AAEC News

In Support of Molly Norris: Pulitzer winner draws line against fatwa

by Michael Cavna

Comic Riffs, 9/22/2010

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/comic-riffs/

 

Responding to last week's news that "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day" cartoonist Molly Norris had gone into hiding at the FBI's urging, Philadelphia Daily News editorial cartoonist Signe Wilkinson has made a statement with her ink-dipped sword.

This week, the Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist took to the drawing board to depict a Norris-like figure going incognito by donning traditional Muslim attire.

"If cartoonists don't stick up for our own right to draw what we think is true and right, no one else will," Wilkinson tells Comic Riffs of her response to the fatwa against Norris. "We need to point out over and and over again that cartoons don't kill people. Fundamentalist religious fanatics with zero sense of humor kill people."

"There is a simple solution," Wilkinson continues. "If humorless 'believers' don't want us drawing tasteless cartoons about their prophets, they shouldn't do tasteless things in the name of those prophets.

"Until then, however, I'm afraid cartoonists just have to keep doing our job."

Seattle Weekly -- to which Norris was a contributor -- reported last week that the Seattle-based illustrator had gone into hiding and changed her name at the guidance of the FBI.

In confirming that report, Comic Riffs has been in contact with Norris last week and this week.

Several months ago, FBI officials alerted Norris to what they were treating as a "very serious threat," according to a report. At that time, Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki said that Norris was a "prime target" for execution and that her "proper abode is hellfire.

Norris drew her "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!" cartoon in April in response to Comedy Central's editing of its program "South Park" and the animated show's attempts to depict Muhammad, which some Muslims consider blasphemous. On April 25, shortly after Norris created her "anti-censorship" cartoon, she told Comic Riffs she was retreating from her illustration and that she didn't endorse the campaign.

Shortly after, Wilkinson and more than a dozen fellow Pulitzer-winning cartoonists signed a petition to condemn "the threat" by a pro-jihad group against "South Park" creator Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Wilkinson also notes that she's "done two cartoons supporting [the] right to build the mosque" and Islamic community center near Ground Zero."

Wilkinson tells Comic Riffs: "I support the entire First Amendment -- freedom of speech and religion."

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On the Advice of the FBI, Cartoonist Molly Norris Disappears From View

Her work won't be in Seattle Weekly anymore, or anywhere else.

By Mark D. Fefer Wednesday, Sep 15 2010

You may have noticed that Molly Norris' comic is not in the paper this week. That's because there is no more Molly.

The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, "going ghost": moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She will no longer be publishing cartoons in our paper or in City Arts magazine, where she has been a regular contributor. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program—except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab. It's all because of the appalling fatwa issued against her this summer, following her infamous "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" cartoon.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.seattleweekly.com/2010-09-15/news/on-the-advice-of-the-fbi-cartoonist-molly-norris-disappears-from-view/

Letter from the President: AAEC as Torn Rotator Cuff

by Rex Babin, AAEC President

 

Everyone says that you have the most fun at the AAEC convention immediately following the one you put on. Having been heavily involved with two, I can tell you that I am already looking forward to next year in St. Petersburg and I’m reminded of how after hosting Sacramento back in 2005, I was harassed by nominating committees until I finally relented and agreed to be Prez for 2010. Jack, are you paying attention? My editor at the time, David Holwerk signaled his approval by advising, “you might as well just bend over.”

As I noted in Portland, about the time I was assuming the position of AAEC president, I had a pretty major shoulder injury and earlier this year went in for rotator cuff surgery. Through much of my term I was saddled in a sling, firing off nasty emails and letters with one hand – all the while nursing a persistent nagging pain in the shoulder.

Although it was tempting to view this as an apt metaphor for the AAEC presidency, I preferred to look at my subsequent rehab, with its slow, sometimes torturous, but ultimately positive forward progress as the best illustration of not only how I felt my year as president went, but also the AAEC as an organization, and perhaps the profession itself, methodically plodded along.

As a result, this year as your president has been a surprisingly rewarding one for me. Possibly due to my fear of the amount of work involved, I just figured it would be a thankless task, but slowly began to realize that it was indeed a labor of love. It has truly been a privilege and an honor to serve in this organization that has given me so much.

I wish to thank my wife and son, of course; The Sacramento Bee; a very solid and professional AAEC board, with a special mention to Secretary/Treasurer (supposedly for life) Cullum Rogers, who is stepping down (he knew better than to step down a year earlier, because I would have killed him); Minister of Information, JP Trostle; Melinda and Teresa at PNA; The Herb Block Foundation; and Jack Ohman, who was a pleasure to work with on the Portland Convention.

So what about that convention? As you’ll see in the following pages, we adapted. Just as we’re adjusting to the changing landscape in our profession, we demonstrated in Portland that we can forgo the swanky four-star hotels we had become accustomed to and still have the substantive discussions and, more importantly, the good times we always have when we gather together.

Who cares if the hotel bar went out of business just weeks before? Hell, we’ll just take it over and, by golly, that suits us even better. Come to think of it, taking over a hotel bar may be the metaphor I’m searching for. Because if we don’t take charge of our own destiny, bartender is just about the only other job we’re qualified for.

 

 

 

 

Appreciating JP

JP: An Appreciation

 

By V. Cullum Rogers

 

This issue of the Notebook is the first since 2002 that hasn’t been edited by J.P. Trostle, who grabbed the torch from my failing hand eight years ago and passed it on to Stephanie McMillan this summer. (Congratulations, Stephanie; also, good luck.) For those keeping score, that works out to 32 consecutive quarterly issues, a record for a single editor that is not likely to be broken, at least not by a sane person.

J.P. added color to the Notebook, switched to better paper and created a PDF edition with embedded videos, website links and other interactive features; somehow, he found a way to do all this while cutting production costs. He single-handedly designed and laid out the biggest issue ever, the 112-page Golden Notebook, which is virtually an official history of the AAEC’s first fifty years. And he did it on schedule, a talent possessed by few if any of his predecessors.

No tribute like this would be complete without a few sentences designed to make its subject squirm, so here are a few obscure facts that J.P. might wish would stay that way:

* He loves pussycats. There are usually at least a couple lounging around the home he and his wife Maura McLaughlin share in Durham.

* He can grow a full beard, or head of hair, or both, in about two weeks.

* He is the world’s leading expert on Rollerball, a game that doesn’t exist outside science-fiction movies.

* He still has his childhood collection of Wacky Packages stickers.

* Once, when the two of us got lost driving to Columbus, Ohio, and found ourselves in a greasy spoon in some godforsaken town in Kentucky, he heard a waitress ask if I was his father. No one should be subjected to that. (For the record, I’m not.)

* Finally, and most important, his favorite drink is the dry Martini. Order him one next time you see him. He’s earned it.

______________________________

 

The Prez Salutes JP

by Rex Babin

It’s hard to believe back when JP took over as Notebook Editor that the role was basically just that — editing our humble B&W quarterly newsletter.

During JP’s tenure the information business transformed itself with the emergence of the blogosphere and its need for almost constant feeding. JP property recognized the necessity for the AAEC to keep up with that demand. His involvement with our website allowed us the opportunity to post more news items in a more timely manner and with more frequency.

JP took on that challenge and his efforts have helped our organization often control the narrative on issues important to us. Whether they be the AAEC eBay auction or Black Ink Monday, he has been instrumental in moving AAEC initiatives forward and made sure the word got out.

So vital has been his input that he has been informally invited by AAEC presidents past and present to help strategize on virtually every pressing issue facing the AAEC. In the process, he earned his title of Minister of Information (said title which he himself rediscovered hidden in the Association bylaws), or as I refer to him, Special Advisor to the President. Let us thank him for his valuable years of service and wish him luck starting up that lucrative lobbying firm of his.

Cullum Noncarborundum

By R.C. Harvey

 

If the forthcoming election pans out in the way it portends to with regard to your correspondent, I’ll be trying to fill gumboots too large for even my ego—namely, those of one Virginius Cullum Rogers.

I might be able to add and subtract and come up with the same unvarying results as our retiring (but scarcely bashful) Secretary-Treasurer, but his numbers always had more flair than mere math.

I might, given a sharp enough pencil, be able to take notes and write up minutes eventually, but I’ll never be able to deliver a pedestrian truth with the same ponderous pontification Cullum can muster for the most mundane of utterances—punctuating said utterances with loftily raised eyebrow and widened orb, both of which bespeak a comedically irritated disbelief as well as astonishment that anyone could actually countenance what he was saying.

Would that I could.

Think of the continents I could conquer.

This is, after all, the gentleman who once practically put the entire Association membership on the floor laughing as he read off the tally from an unpaid bar tab from the previous evening. He is frequently able — and just as often called upon — to regale an audience with a historic tidbit or a salient quote without consulting his notes, and his 12-year tenure as Secretary-Treasurer is an AAEC record (a fact which I had to go to Cullum himself to confirm, as no one seems to remember a time when he didn’t hold the post.)

That would be enough for us to rejoice in his honor and memory. But there’s more.

No one will match his mastery of the history of our medium and of our club. No one can pluck from the shadows of the ancient past such plums as both entertain and inform our derelict modernity. And like everything he has done—from reading minutes to summarizing our lack of financial status—Cullum so obviously found pleasure in it, in the sheer verbal dexterity of it all.

Fortunately for us, he’ll still be in the audience: even if he’s not in command at the head table, he’ll be in command at the back of the room. And we’ll delight in it, as always.

Editorial Cartoonists Like Steve Kelley Know Surgical Wit, Deft Satire Win in the End

By Steve Duin

The Oregonian, June 19, 2010

 

Back in the mid-’90s, Steve Kelley — current president-elect of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists — and Jack Lemmon were booked to go on The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder. That hour generally featured “two segments with the superstar and one with the also-ran,” Kelley said. When the veteran Hollywood actor and the cartoonist met in the green room, there was little doubt as to the pecking order, at least until Lemmon went to pour himself a cup of coffee.

Lemmon barely had pot in hand when Kelley boomed out, “Put that coffee down!”

Just as he did in Glengarry Glen Ross, Lemmon froze, then burst out laughing as Kelley delivered the next line in Alec Baldwin’s famous boiler-room rant: “Coffee’s for closers!”

Read the rest of this article at http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf/2010/06/editorial_cartoonists_like_ste.html

Oil Spill: Shots from a Helicopter

By J.D. Crowe

Press-Register, June 22, 2010

 

I've been drawing about the oil spill daily, and have been hoping for a chance to see the thing in real life. My opportunity June 19, courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard, based at Ground Zero in Mobile.

We flew out of the mouth of Mobile Bay about 120 miles to the “The Source,” the name given to the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion where the wild well gushes.

First sign of oil was about 35 miles out. An oily sheen looked like a gathering of ghosts on the water. Soon, reddish streaks of oil were also visible with the sheen.

Pilot Cathy Gross, who reported the oil sightings via radio, said the streaks would be hard to collect and skimming boats had larger patches to worry about. We soon saw the larger patches.

A little further ahead, the streaks turned into clumpy designs, like a red Rorschach test in the green water, or vomit on a school room floor.

The first clue we were near the source was not in the water, but in the air. Fumes. The action started heating up within 5-10 miles of the well. An invisible cloud of petroleum fumes hovered over a party of skimming boats, cutting paths in a large field of thick sheen.

Soon, we were at the well. Surprisingly, the deep cobalt blue water was fairly clear of gunk and sported only a thin layer of sheen. We were expecting this to be the gunkiest site on on the mission. Pilot Gross said the word from BP was that the dispersants were breaking the oil up at the leak, cutting down on surface oil.

The ship Discoverer Enterprise sits atop the well, collecting oil and burning it. Oil is also being burned at a second burner alongside the ship. They look like two fire-breathing monsters in the ocean. The well ship and burner are flanked on each side by the relief wells.

After circling the fiery theater a few times, we headed back to Mobile Bay. By the time we passed over the largest gunky patch we saw on the trip in, a U.S. Coast Guard ship was inspecting the mess and awaiting skimmer boats.

At Gulf Shores, the water was blue and the beaches seemed clean and lined with sun bathers. But no swimmers. Several hundred feet away from the shore in Orange Beach, white boats, looking like private yachts, patrolled the water in teams of two. Boom stretched between the boats as they tried to isolate and corral thin sheets of oily sheen.

On this day, I did not see a huge oil slick of doom headed our way. Our pilots said the scene is different every day. But for the most part, the ocean is doing the best job of breaking down the oil.

But until there are skimmer boats attacking every drop of oil slick in the Gulf, we're not doing enough. And until the wild leak is stopped, The Source will continue to be a Sore Spot.

 

See this also on J.D. Crowe's blog: http://blog.al.com/jdcrowe/2010/06/oil_spill_shots_from_a_helicop.html

 

Steve Breen Creates Cartoons with Oil from BP Spill

By Shawn Moynihan

E&P, July 21, 2010

 

The Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill has been a target of editorial cartoonists for weeks now, but San Diego Union-Tribune/Creators Syndicate editorial cartoonist Steve Breen has taken his artistic criticism of the subject a step further.

Breen has created five cartoons painted with actual oil from the spill.

“I was surprised by how well it turned out, because I just wasn’t sure I’d be able to work with the oil,” he told E&P. “I’d never worked with oil before, actual crude. Who has?”

The cartoons were featured July 25 in the U-T on a special color page, and Breen’s video journal of the whole experience, shot with his iPhone, appeared on the paper’s Web site July 23.

Six weeks ago, Breen decided he “wanted to do something powerful, and I thought, what’s more powerful than ink?” he said. He pondered visiting one of the polluted beaches and spreading out bed sheets on the sand, scooping up some of the oil in cups and squirting it onto the bed sheets to create cartoons.

“So obviously, it wasn’t thought out very well,” he jokes. “Drawing a cartoon that big would just be too challenging.”

Still, Breen, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, remained attracted to the idea. Since he works in black India ink on Bristol board after penciling his cartoons, working in oil wouldn’t be too much of a stretch. “I wanted to step it up a notch,” he said. After some consideration, “I realized tar balls were the way to go.”

The cartoonist contacted two AP reporters in the Gulf, Brian Skoloff and Cain Burdeau, and asked them to direct him to a location where the oil could easily be found. They directed him to fly into New Orleans and then drive east to Alabama and Pensacola, Fla., Breen said, where beaches were getting hit hard. He also asked for guidance from Dr. Ping Wang, an associate professor and geologist at University of South Florida, who suggested traveling east or west of Pensacola Beach if he wanted to strike oil.

 On July 3 Breen arrived in Santa Rosa Island, west of Pensacola, where one of Dr. Ping’s graduate students, 55-year-old Rip Kirby, met him packing a UV lantern. Breen recalls, “My fears of not finding any tar balls were unfounded.” Scattered across the sand were “tar balls and tar patties everywhere. Some were the size of the floor mats in your car.”

Breen scooped some oil up in Tupperware and brought it back to California, where he discovered that he could create a palette by thinning it with different amounts of gasoline. “It was exciting, because [the gas] instantly turned it into a brownish solution, and when I held it up to the light, and I saw that it would go well on paper. I was able to get different tones of brown, depending on how much gasoline I added.”

 The resulting cartoons were slightly larger than his normal creations, at 11 by 14 inches — and highly flammable. The cartoons, though, are not entirely BP-centric, a move that Breen said would be an oversimplification of the issue.

“Cartoonists love villains, because we love going after evil,” he explained, “but sometimes you have to look beyond the obvious villain at the supporting players, too.” While one cartoon depicts the BP logo spelled out in oil-smeared animals of the Gulf Coast, others tackle “America’s addiction to oil, and the culpability of the Interior Department in all this.”

Breen’s biggest take-away from the experience? “The extent of the damage to the ecosystem in the Gulf,” he said. Under ultraviolet light, he said, you can see how much oil is embedded in the sand of the beaches it’s tarnished. “You have pollution that’s naked to the eye, but that’s really intense and extensive. And that sand is blowing off the beach and into the bay, so who knows what kind of impact that is going to have on the ecosystem?”

And beaches, he adds, are easier to clean than the far more niched areas of Louisiana that have been polluted, where “the oil is literally going to be there for decades.”

 

 

Tres Amigos: In Their Own Words

Ted:

 August 15, 2010

Greetings from Mazar-i-Sharif, the fourth largest city in Afghanistan, the gateway to Uzbekistan, and about the hottest and dustiest place on Earth. Don’t believe the Internet: It says it’s 81 here. More like 111.

It was a brutal drive from Taloqan, where we spent two nights looking for my 2001 fixer Jovid. (Follow my daily cartoon blog to find out whether or not we were successful: rall.com/rallblog). It was much, much worse in 2001, before road-paving, though. Yes, most major roads in Kunduz and Takhar provinces are now paved. This might have made a favorable impression on Afghans prior to 2003, but now it appears to be too late. Everyone knows the Taliban will soon be back in charge.

Women are still in burqas, same as it ever was. Business is booming, but poverty remains widespread. And American troops are still acting like assholes: buzzing through town at high speeds, terrorizing the Afghans they’re supposedly there to help.

* * *

Matt:

 

I sit behind a drawing table all day and I’m eager to go to place where people don’t live as privileged a life as I do. Life is tough and Afghanistan. I want to see how the people there live and cope and what they think of the conflict. There’s no way to avoid being a tourist. Ultimately, I get to come back to a world with air conditioning, hot showers and reality TV. I’m hoping that I can do comics that make the trip worth it and illuminate this conflict in some way for Americans.

Ted’s cartoons were always a big inspiration to me and we have become good friends since he edited my comics at United Media. With this upcoming trip and a graphic novel we are working on together, we end up talking quite a bit. I feel like he’s someone I can get along with for a month in the most uncomfortable place on Earth. Steven I don’t know personally but I have always liked his work. BOASAS was one of the must-read webcomics. I’ve been talking to him as the trip approaches. I’m looking forward to loving and hating them both by the time the trip is over.

 I’m looking forward to getting WAY out of my comfort zone — out of Portland, out of America — and seeing how millions of people who happened to be born in Afghanistan have to live every day.

* * *

Steven:

 

I’m going for the experience and to learn about the culture of Afghanistan. I would like to find out what the Afghan people think about US involvement in their country and how it affects their lives.

I have nothing but respect for Ted both personally and professionally. We first met when he included me in his comic annual Cartoonists With Attitude and we also worked together while he was the acquisitions editor at United Media. Since then we’ve become friends and I’m honored that he would invite me to join him on this adventure.

I don’t personally know Matt Bors, but we have have talked on the phone and had an awkward google video chat after I joined "Team Afghanistan". Obviously, Matt is an amazing editorial cartoonist and illustrator. I look forward to getting to know Matt on this trip. Provided we make it back alive, I’m sure we’ll be life-long friends... or at least frenemies. ;)

I’m nervous. I know this is a very serious undertaking and I’m preparing for most contingencies. I’m also excited that I will get to visit an extremely remote part of the world that most people will never get to experience. It makes me feel alive and more vital than I normally do sitting in front of a computer all day.

I don’t have any specific plans, but I will be taking a lot of pictures, videos and audio recordings. I doubt I will produce a commercial project, but I should have plenty of memories to share with my friends and family.

I’m really looking forward to the trip and hope that I can contribute to the group while we’re on the road.

 

'No filter': Cartoonists MATT BORS & TED RALL depart for Afghanistan eager to tell 'the people's story'

By Michael Cavna

 

For 18 long months, Matt Bors spent his days at war. In every hot spot, his eyes trained on every Humvee, on every rocket, on every malaria pill. It was challenging, grueling, exhausting — and all from the safe remove of a drawing board in Portland.

As Bors labored over illustrating the just-released David Axe graphic novel War Is Boring, he relied for visuals on Googling his way around the world — East Timor to Chad to Somalia to Lebanon. From home, he employed the Web and his imagination as he provided cartoon image to Axe’s firsthand war-reporter narrative — even for the word balloon in which Axe directs his “anger at the pundits and editorial cartoonists who make their living criticizing wars they know nothing about and are too cowardly to go see for themselves.”

Today, Bors, the cartoon chronicler of global events, is hardly too cowardly. Today. the Oregon artist who has never left the country as an adult is making that maiden voyage to a war-torn country.

For the rest of the article, please visit http://voices.washingtonpost.com/comic-riffs/2010/08/matt_bors_and_ted_rall_begin_r.html