda Eddy, has been censored by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Eddy distributes her cartoons by email and regularly sends them to the Tribune. Her latest, showing John Kerry during his 1971 Senate testimony, is titled “Silencing Veterans since 1971” and shows an American soldier in Kerry’s hand, his head covered. Tribune Deputy Editorial Page Editor B. James Boyd responded to Eddy’s latest cartoon by banning any future editorials from the artist: “Please take me off your e-mail list. Your latest statements about Kerry are too much. He said no such...

In an effort to galvanize the message Kerry wants to deliver in the time remaining, he convened a powerful roster of journalists and columnists in the New York City apartment of Al Franken last Thursday. The gathering could not properly be called a meeting or a luncheon. It was a trial. The journalists served as prosecuting attorneys, jury and judge. The crowd I joined in Franken’s living room was comprised of: Al Franken and his wife Franni; Rick Hertzberg, senior editor for the New Yorker; David Remnick, editor for the New Yorker; Jim Kelly, managing editor for Time Magazine; Howard...

It didn't take long for Ted Rall to weigh in with a predictably boneheaded comment on the beheading of Nicholas Berg. Rall quotes -- and mocks -- Bush Administration pronouncements on the Abu Ghraib scandal and the beheading of Berg. Rall then argues that if the beheading says anything about the true nature of the terrorists, then the Abu Ghraib scandal says something about the true nature of the American people. In Rall's twisted view, any contrary opinion reflects "cognitive dissonance." Here is the beginning of Rall's post: Cognitive Dissonance "I share a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated...

Cartoonist Ted Rall says he has received hundreds of death threats over a comic he did this week that satirized the media's response to the death of Pat Tillman, the former pro-football player killed in Afghanistan. ... Some 300 of the messages threatened Rall with "death or bodily harm," he said, and he also said he had received several death threats by phone. Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes Rall's comics to about 70 newspapers, has received several e-mails from readers who objected to the content of the comic, spokeswoman Kathie Kerr said.

Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall recently made the news for penning yet another crass cartoon, this one denigrating Pat Tillman, the football star turned soldier recently killed in Afghanistan. Rall painted Tillman as a racist, bloodthirsty idiot who was just another cog in the "El Busho" war machine. MSNBC.com decided to pull the cartoon because it "did not meet MSNBC.com standards of fairness and taste." Blogger Andrew Sullivan called for a protest campaign against Rall and yesterday offered this enlightening Rall quote: "The word 'hero' has been bandied about a lot to refer to anyone killed in Afghanistan or Iraq....

Item did not meet MSNBC standards of fairness and taste MSNBC.com pulled a cartoon by syndicated political cartoonist Ted Rall on Monday. Rall’s cartoon, distributed widely by United Press Syndicate to scores of newspapers and Web sites, concerned the late Pat Tillman, the NFL player who quit football to join the Army. Tillman was killed last month in Afghanistan.

TAMARAC, Fla. — What do you do 25 years after creating a new artistic genre? If you are Will Eisner, you do the same thing again in your late 80's. "A Contract With God," set in the tenements of his Bronx youth and published in 1978, established Mr. Eisner as the father of the graphic novel. Now he has taken the adult comic-book format a step further, with a graphic history that applies his dark, 1930's-style illustrations to real events of a century ago. This latest work, called "The Plot," tells the story behind the creation of "The Protocols of...

Today's Toles cartoon in the Washington (com)Post, entitled The 20th Hijacker Arrives, depicts the U.S. Capitol building being blown apart by "The Deficit," and with a sub-title, "Who Could've Foreseen?"

Ever since R. F. Outcault’s irreverent creation, The Yellow Kid, first appeared as an incidental character in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World on Feb. 16, 1896, comic art in America has seen an enriching array of artists whose unique personal visions have transformed popular culture. For over a century, every era has had its own defining graphic delineator. So when the punk-rock/new-wave revolution hit North America in the summer of 1976, it was only fitting that this nascent movement should also be documented by its own cartoon chronicler. Enter John Holmstrom, the writer-artist-founder of New York’s legendary hand-lettered PUNK magazine....

[ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 01/30/2004 ]   JOHN KERRY Bush in 2001 Bush in 2004 HEADS OF STATE Drawings by MIKE LUCKOVICH / Staff Forget the issues. Look at the nose. Are those the eyes of a statesman? What about the ears? Close to the skull or practically perpendicular? Even as he ponders the war, the economy, Michael Jackson and the other issues weighing on the republic, Mike Luckovich must also study the facial features of the leading actors on the national stage. Luckovich the citizen has not made up his mind about the Democrats running for president. But Luckovich...

Last Update: 26/11/2003 10:58 Cartoon of naked Sharon devouring infant wins top U.K. prize By Haaretz Service A cartoon of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon eating the head of a Palestinian baby against the backdrop of a burning Palestinian city has won first prize in the British Political Cartoon Society's annual competition. There were 35 entries in the Cartoon of the Year competition, sponsored by the British Independent newspaper, from some of the country's leading cartoonists. Dave Brown's winning cartoon was published in the Independent a few months ago, when it was claimed that it was inspired by a Goya painting....

<p>The scene: a corner table at John's Grill on a recent damp day. Media folk kibbitz over crustaceans while two cartoonists have a chance for a little one-on-one, a rare treat because they are separated by a great distance.</p> <p>Besides questions being answered, pens are drawn and characters rendered to illustrate, literally, various points. Berkeley Breathed is difficult to corner, even when sitting in a corner. But in this cartoonist-to-cartoonist chat -- one of the few, and very infrequent, interviews he's giving -- he gives us a small peek inside one humorist's psyche as we celebrate his return to the Sunday comics pages after an 8-year hiatus.</p>

Did Johnny Hart -- the beloved creator of "B.C." and one of the most widely read cartoonists on Earth -- sneak a vulgar defamation of Islam into the comics pages last week? The question was raised yesterday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based civil rights group, in an e-mail to its membership. Hart and his syndicate say no -- that a simple, straightforward joke is being misconstrued. That may well be true, but the 73-year-old cartoonist's history of evangelizing his Christian beliefs through his comic cavemen have left many people doubtful. The cartoon, which appeared Nov. 10...

I'm listening to Sean Hannity here. He just played a clip where Macgruder called Condi Rice a murderer. IMHO, this is crossing the line. He is a radical. As for me, I'm going to try to get my local paper to pull his cartoon strip.

Aaron McGruder, whose cartoon strip "The Boondocks" is known for its attacks on Republicans, went on the syndicated television show "America's Black Forum" this past week and denounced National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice as a killer. "I don't like Condoleezza Rice because she's a murderer," Mr. McGruder said...