Coup Cartoon

and self doubt

Substack 19

I look at my own work and I’m pained. I see mistakes, shortcuts, and a general lack of ability. I want to be better. When The New Yorker buys a cartoon I usually draw it five or six times trying to make it perfect. It never is perfect. A line in the movie The Outfit (2022) resonated with me. The tailor says, “If you don’t aim for perfection, you can never make anything great and yet true perfection is impossible. So, at the finish, you must reconcile yourself to failure.”

With artists I admire, Gahan Wilson, Basil Wolverton, Robert Crumb, and Will Eisner, every line looks intentional. They seem fully themselves. I wonder if those artists were pained looking at their own art, if they felt they were reconciling with failure. Were they pained by their own style? Maybe, at some point in their lives they decided to lean in to their own style. Will I ever hit that point? When is style expression and not a short cut?

“I was not a very good painter, and I was not as good a writer as I should have been. These two ineptitudes put together made one ineptitude.” said one of the best comic book creators ever, Will Eisner.

We plug away, give it everything we have along with our personal limitations of time and talent, and hope for the best.

The opening cartoon above was a line casually tossed off by my friend, Andrew Aydin. It’s great having smart friends. He later sent me a graphic listing US backed military coups in Latin America. It looks like it’s from Redfish Media but I’m not positive.

I have to admit that I’ve been overwhelmed since the election. The last time we had Trump in office I did a couple of books in protest, Sh*t My President Says and The Mueller Report Graphic Novel. This time, I don’t know. We’ll see.