Cartoonists From The United States

"I wish that every kid was fortunate enough to have parents who could teach them the skills that they will need, but I’m not sure that the parents even have that, because things are changing so fast."

"there’s an old saying that a cynic is just a heartbroken optimist. If you don’t care, then there’s not even a reason to be cynical."

"Profiteers will never change through persuasion. Only by all of us stepping up to build a broad mass movement, with workers in the lead, can we become strong enough to challenge, defeat and overthrow the class currently in power."

"Most of us in the US don't understand populism or many other concepts relevant to political struggle. Even those of us who are active lag far behind much of the world in our grasp of theory-we don't recognize views as coherent lines, and therefore we're incapable of calling them by name, much less foreseeing their far-ranging implications. But we can't keep blithely disdaining the use of "jargon." These words may feel cumbersome and persnickety in our casual, 140-characters-or-less, news-o-tainment culture, but their precision allows us to conceptualize, identify, and decide to accept or reject ideological and political phenomena that could make all the difference to our eventual success or failure."

"We need to make land public, and collectively controlled by the people. The system wants us to be sick and dysfunctional; we need to take control of our health and not accept toxic food."

"it's only when we can collectively provide for our own needs that we can break our dependency on the capitalist system and create an alternative to it that works."

"what is certain is that the structural crises and inequalities that gave rise to the global uprisings in the first place will only intensify."

"Life runs much faster than our ability to record and interpret it."

"New possibilities develop through taking action. We can't conjure strategy out of isolation;"

"It was very stressful at the very beginning (becoming a syndicated comic strip artist). That's a lot on someone's shoulders, to be one of three Black femme people making syndicated comics, ever, in the history of comic strips. I was sweating at my computer, like, “Oh my god, I'm supposed to be representative of an entire ethnic group.” But I did have the opportunity to talk to Bianca Xunise and Barbara Brandon-Croft [who became the first nationally syndicated Black female cartoonist in 1991] about how scary it is. Also, we're all in it together. I remember for my launch, I got emails from the [African American] creators of “Jump Start” and “Curtis,” that were like, “Welcome to the family.” That alone made all of my insecurities and stress completely vanish. I grew up reading their comics. To have them embrace me so quickly was really, really lovely."

"It's all about visibility for me. It took me visually seeing another Black female doing the work for me to have my entire life changed. I always say yes to panels, yes to interviews, because I want to make sure that whoever is looking at the interview sees me. Then maybe kids will end up in a cartooning class saying, “I want to be like Steenz.”"

"I try to put as much of their personality into the kind of clothes that they wear and how they wear their hair or their make-up and so on and so forth"

"when someone’s like, “Design a black character,” well, what does that mean? That could mean literally anything."

"anxiety and depression can also change how you see what people are doing and what they’re saying and what [they’re] actually meaning."

"I definitely am very deliberate and strict when it comes to my schedule. So, while I was working on Archival Quality, the big bulk of it anyway, I was working at the library. And so that was still full-time work. So I would do eight hours at the library, come home, take a nap, wake up, get some dinner with my husband, and then work for four hours or four pages, whichever came first. And that’s how I worked for the majority of the time. And just making sure to stick to that schedule is a lot mentally, just because there are days where I’m like, “I never wanna draw ever again.” But it’s definitely worth it. And, once you get into that habit, it’s really easy to keep the train going."

"As long as it’s on a calendar, it will get done."

"definitely stretch more. That’s another thing. I started working out recently, where I would like actually work out for, like, anywhere between like thirty minutes to an hour like four days out of the week. And it’s helped TREMENDOUSLY...Get in a good amount of sleep. Y’know, people like to romanticize “work culture”"

"one of my things that I like to do is – when I work in editorial – is find people who may not have had an opportunity to tell their stories before."

"I feel like sometimes it’s easier to put what I’m thinking into images AND words. Words aren’t enough for me. I want people to see the face and the personality behind my words. It gives it more meaning."

"I would love to see more of us (women of color and other marginalized voices) in mainstream comics. When it comes to webcomics, we’re KILLING the game. Mildred Louis, Wendy Xu, Ariel Ries, Gisele Jaboteh, Shannon Wright, Bianca Xunise, I mean we’re knocking it out of the park. But when it comes to mainstream print, it’s different. I think in order for that to change we need more WOC writing and illustrating more than just other POC characters. Put one of us on Iron Man. Have a WOC creative team for Justice League. Let me see more of us writing for ALL characters and from that is where the growth begins."

"I'm hard-pressed to think of a thing that happened in politics that is purely just comedy, because people's lives are at stake. I think the worst kind of political cartoon is just, like, "Look at this thing that happened." Like, "Here's a drawing of a news event with nothing to say about it." No point of view, nothing to say. That's not funny to me. What is funny to me is a point of view. It's something to say that is interesting or surprising about the subjects. Like, what is bad about Trump? 'Cause there's a million things, right? I think what's bad about Trump is the system that produced him. I try to think much more about the root causes of things and less about the aesthetic differences that I have with a politician. The jokes that are just like, "Oh, Trump's hands are small" are less funny to me. It's a little easy to poke fun at a person; it's harder and more interesting to poke fun at a structure. Because when you see Trump do something, it's not just him; it's hundreds of thousands of people enabling his policy-it's a whole support system there. For me, it was really clarifying when Trump was elected. A lot of the reaction, especially the more center-left, was like, "Oh no, Trump has dropped out of space, like from a meteorite. He's this rogue figure!" That's distorting everything he is. You can draw an extremely straight line from where the Republican Party was at with Reagan to Trump. I think it's more interesting to talk about that stuff."

"My style is very self-taught. I sort of taught myself drawing from watching The Simpsons and reading The Far Side. I think you can see those two things come out in my comics. I really like drawing gross stuff. I really like drawing gooey shit. I like to draw Ted Cruz, because he's really melty. I love to draw someone melting, or with extra eyeballs. I love a skull. Fire is really fun. So there's all these things that I just like to draw, and they'll end up in my comics."

"I think I don't write fiction because I don't really know how to invent characters. I just know how to put myself into a character. So even when I read the Torah, I can't really fathom an old man with a beard Creator. I can only fathom kind of a childish, sweet, very flawed person taking a lot of joy in making things and then feeling really angry at herself for not making something better."

"I had complicated feelings about Judaism. I went to Jewish schools and synagogue and youth groups and summer camps. I’d always been an outsider as a kid. I was really shy and a little weird, maybe Asperger’s-ish, and I was really happy to get away from the suburbs when I moved to the city from New Jersey for art school. New York was a much more open-minded place, and the world of art seemed to like me for being unusual. I never rebelled against Judaism, though."

"I love them! I was reading Miss Manners for a while (that was Judith Martin). I watch The Steve Harvey Show sometimes, and I love Judge Judy. I watch Kathy Lee and Hoda (this is only at the gym, so it’s only in the winter, when I’m running on a treadmill!). Since I wrote this book I’ve been really into talk radio and podcasts in which people have mundane conversations. I just want to hear people talking about their lives."

"The shadow represents my strangeness and my creativity—my soul, which I used to run from in hopes of learning how to fit in."

"I’m surprised that people relate to my stuff. I always thought of myself as not that relatable and maybe in person I’m not that relatable, but it warms my heart that people can relate."

"(On one page you wrote, “if you intend to create a world – you need to leave the real world behind”) I think my mom believed that. I think both of us deep down have this feeling that either you can have your art or you can have your life. I don’t think that’s really true. I think you can have both."

"There have been many times in my life when I’ve chosen art over people, but like my mom, I thought it was a choice. I think that’s a very romantic notion and it’s a good notion to put in books, but it’s not a good one to live by. I think seeing people does broaden your world a lot and art will come back when it’s ready. Even if you walk away from it for a minute."

"My favorite thing is Stephen Colbert -- he's a genius. It's great to watch Colbert and think: How does he keep that pace up? That's an amazing amount of work. He's really doing something special. This particular election, it keeps you sane [to watch him], when watching TV news makes you want to throw out your television. ... This [election] has become like a reality show that I'm way too invested in."

"I don’t think having a hard time working on something means it was a bad project."

"I think that’s the thing that happens in my life that is closest to art and so I tend to make art about it. I also really love nostalgic writers. Two of my favorite writers are Proust and Nabokov, who are all about lost childhoods and loves that could have been."

"I realize I don’t like to draw any character and then I realized you don’t need to make them look like anything. They just need facial expressions. That’s how it feels to be a person. You don’t know what you look like, you just know what you’re feeling."

"Humor is like a good eye for design, it comes when you have a strong sense of proportion along with the grace to step back and not take every little thing too seriously."

"I've drawn compulsively all my life. I think Instagram is the format that comes closest to my natural tendency of drawing as a means to process things that bother me in real life."

"I AM A PUZZLE I AM SOLVING"

"The presidential primaries are not for the thinking person. All the nonstop chatter about the candidates' temperaments makes me wonder why I even bother to learn about things like, you know, issues...In this precarious time of war, global warming, a health care crisis, and economic woes, this is how we decide the leader of the most powerful nation on earth?"

"The Bush administration flatly denies plans for "permanent military bases," which according to the Opposite Rule that applies to everything the Bushies say, means we are building permanent military bases."

"When the most privileged and powerful members of society can escape the hassles and declines in service the rest of us must put up with, there's that much less impetus for change. Some might say, "They're paying for it. Get over it." While I understand that reasoning, it seems limited in scope, failing to question the larger system that created the neo-aristocracy in the first place."

"The GOP spends a lot of time trying to paint progressives as out-of-touch, ivory tower elites. But if anything, that distinction goes to the so-called "neocon intellectuals" like Norman Podhoretz, the inspiration for Dr. Plonk. In a 2007 Wall Street Journal editorial, Podhoretz said he prays "with all his heart" that we will bomb Iran, making the usual facile comparisons to World War II"

"There have been exceptions, but most of the time the effort to reclaim a regressive epithet fails as a political strategy. Among the worst is "tree hugger." Not wanting climatic catastrophe has little to do with the quasi-spiritual groping of conifers, yet that is how those of us concerned about the environment have been stereotyped. I mean, I like trees as much as anyone, but the term "tree hugger" is dripping with connotations of hippie-dippy hysteria. Using it ironically to reclaim it from the anti-science crowd may make us chuckle, but it's still letting them define us on their terms."

"Democrats remain consistently cowed by the threat of Republicans calling them "weak on terror." They're going to be smeared no matter what, so they may as well go on the offensive."

"We cartoonists have a term for the instances when multiple cartoonists inadvertently draw the same thing: a Yahtzee."

"the excesses of the credit card industry illustrate why we need consumer protections."

"That so many people get their knickers in a bunch about other people's purported "laziness" while being grossly misinformed themselves has always struck me as a tremendous double-standard. Personally, I prefer the thought of my taxes going to some poverty-stricken place in rural America (where a majority of welfare dollars are spent) than to crooked contractors in Baghdad. But that's just me."

"overzealous worship of the 'magic of the market' becomes a religious belief system"

"Writers create so much value in the entertainment industry, it is criminal what a small percentage of the profits they get."

"People are suckers for plausible narratives that confirm stereotypes, no matter how untrue they may be."

"As I mention in the strip, I'm not saying Iraq isn't important. It's pretty damn egregious if I say so myself. But as John Edwards has said, "It's time for us to be patriotic about something besides war." The news media tend to elevate the importance of military matters above domestic concerns (that is, whenever they aren't talking about coked-up celebrity bimbos). Issues that affect millions of Americans, like the bankruptcy bill, receive comparatively scant coverage."

"One of the worst Bush administration acts you haven't heard about is their giving the green light to mountaintop removal mining."