Rants & Raves

MORE CLASSICS

Classic Comics Press has just brought out the sixth volume in its series reprinting all of Leonard Starr’s Mary Perkins On Stage, March 10, 1963 - October 11, 1964 (264 8.5x11-inch landscape-bound pages, b/w dailies and Sundays; paperback, $24.95) and the second volume in Stan Drake’s Heart of Juliet Jones series, August 15, 1955 - November 30, 1957 (248 8.5x11-inch landscape-bound pages, daily only, b/w; paperback, $24.95).  These two strips are half of the entire roster of comic strips superbly drawn in the realistic illustrative manner (the other two, Harold Foster’s Prince Valiant and all of Alex Raymond’s four strips, Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim, Secret Agent X-9, and Rip Kirby), and the reproduction in both these volumes is exquisite: fineline feathering is not matted, blotched or lost altogether, solid blacks are solid, gray tones (in Juliet Jones) and other stylistic variations (ditto) are all here, better displayed than in any of the newprint incarnations of yore. Starr is easier to capture in this regard than Drake, who deploys numerous variations in linear treatment. In his introduction to On Stage, cartoonist Batton Lash spends a suitable amount of time praising and analyzing Starr’s artwork; cartoonist Howard Chaykin in his introduction to Juliet Jones stresses mostly the high quality of the stories as classy soap opera.

THE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

For my money, the Best Book of 2009 was Kirk Anderson’s Banana Republic, which we reviewed at length at the Usual Place in R&R, Opus 238. Observing Anderson’s bold and tapering line — a line supple as liquid sheen, not to mention the crispness of his stylistic mannerisms, the inherent drama of their composition and the superlative comedic timing of the breakdowns — his wit, his graphic genius, his satirical savagery, I laughed the silvery laughter of pure, unadulterated pleasure at beholding the symphonic beauty of his work, its visual distinction yoked to an intellectual assault on the issues of the day, a ramble engaging both eye and mind — cartooning at its most sublime.

A satire, a newspaper comic strip reprint, Banana Republic also qualifies as a graphic novel as surely as anything Marvel or DC produced serially before compiling the pages into a single volume: Anderson did the work first as a quarter-page newspaper comic strip  for the Minneapolis Star Tribune from October 13, 2005 to November 17, 2007. For over two years, in nearly 100 comic strips, Anderson unflinchingly lambasted the Bush League and its demonstrably unAmerican policies. For that purpose, Anderson invented a “zany Third World dictatorship, Amnesia ... [where] the government engages in roughhousing practices we would consider unconstitutional in our own country — such as torture, warrantless surveillance, and imprisonment without charge!”

To give his fictional country a cohesive satiric focus, Anderson invented the dictator, Generalissimo Wally, who “may often represent the U.S. president, but on any given week, he may just as likely represent power more generally, or a corporate CEO, or the U.S. government, or Minnesota’s governor. Regardless of whether we think American torture is right or wrong, when it’s Genralissimo Wally melon-balling some poor bastard’s eyes, we know it’s appalling, unAmerican, and proof of his illegitimacy.”

Purely visual comedy often sharpens the satire by reason of its contrast to the grimness being depicted. Dangling by his arms and pestered with the idiotic preoccupations of his torturer, the political prisoner Diego Meza “lightens the mood for his fellow detainees” by trying to swing his eyeball back into its socket — an outright imitation of a child’s game, which might even be called “ball in the socket.”  In another scene in the torture chamber, Anderson resorts to a simple albeit graphically effective visual pun — showing a victim vomiting blood, about which Wally says, “He even speaks in bloodbaths.”

The last strips in which Rita Meza finally secures the release of her tortured husband deploy breathtakingly inspired visuals. After years of relentless torture, the hapless Diego has been reduced to a liquid, as if his skeletal structure has been completely crushed, mulched. This symbol Anderson exploits for two pages as Rita tries to arouse public indignation — Diego drips from her arms as she carries his limp remains around — all to no avail. Unable to talk, Diego answers his wife’s question about what “they” have done to him with speech balloons the show images of melon-balling, brain removal, and simple beatings. Ugly stuff. But in Anderson’s hands, the ugliness is given an image so grim, so metaphorically accurate, that ugliness is transcended and becomes excruciatingly satirical.

Anderson’s book — his comic strip — makes for vastly entertaining reading. Unabashedly irreverent on every note it strikes, it withholds nothing. There are no sacred cows; no wickedness committed in the name of making the world a better place is ignored, no justification accepted. The book is relentless as well as unflinching. It is also a supreme example of how the arts of cartooning can be assembled for telling satire, satire that is humorous as well as insightful, hilarious as well as inciteful.

NEWSY BITS

A cartoon by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Rob Rogers was featured in “Meet the Press” on Sunday, January 3, but, alas, no one mentioned Rogers by name — or his newspaper. Or his new book, No Cartoon Left Behind, a retrospective collection of the editoonist’s favorite cartoons in his 25 years at the drawing board. ... “Pinocchio: Platinum Edition” is out, celebrating the film’s 70^th anniversary with two discs that include documentaries about the animators, commentary, games for kiddies, and, saith Entertainment Weekly, “a restoration that is pure eye candy.” ... In a classic legal turn-about, Marvel is suing Jack Kirby’s heirs, asking a judge to invalidate 45 notices the heirs sent out to try to terminate Marvel’s copyrights on characters Kirby created between 1958 and 1963. Kirby’s relatives, said the Associated Press, “notified several companies last year that the rights to the characters would revert from Marvel to Kirby’s estate.” Marvel contends that Kirby’s work was done “for hire,” rendering the heirs’ claims invalid. ... Jacob Zuma, prez of South Africa and oft the target of editoonist Zapiro, announced ambitious plans for treating HIV-positive babies and pregnant women, a stunning turn-around for the man who once claimed a shower could prevent AIDS (for which statement, Zapiro usually portrayed Zuma with a shower faucet protruding from his head). A few days later, Zuma married for the fifth time, a woman who will be number three among his current spouses. Said the Los Angeles Times: “With another fiancee in the wings and rumors about a possible future engagement, the country may have five or more first ladies before Zuma’s presidency is over."

STAMPS OF APPROVAL

Comics and cartoonists will show up in the Postal Service’s 2010 crop of commemorative stamps.  Bill Mauldin, whom Pat Oliphant always refers to as “the great Bill Mauldin,” is in the line-up as is a set of stamps featuring Archie, Beetle Bailey, Dennis the Menace, Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes.

February begins the Year of the Tiger, and a stamp in the lunar year series will be issued on January 14; the stamp will not apparently feature any of Tiger’s many mistresses mooning us.  Others of the 2010 commemoratives reported by the Associated Press include Mother Teresa, Katharine Hepburn, Winslow Homer, a four-stamp set of celluloid cowboys (Gene Autry, William S. Hart, Roy Rogers, and the pace-setting Tom Mix, about whom you can read more at the Usual Place, but in our Harv’s Hindsight department for October 2006, where we also log the deceptions of another fraudulent cowpoke, Will James), and stamps honoring Negro Leagues baseball, which operated from 1920 to about 1960, attracting some of the most remarkable athletes ever to play the sport.

Another stamp will commemorate celebrated singer Kate Smith, whose signature song, "God Bless America," was composed for her by Irving Berlin, who said, after composing it, that he now had songs for two of the country’s big holidays — Fourth of July (“God Bless America”) and Easter (“Easter Parade”) and if he could only nail Christmas, his annual income would be assured forever. Then he wrote “White Christmas.”

2009: BEST IN THE FUNNIES

In the newspapers, Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury continues its long run as both a funny and sharply satirical comic strip; and this year, its expose of “the Family” (which we examine, albeit briefly, in the Usual Place, R&R, Op. 247) qualifies it as investigative journalism, too. But Brooke McEldowney’s 9 Chickweed Lane is the best comic strip (again this year) for its mastery of the medium and for its gentle humor and profound humanity — and for its daring: Edda’s losing her virginity “on camera” in October 2008; God getting an actual first name (Monty).

Greg Evans’ Luann is also a rewarding pleasure to read, particularly when he dwells on the romance developing between Luann’s nerdy brother, Brad, and the beauteous Toni (who initiated Brad into the joys of carnal knowledge last fall, in one of the subtlest maneuvers in the comics). You’d think, from the last two examples, that deflowering virgins represents to me the highest form of entertainment, but you’d be wrong. Other strips are also on my “must see” roster. To name a few: Jef Mallett’s Frazz (for its occasional wisdom passing as wit), Darrin Bell’s Candorville (for sharp satire), Keith Knight’s The Knight Life (with its uniquely autobiographical slant -- that's it on the right), Zits by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman (the artistry of comic strip cartooning), Jimmy Johnson’s Arlo and Janis (for its understanding of relations between the sexes), Betty (a rare and wonderful evocation of a vintage graphic style treating of contemporary matters, written by Gary Delainey and drawn by Gerry Rasmussen), Hilary Price’s Rhymes with Orange (I might miss something very clever if I don’t read it every day), and Brian Crane’s Pickles (ditto). I’m sure I’ve left some of my favorites out; for which, my profound apologies. Maybe next year.

On the Web, there are too many thousands of comic strips and cartoons to contemplate in this round-up, particularly since so many of them are astonishingly inferior. But one is head-and-shoulders above the rest: superbly drawn, acutely comedic and often satisfyingly satirical — Tatsuya Ishida’s Sinfest. I never tire of reading it and beholding its beauties.

 

 

HELP THE HODGES!

The Haitians aren't the only ones in trouble. Here's a notice from the National Cartoonists Society:

The NCS Foundation is excited to announce our first major fund raising effort through the use of eBay which launches this coming Thursday, January 21.  Many of you, along with our colleagues outside of the NCS, have donated 160 pieces of amazing artwork in a concentrated effort to Help the Hodges.

Tim Hodge is an animation artist having worked on storyboards for Disney and directing Veggie Tales projects. His teenage son Matthew, an A student and a drummer in his Tennessee high school championship marching band, was in an accident involving his car and a train in August of 2009, and has been in a state of a coma ever since. Tim's insurance refused to cover Matthew's long-term recovery, and the financial strain has only added to the emotional strain that the family has been experiencing.

Several NCS members have partnered with the NCSF to make this event happen, but we need YOUR HELP to make it a success.  We need the word to get out!  If you have a blog, or you frequent chat rooms on the web, please put in a good word that this event is taking place.  And please come bid on items, too!

The line-up of artists is incredible! Here are just a few of the over 100 names you'll see in our auctions:

Drew Struzan
Patrick McDonnell
Mort Walker
Nick Parks
Tim Sale
Mike Mignola
Stan Lee
Stephen Silver
Don Bluth
Peter de Sevè
Glen Keane
Bil Keane
Dan Piraro
Gary Kelley
Marc Davis
Frank Thomas
Walt Kelly
Paul Coker, Jr.
Jim Borgman
Charles Schulz

To see the items for sale, we have set up a special website where everything is being posted. New items continue to be added daily.  Also, please feel free to use any of the images from our special website to promote this event, along with the graphic that we are attaching that represents Matthew's love for his marching band drums.

http://www.HelpTheHodges.com

Thank you,
The NCS Foundation

ANOTHER GEM FROM MARESCA

  From Pete Maresca’s Sunday Press Books comes another in Maresca’s exacting reproductions of the Sunday funnies of yore — a complete run of Gustave Verbeek's famed Upside-Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo (1903-1905), digitally restored and presented in their original size and colors (120 11x16-inch pages, $80).

Also featured (from the press release) “are a complete run of Verbeek's Loony Lyrics of Lulu (1910) and a sampling of his long-running Terrors of the Tiny Tads (1906-1914). A compilation of 25 early cartoons and paintings by Verbeek for magazines and illustrated books (1900-1915) fills out this large hard-bound volume.

For collectors, there is an insert sheet of 12 Tiny Tads postcards, reprinting a 1907 promotional set.”

Verbeek’s ingenuity in constructing actual stories, half of which are upside down repeats of the rightside up versions, is stunning. Amazing.

More on this in the Usual Place, Rants & Raves, Opus 252.

OTHER EDITOONS OF THE YEAR

Time.com chose ten editorial cartoons, called them the “best,” and flung them up on the magazine’s website. But none of them stick with me. Clay Bennett’s target-painter is the only cartoon in the lot to achieve any power as political commentary; all the rest of Time’s selection are simply humorous, employing visual fragments from yesterday’s news to make a political point today. And the visual metaphors — a big guy getting into a tiny car to symbolize the shrunken auto industry — are trite and predictable and lame, lame, lame. Humor may have guided the selection, but the humor was not very sharply pointed. It’s as if the editors at Time had isolated the word “cartoon,” divorcing it from the genre’s controlling adjective — “political” or “editorial” — and because “cartoon” always denominates something funny, their misguided choices of the year’s best must perforce be funny cartoons without any particular potency as commentary. Too many editors make this mistake. Comedy has a role in an editorial cartoon, otherwise it wouldn’t be a cartoon. But the best editoons use comedy to make their points.

In animated political cartoons, for example, the best ones use motion to make the commentary. One of the most adroit at this is Ann Telnaes at the Washington Post online. Her cartoons do not simply move: their motions provide the punchlines that give the commentary its memorable impact. Her take on Darth Cheney’s perpetual kibitzing (January 1, 2010) is a beaut. Incidentally, the famed Herblock award competition this year will include, for the first time, animated editorial cartoons.

If you want to see more of my picks, the editorial cartoons representing the “best of 2009" without being exhaustive or encyclopedic, go here, where Rants & Raves, Opus 254, is open to the general public and casual drop-ins.

1,000 COMIC BOOKS YOU MUST READ

If you’ve ever wondered what Tony Isabella does when not writing his monthly review column for the next issue of the Comics Buyer’s Guide (CBG), you can stop: he was probably doing the research for the latest book from CBG’s publisher, Krause Publications — 1,000 Comic Books You Must Read (272 8x11-inch pages, color; $29.99) —  in which the dauntless Isabella describes in a couple sentences the content of each of a thousand comic books (some of which, due to his insatiable appetite for comics, are whole anthology titles full of stories, not just single-story issues). An extraordinary undertaking. And it turns into a four-color celebration with the picturing of each book’s cover; a research resource, with the writers and artists and publication date listed below the pictured cover. Here are a few of Isabella’s annotations, chosen almost at random:

Classic Comics No. 1: “Russian-born publisher Albert L. Kanter used the comic book to bring great literature to young readers. His long-running series, best known as Classics Illustrated, began with an adaptation of The Three Musketeers [October 1941]. Nearly 170 issues would follow.”

Joker Comics No. 1: “Publisher Martin Goodman’s first all-humor comic book featured Stuporman, one of the first superhero parodies, and the debut of Powerhouse Pepper, a dim-witted, good-hearted boxer who possessed super-strength. Pepper’s slapstick adventures appeared in several other Goodman titles as well.”

Gleason’s Daredevil Comics No. 13: “Daredevil gets four kid sidekicks, as he battles the Wizard and German-American Cult. The Little Wise Guys — initially Meatball, Peewee, Scarecrow and Jock — would become more popular than Daredevil and, by 1951, push him out of his own book.”

The content is divided by decade, beginning with the invention of Superman in 1938 (4 pages); after that come the seven decadence chapters in an orderly chronological procession that Isabella interrupts a third of the way through to proclaim Fantastic Four Annual No. 1 “the greatest comic book of all time.” However valuable the book is as a guide, most of us will doubtless enjoy the book not as an aid to acquiring a collection of great comic books but as an act of fond remembrance. For that, the book is worth the price and more.

EDITORIAL CARTOON OF THE YEAR

The undisputed best editorial cartoon of 2009 is Jay Bevenour’s cover for the Stranger, a weekly altie in Seattle. Bevenour’s effort capped a week awash with obit cartoons commemorating the departures of Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Gale Storm (star of tv’s “My Little Margie,” a popular 1950s series), pitchman Billy Mays, and, the ultimate dead man with face to match, Michael Jackson. MJ’s surprise departure a few hours after Farrah left us on June 25 quickly eclipsed all the others. On cable tv, a 24/7 loop began that Thursday and didn’t stop for four days. Then it went on for another three with only intermittent breaks between eulogistic spasms. All the while, MJ remained dead. The news, in other words, stayed the same. Unchanging for a change. And therefore no longer “news.” The best editorial cartoon commentary on the grief-besotted week was the Bevenour’s cover drawing.

Layers of meaning can be peeled away from the picture. Stupendously, outrageously grotesque, the picture combines and compounds so many of the nauseating aspects of the extraordinary fortnight that began with Fawcett’s death. When I first saw it, I thought the face was Farrah’s, disease-wracked to the point of death — thus, a kind of death mask. Then I realized the mask was MJ’s face, still deathlike. Just as his death supplanted Farrah’s —scoming only a day after she died, Jackson’s death shoved hers off the front pages of popular culture — so does his morbid likeness take over her body in the drawing. The silly pointlessness of his accidental demise thus consigns the heroic struggle of her last days to limbo.
The satire cuts many ways. Combining the plastic mask of Michael’s visage with Fawcett’s famed poster image, the picture alludes to MJ’s dubious sexuality and seems to convert Farrah’s celebrated toothy grin into death’s rictus, a frozen lifeless grimace rather than a bonding expression of human warmth. Moreover, Farrah’s MJ death mask on the classic nippled pin-up body mocks our preoccupation with so transient a thing as young female beauty.

But Bevenour is also commenting upon our celebrity-obsessed culture. Michael’s face superimposed upon Farrah’s celebrated picture enacts the very evolution of the week’s events: the media’s excessive treatment of the singer’s death overshadowed the actress’s death, overwhelming one tragedy with another until Farrah’s death — and McMahon’s and Storm’s — receded into a dim and forgotten past, a merely momentary blip on the screen of our cable-tv culture. Bevenour’s picture is thus the ultimate emblem of our infantile irresponsibility and grotesque preoccupation with things that do not matter much.

STEAMPUNK / BOILERPLATE

Steampunk, that’s the word for it, the “it” being the current pop culture preoccupation with what might be called “Victorian tech,” a world Time reported (on December 14) denoting antique computer technology that uses brass and steel and leather and mahogany instead of sillicon and plastic — clockwork instead of electronics.

Abrams just published a whole book of spoof on the subject, Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel, by Paul Guinan and his wife Anina Bennett, in which a Victorian robot managed, like Forest Gump, to be wherever photographers were taking news pictures in the 19^th century and into World War I. For a review, consult the Usual Place, R&R, Op. 252.

EUSTACE TILLEY CONTEST

The New Yorker once again will welcome submissions in its Eustace Tilley contest — reinterpretations of the iconic first issue cover drawing of a dandy by Rea Irvin; winners will be featured at newyorker.com (where you can witness a host of previous brilliantly inventive submissions and winners; surely the magazine will publish a book collection of them soon). For contest rules and to enter, visit newyorker.com and scroll down the opening page to “Your Eustace.” Deadline, January 18. ... 

GAHAN WILSON TOMES

A book that’s not particularly new but is a great buy at the moment is a tidy bonding between two covers of a brace of memorably macabre tomes, the 2002 Gahan Wilson’s Gravediggers Party and the 2004 Gahan Wilson’s Monster Party, reprinted as one volume (360 5x7-inch pages, b/w), Gahan Wilson’s Monster Collection, in 2005 by Barnes & Noble for $7.98. If it’s disappeared at B&N, you can find it at Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller for merely $4.95 (#6340563), a bargain at edwardrhamilton.com; but with shipping charges, you’re back at about eight bucks — still, withal, a bargain. (It took me 20 minutes to complete this notice, including checking the Web to verify the URL and the presence, still, of copies of the book. It may be only a couple sentences to you, but it’s a Huge Piece of My Life to me, kimo sabe.) Finally, thumbing through old issues of Playboy and counting the cartoons for an extravagant report on the fate of cartoons in the magazine, I was struck by how regularly Gahan Wilson’s work showed up. And now a lot of it will show up all at once: Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons is due out in December, just in time to make your Christmas Wish list.

40TH COMIC BOOK PRICE GUIDE

From Scoop at Diamond: Gemstone Publishing is pleased to announce that in honor of its 40th anniversary, the 2010 edition of The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide will be released on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 in comic shops across North America and at Comic-Con International: San Diego. Said Robert M. Overstreet, the book’s founding editor: “When I first started the Guide, I could have never imagined that we’d still be talking about it forty years later. While the market has changed and become much more sophisticated in the past four decades, comic books still have an amazing appeal to the kid inside all of us. It’s still something we can really stop and enjoy.”

Robert M. Overstreet with the first and second printings of The Comic Book Price Guide's debut edition, in 1970.

CLASSIC CHILDREN'S COMICS

The Toon Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics (350 9x11-inch pages, color; hardback, Abrams ComicArt, $40) assembled by Art Spiegelman and his wife, Francoise Mouly, is an absolute delight. For one thing, it continues the commendable practice of reproducing comic book pages exactly as photographed, without jazzing up the art by retouching linework and adding fresh coloring for “the modern reader”; these pages reprise the comics of yore pretty much the way they appeared originally (only slightly doctored, perhaps, to remove bleed-throughs.) And — don’t be fooled: although the stories herein can be appreciated by children, they will captivate adult connoisseurs of the artform. With Walt Kelly, Sheldon Mayer, George Carlson, John Stanley, Harvey Kurtzman, Jim (The Fox and the Crow) Davis, Carl Barks, Dan Noonan, Dan Gordon and their ilk on the pages, we’re trapped, and we love it. And I never knew that Woody Gelman drew as well as published cartoon artifacts; and I always wondered who drew Supermouse (Milt Stein). For more on this dazzling tome, visit the Usual Place, Rants & Raves, Opus 249, which is crammed with copious detail about how good the book is.

IRANIAN CARTOONIST-IN-EXILE NIK KOWSAR

Considering the current turmoil in Iran, I have unearthed a piece I did last summer during the initial turbulence over the presidential so-called election. Last July, Iranian cartoonist-in-exile Nik Kowsar called the unrest then "the uprising of the middle class." Talking with Michael Cavna at the Washington Post’s Comic Riffs blog, Kowsar said: "The silent majority hates [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad. Former supporters weren't supporting him. The Guard and the council and the interior ministry didn't let the silent majority in on what was going on ... It's not important who votes—it's important who counts the votes."

Kowsar stays in touch with friends in Iran through two Facebook pages, one with 500 friends; the other, 1,500. “When I post a cartoon,” he told Cavna, “tens of thousands get it. My cartoons are spread throughout the world. ... Now people in Tehran hold up their hands and show bypassers my cartoons. I’ve seen a lot of people do that. That’s very touching to me.” In a recent cartoon, he depicted Ahmadinejad wearing a mask like a thief, saying: “Trust me! We counted the votes 20 days before the election!”

Once a geology student, Kowsar started doing editorial cartoons in 1993. He decided to become a cartoonist while still a student, working on student newspapers. “I felt there was a need in Iran to publish with a clear voice through the simplest cartoons that would connect with the masses,” he said. “There is a tradition in Iran of philosophic cartoons — too many symbols that might take minutes and minutes to decode and understand. I thought: Here could be a way to translate the style of American editorial cartoons — the style, the rhetoric — into Persian to show politics through humor. When I saw the effect my cartoons had on people and how much mail I got, I thought I was on the right path. ... My highly circulated work was well-received by the public, especially in Tehran. They were attacking my cartoons on national tv. I could see the effect of my cartoons.”

He was convinced of his popularity when his first book collection of cartoons was published in 2000 and sold 5,000 copies in each of five printings. Editorial cartoonists enjoyed a certain freedom in Iran as long as they didn’t satirize clerics and the military and judges, but Kowsar sometimes did and got himself into trouble. Once he depicted Ahmadinejad dancing the tango with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Such cartoons provoked the authorities. In February 2000, Kowsar was arrested and imprisoned for six days. "I had drawn a cartoon with a crocodile [strangling a cartoonist with its tail] that referred to a powerful ayatollah," he said to Cavna. "Clergy students and ayatollahs asked for my death ... They started with one cartoon but [suddenly] here were 168 cartoons. They [accused me and imprisoned me] for attacking Islam and defaming prophets."

During the Cartoonists Rights Network International (CRNI) dinner at the editorial cartoonists convention in 2007, I sat next to Kowsar. (We took photos of each other mugging at his behest; you can see mine of him to the right, and a sketch I’d made of him earlier.) He made a good living as a cartoonist in Iran, he told me — the equivalent, he said, of $100,000 a year. He drew for three different newspapers, going every day from one office to another in succession. In 2002, he was arrested again. Because of the views he expressed in his cartoons, he was suspected of being in a cell of revolutionaries.

“Being arrested in Iran is not good,” he said, eyebrows raised quizzically. He was tortured to divulge the names of the others in the dissident cell he was alleged to be a member of. Since he wasn’t in such an organization, he could reveal nothing. But when he was again at liberty, he was so fearful for his life that he fled the country, and CRNI was instrumental (in some unspecified way) in getting him to Canada, where he is now working on a newspaper and taking courses in journalism. Kowsar received the CRNI Courage Award several years ago, and his story has, for the moment, a happy ending: he was particularly jubilant during our conversation because he and his family, his wife and children, have just been reunited in Canada — “after four years,” he kept saying, holding up four fingers.

Kowsar has an antic, playful sense of humor, almost whimsical; it showed in his initial response to Cavna’s question about why he took the risk of cartooning in Iran: “First of all,” Kowsar said (grinning no doubt), “as a cartoonist you must be nuts to work in Iran. I think I was. ... But,” he continued in a more serious vein, “I could see that domestic [-focus] cartoons have an effect on people who are actually sympathetic with the cartoonist. You see cartoons under glass on their desks or framed and in dorms."

“Kowsar left Iran in 2003,” Cavna writes, “after receiving a death threat. He settled in Toronto with his family. He currently draws cartoons for Rooz, an online news site that publishes five days a week. His work has appeared in The New York Times as well as the Washington Post, the Globe and Mail of Toronto, and The Guardian in Britain.” You can find all of his engaging and insightful interview with Cavna here.

Otherwise, cartooning goes on in Iran. According to presstv.ir, Iranian cartoonist Mohammad-Ali Khalaji has won the first award of the 26th edition of Brazil's International Humor Exhibition of Piaui. Khalaji was also a winner at the First International China Olympic Cartoon Competition and the Fontanarrosa section of the 12th Buenos Aires International Salon Diogenes Taborda (ISDT) Visual Arts Festival. Must be something funny happening somewhere in Iran.