I have been doing weekly cartoons for the local paper since the early 1980’s. For the past year I have been doing different cartoons for two local papers. That means I have done a lot of cartoons over the decades. Most of them are based on humorous everyday things that happen, but periodically I get mad about something and do a more political cartoon to get it off of my chest.
While I throw a lot of cartoons out there, and people come up and tell me that they really thought a particular one was funny, or that they cut a favorite out and have it taped to their refrigerator, I have never gotten such a big blast of positive responses as I have gotten for the one you see above, which was in one of the papers last week. Here is the back story.
Last fall in McBride’s municipal election, the voters threw out the old government that had been doing a lot of stuff in secret, and were unresponsive to the desires of the public. In their place a new slate of municipal officials were elected to replace them. Since then the booted politicians have been on a campaign to cause trouble for the newly elected officials, trying to make them look bad. Blogs were created for this purpose, and a never ending line of negative things have been tried to paint the new council in a bad light.
I was getting pretty fed up with all the sour grapes, and came up with the idea for the cartoon. When it was published, it certainly hit a chord with the public, and I have gotten a huge amount of positive feedback, including phone calls, and people stopping me on the street to tell me it was a great cartoon.
It doesn’t happen very often, but it feels good to occasionally really “nail it.”
My paintings can be seen at: www.davidmarchant.ca
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