Cartoon Lessons by Charles Kuhn (1892-1989)

Though born in Illinois, cartoonist Charles "Doc" Kuhn lived and worked in Indiana for many decades. Kuhn was an editorial cartoonist at the Indianapolis News from 1922 to 1948. In middle age, he decided to make a change in his cartooning career, launching Grandma, a syndicated comic strip, on April 14, 1947. Originally syndicated by Richardson Feature Service of Indianapolis, Grandma was picked up by King Features Syndicate the following year and ran in American newspapers until 1969. Kuhn lived with his wife in Acton, Indiana, just southeast of Indianapolis, until 1964, when they moved to Florida. Kuhn died on January 16, 1989, at age ninety-six.

Like so many early cartoonists, Kuhn was a jack-of-all-trades. In addition to drawing editorial cartoons and a nationally syndicated comic strip, he created instructional books on cartooning for children. These included The Boy and Girl Cartoonist: A Complete Course in Cartooning, published by Saalfield Publishing Company of Akron, Ohio, in 1936. The cartoons below are from that book.

Charles Kuhn's Lessons 57 and 58 from The Boy and Girl Cartoonist (1936), showing the stereotyped Republican elephant and Democratic donkey. They look very different here of course . . .

Now see if you can guess which one has his big, fat hand out to the taxpayer. Look closely. Can you tell the difference? Neither can I. And these are the people we're going to elect today and then install in office in a few short weeks.

Text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Dele Jegede in Encyclopedia of African Political Cartoonists

Born in 1945 in Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria, artist, teacher, cartoonist, and art historian Dele Jegede studied art history at Indiana University in 1979-1983. From 2002 to 2005, he was a professor of art and head of the Department of Art at Indiana State University in Terre Haute.

For years it was hard to find anything about Dr. Jegede on the Internet, least of all images of his art. That has changed. There is a lengthy Wikipedia page on him. From that I have learned that in 2018, he was inducted into the Society of Nigerian Artists Hall of Fame. There is also an entry on Dele Jegede on the website Africa Cartoons: Encyclopedia of African Political Cartooning. Here is a link to the main page:

https://africacartoons.com/cartoonists/

And here is a link to the page on Dr. Jegede himself:

https://africacartoons.com/cartoonists/map/nigeria/jegede-dele/

Congratulations and best wishes to Dr. Jegede for the recognition he has received.

Copyright 2022, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Tom Floyd (1928-2011)

Cartoonist and commercial artist Thomas Wesley Floyd, Sr., was born on July 13, 1928,* in Gary, Indiana, to William Webster Floyd (1894-1936), a laborer in a steel mill, and Alice James Floyd (dates unknown), a housewife. Tom Floyd's parents came from the South, William from Wetumpka, Alabama, Alice from Mississippi. They were married on March 1, 1923, in Crown Point, Indiana.

Tom Floyd was their fourth child, but only three of those four showed up in the census of 1930, Tom, his older sister (Mary) Juanita, and his older brother James Frederick. All three were born in Indiana, and the family lived in Gary, the largest American city founded in the twentieth century and one known for its steel mills. In the census of 1940, Tom and his siblings were living in the household of their maternal grandparents, Walter and Ollie James. Walter James died in 1945.

Tom Floyd graduated from the University of Illinois in 1953 with a bachelor's degree in commercial art. He ran his own advertising business in Gary and worked as a designer of visual aids in the training department of Inland Steel Company, also in Gary. By 1971, he was vice president of W.V. Rouse & Associates of Chicago, a management consulting firm engaged in minority relations. Over the course of his career, Floyd also worked as an editorial cartoonist, single-panel cartoonist, comic strip artist, and comic book scriptwriter.

Race and minority relations were a continuing theme and interest in his life and work. He is best known for his cartoon collection Integration Is a Bitch! (1969), subtitled "An Assessment by a Black-White Collar Worker," but he also wrote and drew the cartoons for a second book, The Hook Book . . . The ABC's of Drug Abuse . . ., which he self-published in 1973 under his own firm, Tom Floyd Visuals of Gary, Indiana. It's a cute book on a serious and deadly subject. I stand with the late Mr. Floyd in his opposition to drugs and drug abuse, which has helped to ruin not just black people but all kinds of people in America and the world over. Integration Is a Bitch! won the Book of the Year Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews in 1971.

In 2012, comics historian Allan Holtz published a monumental work, American Newspaper Comics: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide. In the index of authors and cartoonists, there is a single-name credit, "Floyd," for a person who created three comic features for the Chicago Defender during the 1960s. I don't think there can be any doubt that the artist in question was Tom Floyd. The three features credited to "Floyd" are:

• At the Brink with J.J., which ran from December 11, 1965, to February 3, 1968 (It was renamed King Freedom. I don't have dates for that title.)
• Color Cuties, which ran from December 11, 1965, to March 30, 1968
• Integration Chuckles, which ran from December 11, 1965, to March 23, 1968

I have a sample only of the first title (shown below). Comparing a sample of Integration Chuckles with the cartoons in Integration Is a Bitch! might be all the evidence we need to show that "Floyd" and Tom Floyd were the same person. (A comparison of signatures, also shown below, makes pretty good evidence, too.)

Beginning in the 1960s, Floyd was involved in a project for which every comic book fan, especially every Hoosier comic book fan, can shout Yay! The project was a comic book about a black superhero called Blackman, who flies by pulling on his own bootstraps and who likes to eat peanuts. (We should remember that Floyd's parents were both Southerners.) Blackman finally made it into print in 1981 as a one-shot comic book pencilled by Eric O'Kelley and inked by Danny Loggins working from Floyd's script. It was published by Leader Comics Group, which is supposed to have been based in Indiana. I would like to think that that makes Eric O'Kelley and Danny Loggins Hoosier cartoonists, as well. By the way, Tom Floyd developed a supergroup that included Blackwoman, The Brotherhood, and The Big Dunker. 

In the 1980s, Floyd drew editorial cartoons for the Gary Post-Tribune. One of his drawings was included in the 1984 edition of Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, edited by Charles Brooks. (See below.) Tom Floyd married Wynona Marie Gibson, a native Illinoisan, on February 25, 1956, in Cook County, Illinois, presumably in Chicago. They had three children. Thomas W. Floyd, Sr., died on September 22, 2011, in Gary, Indiana. He was eighty-three years old.

*Although his year of birth is everywhere given as 1929, Tom Floyd's birth certificate states clearly that he was born in 1928.

A cartoon from Integration Is a Bitch! by Tom Floyd. Floyd's book was published more than half a century ago, yet many--if not all--of his cartoons are still pertinent. This is one of my favorites--". . . And this is our Negro!"--an outright acknowledgment of a kind of tokenism that is never supposed to be spoken of or noticed. Note that one of the people applauding is a clergyman. I take that to be a poke at the virtue-signaling liberalism of mainstream religion in America.

At the Brink with J.J. by "Floyd" from the comics page of the Tri-State Defender, Memphis, Tennessee, July 9, 1966.

The cover of Blackman #1, a one-shot comic book written by Tom Floyd, penciled by Eric O'Kelley, and inked by Danny Loggins.

An editorial cartoon by Tom Floyd from the Gary Post-Tribune from 1984. Note the signature on the upper right and its resemblance to the signature in the comic strip At the Brink with J.J. from 1966. The same signature is on the cartoons for Integration Is a Bitch!

A photograph of Tom Floyd with his comic-book superhero, Blackman, in an article from 1995. Photograph by Milbert Orlando Brown.

Text copyright 2021, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Christmas Cartoons by Eugene Craig (1916-1984)

Eugene Craig was born on September 5, 1916, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He graduated from high school at age seventeen and went to work first for a sign painter, then for the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel. He stayed with the Sentinel until 1951 when he took a job with the Brooklyn Eagle. From 1955 to 1981, Craig drew cartoons for the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch.

Craig was known mostly for his editorial and political cartoons. From 1950 to 1962 he won six Freedoms Foundation awards for his cartooning. He also created the design for a U.S. postage stamp commemorating the Battle of Brooklyn (below). From 1961 to 1974, he drew a syndicated cartoon feature called Forever Female. Above is a sample from the Columbus Dispatch from December 14, 1969, fifty years ago this month. Eugene Craig deserves one more credit, an unusual one: he helped to introduce a young Gray Morrow (1934-2001) to the world of cartooning and comic art.

Eugene Craig died on March 18, 1984, in Winchester, Ohio.

Text copyright 2019, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Indiana Cartoon News 2019-Part Two

Mitch Daniels on Political Cartooning (and Political Cartoonist Gary Varvel)

In July of this year, Mitch Daniels, current president of Purdue University and former governor of Indiana, wrote about political cartooning in the United States, more specifically on the decline of a once great form of graphic art:

The digital age, for all its beneficial wonders, has left some regrettable casualties in its wake. No loss has been more troublesome for many of us than the decline of print journalism as our principal medium of information. . . .

With that development, we’re losing something I have always appreciated almost as much. The political cartoonist, an influential voice in public debates for centuries, is among our most endangered species. According to "Drawn & Quartered," a history of American political cartoons by Stephen Hess and Sandy Northrop, 2,000 editorial cartoonists were employed a century ago; estimates of the number of staff cartoonists working today range from about two dozen to maybe 40. [Boldface added.]

The Indianapolis Star lost its own political cartoonist earlier this year when Gary Varvel retired after nearly a quarter of a century at his post. President Daniels called Mr. Varvel the cartoonist he will miss the most.

You can read Mitch Daniels' piece, "Political Cartooning Is Becoming a Lost Art," originally published on July 31, 2019, on the website of the Washington Post, but if you don't have access to that site, you can probably find it just about anywhere, for it was widely reprinted in the nation's surviving newspapers.

(Maybe we should note that the onetime dean of American political cartoonists, John T. McCutcheon [1870-1949] of the Chicago Tribune, graduated from Purdue University in 1889. This year, then, is a nice, even anniversary year of the founding of Purdue University [1869], McCutcheon's graduation from that institution, and his death.)

Cartoon Controversy at Indiana University

A cartoon controversy erupted at Indiana University in November when the Center for the Study of the Middle East (CSME) sent out a newsletter and flier in which it reprinted a cartoon by the notoriously antisemitic Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff (b. 1968). There were of course objections to the use of the cartoon, which was distributed on Monday, November 4, 2019. The next day, the director of CSME, Feisal al-Istrabadi, sent out an email message apologizing for the use of the cartoon.

On November 8, the Indiana Daily Student published a letter to the editor entitled "How the Israel lobby at IU suppresses speech for Palestinian rights," accessible by clicking here. A letter in response, entitled "Response to Palestine Solidarity Committee," appeared on November 13. Click here to read that one. In between those two dates, on November 10, the Indiana Daily Student published an article called "Center for the Study of the Middle East apologizes after circulating flier with alleged anti-Semitic image," explaining the affair. That article is by Grace Ybarra, and you can read it by clicking here.

One of the problems with this and similar cartoon controversies might actually be described as a meta-problem: we can't see the offending cartoon for ourselves, even in this Internet Age in which just about anything can fly around the world at light speed. I despise the leftism and antisemitism that animate people like Carlos Latuff, but that doesn't mean we should not be able to see his cartoons. In fact, the whole purpose of freedom of speech and of the press is so that people with whom we might disagree may still express themselves freely. I guess my question is this: are our feelings and sensibilities really so tender and sensitive that we may not look upon the things that might offend us? And when a cartoon becomes news itself, are we not permitted to see it or consider it?

Incidentally, Mr. Latuff has contributed to Mad magazine--the Brazilian version--about which I wrote a few days ago.

Paul Gray Still Cartooning at 89

Turning to a happier topic, I would like to write about Paul Gray of Carlisle, Indiana, who is still cartooning at age eighty-nine. His art career began at age three when his older brother taught him to draw. Mr. Gray continued drawing while serving in the U.S. military in Germany during the 1950s. A high point of his career was his fourteen years of contributing gag cartoons to The Saturday Evening Post, from the 1960s to the 1970s. He also contributed to Pentecostal Evangel, the weekly magazine of the Assemblies of God.

Paul Gray became a pastor in 1961 and spent more than half a century in that position, finally to retire in 2015. Since 2002, he has drawn a weekly religious cartoon, Shades of Gray, for the Sullivan Daily Times in Sullivan, Indiana. You can read more about Paul Gray in the following articles:

• "89-year-old Carlisle cartoonist, minister still hard at work," dated October 31, 2019, on the website of WIBQ radio, here. 

• "Drawing Inspiration" by Eric Tiansay, dated December 6, 2019, on the website of Assemblies of God, here.

• "'Shades of Gray' brings a hint of sunshine to local papers," date unknown, on the website of the Sullivan, Indiana, Daily Times, here. You will need special access to read it.

I will have two more pieces of news, sad news and yet in some ways a celebration, to end the year.

Original text copyright 2019, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Leo Ross Porter (1889-1918)

I wrote some time ago that I knew of only one Hoosier cartoonist who died while on active duty in the U.S. military. He was Asa Henderson King (1880-1919) of Boone and Clinton counties, who died at Camp Galliard in the Panama Canal Zone on June 6, 1919. This summer, though, I discovered another, one who not only died while on active duty but was actually killed in action, one hundred years ago as the Great War was in its final months. On this anniversary of the ending of that war, the war that was to have ended all wars, I would like to remember and honor him as we remember all who fought and died, in the mud and trenches, among the shell craters, on the wire, in the bombed-out cities, above the battlefields, and in the maritime approaches to a continent at war.

Leo Ross Porter was born on February 26, 1889, in Metz, a small town in Steuben County, Indiana, not far from the Ohio state line. When he was five years old, his parents, John Wesley Porter (1855-1933) and Josephine Porter (1856-1933), moved their family to Pleasant Lake, a town a little south of Angola, Indiana. "Leo was always a lover of art and nature," wrote the Steuben Republican. "He always liked birds and animals and they seemed to know him as a friend. He made a special study of birds, and when a boy, used to watch them by the hour, studying their habits, and he could answer almost any question concerning them." (1)

When he was about twenty, Porter went west, working and traveling for about a year and a half. He also studied art for a short time in Kansas City. Upon his return to the Midwest, Porter worked at a wholesale firm in Detroit before leaving to take up his art studies again. He attended the Lockwood Art Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and graduated in 1914. From 1914 to April 1917, he worked as a designer and cartoonist for the Lansing State Journal. Then war came.

Porter enlisted in the U.S. Army at Lansing in April 1917. He trained with his unit, the 119th Field Artillery, at Camp Grayling, Michigan, then, beginning in July 1917, at Camp McArthur, Texas. At Camp McArthur, he was assigned to the reconnaissance section of his headquarters unit as a drawer of maps and sketches. The 119th shipped out for France on February 26, 1918, and went right into the firing line and what for Porter would be five months of continuous action. He was at the Second Battle of the Marne, his unit helping to capture the city of Fismes. On August 12, Porter was wounded at Château-Thierry. While he was being carried away by his comrades, a shell burst nearly tore off his left leg. Despite the grievous wounds he had received, Porter joked, "Well, I guess I'll have to get a peg leg." (2) Instead he died two days later, on August 14, 1918. Leo Ross Porter was the first Steuben County resident to die in action.

Three years passed before his body was returned stateside for burial. His father received the body in Indiana in July 1921. On July 31, 1921, a funeral for Leo Ross Porter took place at the Methodist Church in Angola. He was buried at Circle Hill Cemetery in that city. Porter was survived by his parents; three brothers, Jay, Otis, who served with the 338th Infantry in France, and Lester; and a sister, Audrey. The local newspaper, the Steuben Republican, remembered the fallen soldier as "of a quiet disposition, never talking much, and his remarks were always to the point." (3)

In the year following Porter's funeral and interment, local veterans formed the Ross Porter Chapter of Disabled Veterans of the World War. On May 31, 1922, the men marched in the Decoration Day parade in Angola. Afterwards they went to Porter's grave for a memorial service. You can still visit his grave today. His headstone is engraved: "Leo R. Porter/Killed in France/1889-1918."

Notes

(1) "Leo Ross Porter." Obituary. Steuben Republican, October 2, 1918, page 1.

(2) "Steuben County Hero Will Be Buried Today." Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, July 31, 1921, page 27.

(3) "Leo Ross Porter." Obituary. Steuben Republican, October 2, 1918, page 1.

For years journalist Earle R. Pitt amused readers of the Lansing State Journal with his humorous columns published under the heading "The City Hall Grouch." For part of that time, Pitt's columns were illustrated by a young Hoosier cartoonist, Leo Ross Porter. Here's an example from April 5, 1916, exactly a year and a day before Congress declared war on Germany. 

And here is the cartoonist, Leo Ross Porter, who was killed in the war.

Original text copyright 2018, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! . . . To Indianapolis!

If you watch the mainstream media and listen to one of our major political parties, you know that America is crawling with Russians, especially on this day when we choose our elected leaders--completely under their influence of course. Russian influence that is. Well, in the good old days of the Cold War when the aforementioned political party felt more kindly towards them, Russians came to Indianapolis. And they were armed. But not with rifles and bazookas. Instead they used pens, for they were cartoonists.

Yes, sixty years ago, in May 1958, while the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race was going on, the city was invaded by two Russian cartoonists, Vitalii Goriaev (1910-1982) and Ivan Semeonov, who worked in their native country for the humor magazine Krokodil. They came at the invitation of journalists, Jameson G. Campaigne, editorial page director of the Indianapolis Star, and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Charles G. Werner of the same paper. Their visit would coincide not only with the Indianapolis 500 but also with the national convention of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC). Indianapolis was supposed to have been a closed city to visitors from Russia, but the U.S. Department of State consented to Campaigne's request and allowed them in. No one suspected that the Russians would escape from their keepers and make a trip to the big city. Not Indianapolis, though. New York. That big city.

Goriaev and Semeonov arrived in New York towards the end of May 1958. Horrified by traffic but excited by the movement and "holiday mood" of the city, they drew pictures of skyscrapers, art galleries, pigeons, children, American women, and big American cars. As the date of the 500 approached, the two made their way west, to Indianapolis, where, on the evening of Thursday, May 29, they attended a reception and banquet at the Continental Hotel, hosted by Eugene Pulliam, publisher of the Indianapolis Star. On hand were forty-four other cartoonists, including Hoosier cartoonists Karl Kae Knecht of the Evansville Courier, William B. "Robbie" Robinson of the Indianapolis News, Eldon Pletcher of the Sioux City, Iowa, Journal-Tribune, Bill Crawford of the Newark News, Eugene Craig of the Columbus Dispatch, Cy Hungerford of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Charles Werner of the Indianapolis Star.

The big day came on Friday, May 30, when the cartoonists were in the stands for the running of the race. The beginning of the race was marred by a terrible crash in which driver Pat O'Connor was killed. Goriaev made a sketch of his fellow spectators hours later as the moment of victory came for Jimmy Bryan. His sketch appeared in the Indianapolis News the next day (see below). I'm pretty sure Russians didn't influence the outcome of the race, though.

The convention of the AAEC came to a close on Sunday, May 31. Goriaev, Semeonov, and their translator, Lev Petrov, were supposed to have continued westward, to Hannibal, Missouri, then to Disneyland, before making a return trip east to Boston. Instead the Russians went on the lam, escaping back to New York City, where they made a study of art and cartooning before being found again on June 6. There didn't seem to be any harm done, though, and the men stayed in the city until June 13.

Life noticed that Vitalii Goriaev and Ivan Semeonov had come to America. In its issue of June 16, 1958, the magazine featured a two-page spread of the artists' drawings. Back home again, Goriaev had his work, done in fiber-tipped pen and watercolor, exhibited at Tret'iakov Gallery in Moscow in 1958. He called it "Americans at Home." For twenty days in the late spring of 1958, he had had a chance to observe us in our natural environment and to taste in the Circle City what the Indianapolis News called "Hoosier freedom." I wonder if he also questioned, as the News suggested he might, his role as a cartoonist in the Soviet Union.

Happy Election Day, America!

From the Indianapolis News, May 31, 1958.

From Life, June 16, 1958.

Text copyright 2018, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Indiana Illustrators in Puck and Life

More than a couple of Indiana illustrators did work for Puck, Judge, and the old Life humor magazines. Two of the earliest and most well known were Albert Levering (1869-1929) of Hope, Indiana, and Walter H. Gallaway (1870-1911) of Pendleton and Indianapolis. Following is some of their art.

Life, Auto Number, January 19, 1905, with cover art by Albert Levering. In addition to being an illustrator, Levering was a cartoonist. His training as an architect showed through in his precision and complete confidence in depicting buildings and machinery.

Levering may not have been right on the timing or appearance of the vehicles shown here, but he foresaw that horses would one day become pets rather than beasts of burden. Note the lap-horse held by the woman on the right. It probably won't be long before miniature horses are called "therapy animals" or "service animals" and that you'll find them sitting next to you on the plane.

Levering's cartoon portrait of Mark Twain, here used as the cover of a color insert in Life, July 13, 1905, became one of his more well-known works.

In the early 1900s, caricaturists often depicted well-known men as having big heads and little bodies. Here, with William Howard Taft, Levering did the opposite. The result is funny, though not very flattering to our heaviest of presidents.

You don't have to know who William Waldorf Astor was to gain some insight into his personality and character by way of Albert Levering's very devastating caricature from Life, 1905. 

One hundred years ago this season, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was in a bit of a pickle. His country was losing its war and he was only a few months away from abdicating his throne and fleeing to Holland. In 1905, Albert Levering caricatured him for Life, and though this portrait isn't as devastating as the one above of Astor, the artist nevertheless had his fun. Note "der Kaiser's" own self-portrait and book of poems. Note also the little cannon, which became a very big howitzer--Big Bertha--just a few years after this drawing was made. The Kaiser is just another example of how personal and psychological failings on a very individual level can have outsized effects on history and the rest of humanity. We are today still paying the price for those kinds of failings, one hundred years after the end of the Great War. 

Albert Levering was most active during the Progressive Era when trusts were seen as a great enemy and trust-busting was a favorite activity among politicians. Trusts, here disguised as corpulent girls (they're probably supposed to be caricatures of a real-life person but I don't know who that might have been) dance around a man (is he supposed to represent the public?) in a drawing captioned "A Maypolitical Party" (a somewhat clumsy pun on "Maypole Party"). The month for this issue of Puck is obvious, but I can't read the year. Sorry for the poor image. What we need, I think, is a complete and easily accessible, searchable, portable, and necessarily digital version of Puck for all to see.

Walt Gallaway did at least two covers for Puck, this one from June 26, 1901 . . .

And this one, from September 13, 1903. Note the very Hoosier-looking men with big bellies, big, unkempt beards, slouch hats, big boots, and baggy pants.

Text copyright 2018, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

The International Day of the Cartoonist 2018

On December 5, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. There is talk of discrimination, public accommodations, and so on in the case. Make no mistake, though. What is at stake here is whether the State can require an artist to create something he wishes not to create. Larger still are the questions of whether the individual serves himself or the State, whether he can be made to perform labor against his will by the State, and whether there are such things as private enterprise and private property, or whether those things are merely extensions of the State and exist to serve the purposes of the State. I'll have more to say on these questions below.

Masterpiece Cakeshop of Lakewood, Colorado, is owned and run by Jack Phillips. Mr. Phillips may or may not be a cartoonist, but he is an artist. Anyone who doubts that should see his work and the way in which he creates it. Although he may not be a cartoonist, I write about Jack Phillips today, the International Day of the Cartoonist, because of the issues involved in the case against him and in his case against the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. I started observing this day in 2015 when five cartoonists were murdered in Paris in the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. They were murdered because they dared to draw what they pleased. I have since written about cartoonists who have been oppressed, threatened, harassed, tortured, imprisoned, or killed, again, for their art. Usually, when artists are treated this way, it is at the hands of the State, or, in the case of radical Islam, a political mass movement with aspirations towards control of the State. Jack Phillips won't be tortured or killed for his art, but he has already been harassed and may face other punishments for choosing not to create something he wishes not to create. My question is this: If he and artists like him do not comply with the requirements of the State, what shall be done with them? Shall they be fined, even to the point of bankruptcy or impoverishment? Shall they be endlessly harassed? Driven out of business? Imprisoned? Shall they have their substance eaten out? Or should we simply allow them their freedom?

* * *

In thinking about cartoonists and the Masterpiece Cakeshop case last month, I developed a hypothesis. My hypothesis is this: that the nation's political cartoonists, specifically those who lean to the left, will perceive the implications of this case for the artist, namely, that if one artist can be made by the State to create something against his will, then no artist is safe from official coercion; and, if those political cartoonists understand the implications, they are likely to remain silent on the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. My hypothesis does not include conservative political cartoonists, as artists of that political or philosophical persuasion are almost certain to support the rights of the individual over the power and authority of the State.

So how do you test a hypothesis like this one? Well, I did what everyone does these days: I searched the Internet. Before doing that, though, I drew up a short list of political or editorial cartoonists who I believe lean to the left. In alphabetical order, they are:

• David Horsey (b. 1951) of the Los Angeles Times, formerly of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

• Mike Luckovich (b. 1960) of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

• Joel Pett (b. 1953) of the Lexington Herald-Leader

• Ted Rall (b. 1963), a syndicated cartoonist

• Tom Toles (b. 1951) of the Washington Post

David Horsey and Joel Pett, by the way, were born in Indiana. Whether they like it or not, I'll call them Hoosiers.

As it turns out, I found very few drawings from political cartoonists on the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. The cartoons I did find are pretty mild, I think, and don't address what I believe to be the real heart of the case, nor do they come out with any strong support for the two men who made the original complaint against Masterpiece Cakeshop or for the general idea behind their complaint. None was drawn by the cartoonists on my list.

Mike Keefe (b. 1946), a syndicated cartoonist with the Colorado Independent, formerly of the Denver Post, drew a cartoon dated December 7, 2017, showing Moses holding the Ten Commandments and stating: "And if you violate any one of these, no wedding cake for you!" (You can see the cartoon at the website of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists [AAEC], here.) That apparent allusion to Seinfeld may be a deflection from the far more serious topic at hand, in other words a way of noticing the topic without saying anything serious about it.

Chip Bok (b. 1952) of the Akron Beacon Journal, another cartoonist who was not on my list, also drew a cartoon commenting on the controversy. It shows a black man sitting at a lunch counter in Selma, Alabama, in 1965 and saying to the waitress: "Now that I'm sitting at your lunch counter, I'll have a slice of gay wedding cake." (The cartoon is dated December 9, 2017. You can see it on Mr. Bok's website by clicking here.) I don't think Mr. Bok's cartoon is especially well thought out. In fact, it seems to me practically a non-sequitur. But if Chip Bok's purpose is to equate homosexuality with being black in America, he ought to have studied our country's 400-year history of enslavement, rape, murder, torture, lynching, oppression, segregation, discrimination, and other offenses against African-Americans before making such a foolish calculation.

The most pointed cartoon that I found on the topic is actually from 2015 and was drawn by David Horsey. In it, an angry cake baker is handing out slices of wedding cake to a crowd of well-dressed people. The triple-tier cake (a devil's food cake, I'm sure) is decorated with the words: "Have a Happy Abomination." The cake topper is two little devils holding hands. The cake baker is saying in anger: "Which one of you sodomites wants the first piece?!" On the left is a caption that reads, "Caveat: You may not want a wedding cake made by someone who thinks that your marriage is evil . . ." Mr. Horsey's cartoon (to be found on the website of the Los Angeles Times, here) accompanies his own opinion piece on the religious liberty law advanced in Indiana in 2015. Mr. Horsey's piece may be slightly snooty, but he closes it with this reasonable consideration:

Gay activists are winning battle after battle, and may want to show some magnanimity in victory. If, in the end, it really comes down to a matter of a few wedding photographers, florists and bakers who disapprove of same-sex marriage, what is gained by forcing them to provide their services? If somebody doesn’t want to share the joyful occasion, does anyone really want to have them around? No wedding needs to be spoiled by a party pooper who thinks committed, lifelong love is a sin. 

I would like to think that David Horsey's opinion has not changed in the last two years. On the other hand, he might very well be flayed by the leftist media for writing something like that today. We should be clear, here, that Jack Phillips is almost certainly not like Mr. Horsey's cartoon caricature, nor is any true Christian likely to be. But then men of David Horsey's political stripe are permitted to trade in broad and inaccurate stereotypes where others are not.

In any case, you can't prove a negative. The fact that I found only two cartoons on the topic of the Masterpiece Cakeshop case and none drawn by the five cartoonists on my list does not really confirm my hypothesis. (Maybe I should have designed my experiment better.) In other words, an absence of evidence doesn't make a firm foundation for a case. But if left-leaning political cartoonists remained silent on the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, might that indicate something about where they stand? Maybe. Maybe not. There has certainly been enough else to keep them busy for these many months. Maybe I can test my hypothesis again when the Supreme Court announces its decision later this year.

* * *

A year ago today, I wrote about the cartoonist Joe Szabo, who was born and educated in Communist-controlled Hungary before fleeing to the United States. (Click here to read that entry.) Here he is discussing journalism in his native country with his friend Len Lear:

Journalists in a Communist country are considered a part of the political apparatus. You're not a watchdog, just the opposite. You are a lapdog. You are not there to print the news or to be objective. You are there to make the authorities in government look good and not to deviate from the party line. You are basically a public relations person for the rulers and oppressors.

Substitute the word artists for journalists, and you begin to close in on the questions central to the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, namely: Is an artist his own person, an individual free to express himself or not as he chooses, or is he simply a part of the apparatus of the State, merely one of a collective compelled to serve its purposes? Is an artist a free and autonomous person or, in Joe Szabo's words, is he "basically a public relations person for . . . rulers and oppressors"? Does an artist own his own property? Does an artist have any right or claim to his own time, labor, energy, and creativity? Or do all of these things simply exist within the domain of the State, to be held, distributed, and controlled by the State as it sees fit? Is the artist his or her own master, or are artists simply servants of political power? And if an artist is such a servant, then what about everyone else? Are we not servants also?

I'll close with two quotes on totalitarianism. One is from an artist, T.H. White in his novel The Once and Future King (1958):

"Everything which is not forbidden is compulsory."

The other is from one of the architects of totalitarianism, Benito Mussolini:

"Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."

Shall it be forbidden the artist to create or not to create as he or she pleases? Shall artistic expression for the State's purposes be made compulsory? Shall anything be permitted to reside outside the State? Or shall we as artists--and as people--be free?

Original text copyright 2017, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

George W. Spayth (1892-1969)

Photographer, cartoonist, reporter, editor, and publisher George William Spayth was born on January 28, 1892, in New Fostoria or North Baltimore, Ohio. His parents were Frank M. and Hattie (Landon) Spayth. He had one brother, Franklin J. Spayth. George Spayth quit school to help support his family and had only an eighth-grade education. In 1900, the family was in Henry, Ohio, and in 1910 in Lima. By then Spayth's mother had remarried.

George Spayth got his first newspaper job in 1913 as a cub reporter in Janesville, Wisconsin. Over the years, he would work for the Milwaukee News, Washington Times, Washington Herald, Galveston News, Houston Chronicle, Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, Reading Times, and Camden Courier-Post. In 1917, he was in Washington, D.C., and working as an artist out of the Kenois Building. By 1920, he was in the area of Galveston and Houston, Texas. He started as an editorial cartoonist at the Fort Wayne (Indiana) Journal-Gazette in 1920. When he was a child, he had gone on a train ride with his mother and had passed through Fort Wayne. It was the first big city he had ever seen. Spayth spent the first half of the 1920s there, not far from his original home in northwestern Ohio.

In addition to drawing cartoons for the Journal-Gazette, Spayth gave chalk talks in and around Fort Wayne and taught commercial art at the Knights of Columbus Evening School in his adopted city. By 1928, he was in Pennsylvania, where he worked for the Reading Times. His historical-educational comic strip Berks History in Pictures began appearing in the  Times on September 17, 1928. The initial plan was for the strip to cover Berks County history up to the present in 300 installments.

Spayth was still in Reading in 1930, but by 1932, he had moved further east, to Dunellen, New Jersey. He served as editor of The Chronicle of Dunellen before establishing his own newspaper business. From the 1930s until he sold his business in 1967, Spayth published what were called the Spayth Weeklies--The Weekly Call, The Piscataway Chronicle, The Middlesex Mirror, and The Store News--all under his company name of The County Press, Inc.

As he was nearing the end of his newspaper career, Spayth self-published a book, It Was Fun the Hard Way: The Autobiography of a Small Town Editor (1964). He was also an inventor whose brainchildren included a bookmark that automatically kept its place should the reader fall asleep while reading, as well as a device for straightening parking meters. He was married twice, first to Annis L. (Salsbury) Spayth (1882-1957), also a journalist, second to Elizabeth (Crosswell) Spayth. His children by his first wife were Lillian June, Sue, and Joseph. You can find Sue Spayth Riley on the Internet.

George W. Spayth died August 21, 1969, at his home in Dunellen, New Jersey. He was seventy-seven years old.

An editorial cartoon by George W. Spayth from the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, December 4, 1923.

What I believe are the first five installments of Berks History in Pictures by George W. Spayth, from the Reading Times, September 26, 1928. In his obituary, Spayth was described as a syndicated cartoonist, but his name does not appear in Allan Holtz's comprehensive American Newspaper Comics (2012). It may be that Berks History in Pictures was syndicated locally, and that might account for the artist's credit as a syndicated cartoonist. It may be also that Spayth's editorial cartoons were syndicated. In any case, his five years or so in Fort Wayne qualify George W. Spayth as a Hoosier cartoonist. We can also add his name to the list of Hoosiers who drew historical, informational, or factual comic strips, panels, or features.

Backdated to September 18, 2017.
Text copyright 2017, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

The International Day of the Cartoonist 2017

I would like to observe the International Day of the Cartoonist 2017 by remembering the international cartoonist Joe Szabo, who died last year at the age of sixty-five. I'm happy to say that Joe was also a Hoosier, if only for a while.

Joseph George Szabo was born on February 4, 1950, in Budapest, Hungary, just six months after his country fell under communist rule. According to items on the Internet, Joe graduated from the Academy of Journalism in 1974. I believe that to mean what was then or is now called Bálint György Academy of Journalism in Budapest. On July 19, 1975, Joe Szabo married Flora Toth, also of Budapest.

In a remembrance of his friend, Len Lear wrote that Joe "wanted to be a real journalist because he had a passion for justice, but that was impossible in Communist Hungary, where any deviation from the party line could mean unemployment, exile, prison, torture or even death." (1) Although he worked in the late 1970s as assisting managing editor for Magyar Nemzet (Hungarian Nation), the largest daily newspaper in Hungary, Joe was dissatisfied with his comfortable position and his relatively prosperous life in his native country. "Journalists in a Communist country are considered a part of the political apparatus," Joe told Mr. Lear. "You're not a watchdog, just the opposite. You are a lapdog. You are not there to print the news or to be objective. You are there to make the authorities in government look good and not to deviate from the party line. You are basically a public relations person for the rulers and oppressors." In 1980, Joe and his wife fled from Hungary to the United States by way of Austria and West Germany (where he sought political asylum at the U.S. embassy). In December 1981, Joe arrived in a small town in Indiana, possibly Warsaw, Indiana.

Not knowing English, Joe struggled and was unemployed for a couple of years. He found work as a freelance cartoonist for a time. With a drawing printed on May 13, 1985, his political cartoons began appearing in the Philadelphia Daily News. They were also syndicated by Rothco and were chosen by Charles Brooks for his annual collection Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year in 1986, 1987, 1988, and possibly other years. (My collection is incomplete.) In 1987, under the byline Joseph George Szabo, Joe began publishing WittyWorld International Cartoon Magazine. The first issue was dated Summer 1987.

I have just three issues of WittyWorld (Nos. 2-4). As a cartoonist, I can say that is everything a cartoonist might want in a magazine. It is well designed and well made, and though there are only forty-eight pages in each issue, those pages are packed full of information. The regular departments are especially fine. They include a letters page; "Witty Wire," a compilation of cartoon news from all over the world; reviews of comic books and animation books by Frederick Patten, of cartoon books by Hongying Liu-Lengyel, and of journals by John A. Lent; "Cartoon Laboratory" on innovations in cartooning; a column on syndicates; a calendar of events; and classified advertisements. There are of course many articles and pictorial features as well. WittyWorld ran for several years. The last number I have found is Number 18, from Autumn/Winter 1994.

Joe Szabo published WittyWorld from North Wales, Pennsylvania, a borough north of Philadelphia. He seems to have moved to Pennsylvania from Indiana and to have lived there for the rest of his life. Even though he had escaped to the United States, he still had reason to fear political oppression and political violence. "Remember," he said, "Joseph Stalin had Leon Trotsky murdered in 1940, although Trotsky was many thousands of miles away in Mexico. In the U.S. and western Europe, where there is freedom of movement, dictators like Vladimir Putin have had journalistic critics murdered. They could do it here, too. You are never really safe." (Boldface added.) The targets of the cartoons he drew and those he published by other cartoonists were not just communist rulers or rulers in formerly communist countries. They were and are oppressors and tyrants of every color and stripe.

In 1990, Joe convened a meeting of cartoonists in Budapest as the Iron Curtain was coming down. He traveled to other parts of the world, too, to meet with cartoonists, to speak at and attend exhibits and conferences, and to lecture on cartoons and cartooning. He spent the last decade of his life conducting research and interviews for a planned book, The Image of America, showing how people the world over see his adopted home country. With visits to nearly seventy countries, he had enough material for a lecture series, one that he conducted in the United States and abroad. (He found that people in other countries have ambivalent views, though tending to the negative, of the United States. Some of those views are delusional at best. For example, some Spaniards--like one of our recent presidential candidates--are 9/11 truthers.) Joe Szabo was also author and compiler of The Finest International Political Cartoons of Our Time, published in 1992 by his own WittyWorld imprint.

"I'd rather be poor in America than rich in Hungary," Joe Szabo once said. (2) Although he was not materially wealthy--he and his wife reared their five children in a small apartment stocked with used furniture and books--Joe Szabo enjoyed the benefits of freedom with his family in a new country. Sadly, he died at his desk on February 2, 2016, in North Wales, Pennsylvania, just two days short of his sixty-sixth birthday. His obituary observed, "He was a passionate risk taker, boundless world traveler, and world-class debater. He never once lost an argument. Joe's friends described him as having an infectious personality with a continuous thirst for knowledge." (3) I think it fair to say that he also had a thirst for freedom and a very keen interest--as cartoonists tend to have--in fellow cartoonists and in the craft and profession of cartooning, which is, if I might add, a fine and noble one.

In memory of Joseph George Szabo (1950-2016) and of:

George David Wolinski (1934-2015)
Jean Cabut (1938-2015)
Philippe Honoré (1941-2015)
Bernard Verlhac (1957-2015)
and Stéphane Charbonnier (1967-2015)

Notes
(1) From "Joe Szabo, Local Voice for Courage and Justice, Has Been Silenced" by Len Lear on the website Chestnut Hill Local, January 6, 2017, here.
(2) Ditto.
(3) "Joseph George Szabo," from the Landsdale Reporter, Lansdale, Pennsylvania, posted on the website Legacy.com, February 9, 2016, here.

A cartoon by Joe Szabo from 1987 showing the magnetic pull the United States has for people who wish to express themselves freely and, by extension, to live freely. From Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, 1987 Edition, edited by Charles Brooks.

Completed at a later date and backdated to January 7, 2016, in observance of the International Day of the Cartoonist.
Text copyright 2017, 2024 Terence E. Hanley