Cagle World

Here’s some more art from my tightly packed garage.  This oldie was for a magazine that I forget, it is gouache, about 18″x24″. I like this one.  

This one was a magazine cover, I forget the magazine, but the art director worked in the office next to my then art-director-buddy, Monte Wolverton.

This “Beaver Bowling” painting was for a children’s magazine that gave me a long list of just what they wanted, I think everything began with the letter “B” like ballerina, blue bull, bear, boar – it was a “letter B scavenger hunt.”

I did a line of Sesame Street balloons. Here’s one from the garage.

This garage oldie was a cover for “Zillions” magazine.

Here’s another “Zillions” magazine cover. I did a lot for Zillions 25 years ago or so. Zillions was great.

Sorry about the exposure and color; these are from my iPhone camera.

More from my garage coming soon!

See yesterday’s post with more from my garage.

I’ve been cleaning out the garage, excavating lots of old artwork from my Muppet days when I was designing and illustrating licensed products. I thought I might post some iPhone pics here.

This one looks like a piece I did for some Muppet art markers – and it looks like it wrapped a thick book or package with a rat in the middle, on the spine – as line art to be colored, I’m sure.

Here another one, which is quite big and very light, which makes me think type was going over all the light parts – I think it was a complex package (judging by the crop marks where folds would go) with a window in the open space showing the product inside – which I’m guessing was a Fraggle celery vehicle toy. That’s why the characters are not in the same perspective – the box turned a corner between the characters. Hey, I designed 2,000 Muppet products/packages 30 years ago, and I don’t remember them. Also, it has been a long time since I used watercolors – all I do are political cartoons on the computer now. Sorry about the color and exposure – hey, it’s a phone camera.

Here’s another Fraggle project I don’t remember – these look like line art for sheets of Fraggle stickers, or rub-ons, or Colorforms, that probably were meant to stick onto backgrounds that I probably painted – but I have no idea. Does anybody remember this product? Jeez, the garage is full of old junk. I did lots of stuff like this. I even did Muppet Shrinky-Dinks.

I miss my old Muppet days.

In the garage I found a bunch of Muppet comics pages, like this one that I’m guessing was for Muppet Magazine. I remember going into Marvel Comics where they asked me to draw Muppet comic books, and I said, “great! lets do it!” and they said, “$50/page” Ouch. No Marvel Comics for me.

This gouache painting was for a Muppet Babies wallpaper runner. I remember they thought my Piggy face wasn’t baby enough so I corrected it with a patch. I drew Muppets on wallpaper, shoes, pajamas, toys, books, games, watches, glassware, lunch boxes, hats, purses, McDonalds toys, turnarounds for sculptors … my memory fades, but my garage never forgets.

I’ll post some more occasionally.

Donald Trump doesn’t seem to have much compassion, prosecuting immigrants seeking asylum, separating them from their children. I thought I would take a cookie-cutter approach to this issue, so here is heartless president Trump.

Ivanka Trump, who is in charge of women’s and children’s issue in the White House, reportedly urged her dad to take action to prevent the family separations, resulting in the recent executive order to keep families together for the first 20 days of the years it will take for the immigration courts to convict their parents. Ivanka hasn’t said anything compassionate publicly, so I drew her as heartless too.

Melania Trump famously took a trip to visit a facility that imprisoned immigrant children and wore a jacket imprinted with the words, “I REALLY DON’T CARE  DO U?” So I drew her as heartless too, in this heartless, cookie-cutter family cartoon portrait.

I was going to draw Trump with heartless Jeff Sessions and DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen – but I thought I would have to put a label on Kirstjen Nielsen, and three cookie-cutter cartoons seemed a little much.

Melania and Ivanka reportedly have the ear of the president on this issue; I’d like to see more cartoonists hold their heartless souls to the fire.

… Funny, now it is later in the day and I’m getting emails from readers about how I put their hearts on the wrong side. The real reason is that I’m dyslexic and sloppy. I could say they had their hearts in the right place –no. Oops.

First Lady Melania Trump is known for her sophisticated fashion choices. When she went on a recent visit to see facilities holding illegal immigrant children she chose to wear a jacket imprinted with the words: “I REALLY DON’T CARE  DO U?”

This led to lots of media speculation about whether she thought about the message on the jacket, whether the jacket reflected her own views on the subject of her trip, or whether it was a message to president Trump – who later tweeted that it was a message about the fake news media.

And it looks like I gave Melania two left hands. Sorry about that. I get mail when I do that.

Don’t miss our collections on Trump and Immigration on Cagle.com:

When President Trump described illegal immigrants as infesting America, I remembered an old cartoon I drew early in 2015 with Trump as the Pied Piper. Of-course, the Pied Piper legend was about a goofy troubadour who played his “pipe” to rid a town of rats, then, as the result of a payment dispute, he led the children out of town. Trump’s recent executive order that supposedly stopped jailing immigrant children seems to do little or nothing about the kids, who will continue to be imprisoned, one way or another –perhaps on military bases.

I lived in New York in the 1980s, and Trump was a big, local celebrity; he was a thin playboy, before he turned orange, and it took me some time to realize that present day plump-Trump doesn’t look much like the Trump I knew. Trump has filled out his figure and trimmed his formerly giant, bushy eyebrows. I had a svelte 1980s Trump in my memory as I drew this oldie with Trump entrancing the Republican Party.

Now it bothers me to look at this one. Looking at the kids in cages bothers me more.

Pedro Molina has been an editorial cartoonist in Nicaragua for more than 20 years. A crackdown by Nicaragua’s President, Daniel Ortega, threatens Pedro and other journalists who dare report the truth about the brutal regime. I asked my friend Pedro to write a column about the situation for us. – Daryl Cagle

Cartoonists often complain that politicians are unfair competition because they can be crazier than our cartoons. This is particularly true in Nicaragua, where I live and work as a cartoonist.

We have a government formed by a married couple: President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo. The only time they venture out of “El Carmen,” their private housing complex, is for ceremonial events that are covered by most television and radio media in the country, which, by the way, they own.

Despite calling themselves “socialist revolutionaries,” the Ortega family are actually multimillionaires (thanks to Venezuela’s oil business) with a special taste for things like Mercedes Benz cars, Rolex watches and caviar. Our first lady, Murillo, the most extravagant of the duo, has filled the country with huge ridiculous metal “trees” she calls “Trees of Life” at the price of $ 25,000 each; we have hundreds of them! In the second poorest country in Latin America!

As you can imagine, Nicaragua was a cartooning paradise, with lots of potentially funny material for political cartoonists like me … until April 18 of this year.

After several years of suffering electoral frauds, curtailment of rights, selective repression, attempts to censor the internet and mismanagement of environmental disasters, the last straw was the enactment of the country’s social security law that curtails the rights of current and future pensioners.

Protests began timidly in a country where protests, however small, are crushed by mobs like the JS-19 (a paramilitary arm of the government) and the police. This time, the killing of college students made peaceful protests spread like a wildfire. Dozens were killed while Ortega’s wife, in the style of George Orwell’s Big Brother, referred to war as “peace” and violence as “love.”

Protests and killings continued. May 30 is national Mother’s Day in Nicaragua. People took to the streets to honor the mothers of all the victims of the repression since last April (numbering 86 dead at that time). The Mother’s Day march became the biggest public demonstration against this government, ending when the paramilitary and police forces of Ortega and Murillo opened fire against the crowd. It was a massacre.

At the time I write this, the number of protesters killed by the regime since April 18 is over 146. It is clear that Ortega and his wife, after 11 years in power, will not resign by their own will.

There are brutal regimes around that world, why should Americans care about Nicaragua?

In early June, Nicaraguans were expecting the General Assembly of the Organization of American States to deliver an energetic condemnation about the massacre conducted by Ortega’s goons. Surprisingly, we learned that the Ortega regime and the Trump administration made some type of agreement on a softer statement, avoiding the stronger condemnation that was needed and expected.

The question is why. Why is president Trump doing favors for a thug like Ortega? Is this another favor from Trump to Ortega’s comrade, Vladimir Putin? Is it because Trump identifies with an egomaniac that clings to power no matter what? Is it in exchange for support from Ortega against Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela?

There are many questions, but few answers.

I hope these questions find a way into Americans’ hearts and minds. Why is Trump aligned with a genocidal leader like Ortega? Congress is discussing Nicaragua now, and readers can take action to help us stop the killings. Please call your representatives in Congress and urge them to care about Nicaragua. Why? Because of our shared humanity; or perhaps because instability in Central America could mean many more immigrants trying to get into the USA soon. Please call your congressman and spread the word that what is happening in Nicaragua is NOT a war; this is an armed state murdering unarmed citizens.

– Pedro Molina, editorial cartoonist, Nicaragua

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Forcibly separating children from their parents at the border makes for lots of great editorial cartoons. I did this one over the weekend and I’m working on another one now.

There is an interesting disconnect in the press about the criticism of this ugly Trump policy. The more alarm raised by critics, and the more attention raised to the separations and detentions, the more likely it becomes that refugees will be deterred from entering into the USA illegally, and therefore, the more Trump will be beloved by his heartless base – who see the Bible as supporting Trump’s immigration planning.

Still, the bad press must sting the ICE agents and the people who carry out this heartless policy, like a bit of pee to the eye.

I drew a pro-Trump cartoon again – I know how my readers hate that! Trump is getting hammered in the press today for testy comments following a testy G7 summit in Canada, with Trump saying, “We’re like the piggy bank that everyone is robbing.”

I think “suckling” is a better fit than “robbing”. Trump ran his campaign on toughening up trade relationships, which is something I like. Trump also complained about our allies not paying enough for  their defense, and depending on the US military subsidizing them. I also liked that Trump promised to get us out of foreign wars. I’d like to see Trump do more to keep these promises, especially the one about keeping out of wars. Trump seems to want to meddle around the globe poking every bee hive, at least as much every other president –better that he meddles with tariffs than wars.

My readers, who strongly object when I draw something that veers out of my liberal slot, will have plenty to complain about with this cartoon.

There are so many great quotes between Trump and l’il Kim that I thought it would be fun to draw the best quotes into a thinking cartoon.

I know. I know. Wordy cartoons are bad. But I didn’t write this one, and the words are crazy!

I think I’ll start drawing l’il Kim with devil horn hair from now on.

As vile as Roseanne’s comments were, I look forward to opportunities like this to draw something other than Trump! Here’s my Roseanne hara-kiri cartoon.

Here are some of my Roseanne-racist-tweet/show-cancelled cartoons! This one is by RJ Matson:

Roseanne has her defenders, among them our far-right cartoonist Sean Delonas:

This one is by my buddy, Taylor Jones, who looks for every opportunity to draw monkey butts:

We’re collecting more Roseanne cartoons as they come in at Cagle.com! Come look!