April 27, 2004
WORKING FOR THE MAN
Boondocks cartoonist Aaron McGruder doesn’t even draw the strip these days. The street-talkin’ honky-hater just sits around thinking up great jokes which he then hands over to an underling:
He passed the sketching and inking duties to a Boston-based artist, Jennifer Seng, around the time of the Condoleezza Rice flap, last fall. “If something had to give, it was going to be the art,” he told me. “I think I’m a better writer than artist.”
Too close to call, Aaron.
(Via New Criterion)
Posted by Tim Blair at April 27, 2004 02:41 AMCareful! If you point out that McGruder is quite literally phoning it in these days, you just might be called a RACIST.
Posted by: Jim Treacher at April 27, 2004 at 03:12 AMDay one: two frames of Huey watching a large square TV that looks like the box it came in. One frame of Huey looking at us with one eyebrow raised.
Day two: two frames of Huey watching a large square TV that looks like the box it came in. One frame of Huey looking at us with one eyebrow raised.
Day three: two frames of Huey watching a large square TV that looks like the box it came in. One frame of Huey looking at us with one eyebrow raised.
Day four: two frames of Huey watching a large square TV that looks like the box it came in. One frame of Huey looking at us with one eyebrow raised.
Day five: two frames of Huey watching a large square TV that looks like the box it came in. One frame of Huey looking at us with one eyebrow raised.
Poor Jennifer. I wonder if he pays her for five strips, or one.
Posted by: Lileks at April 27, 2004 at 04:47 AMInternet time. It took Trudeau a decade, before handing off that annoying "drawing thingy" involved with cartooning. If McGruder is todays "hip, edgy," Doonesbury, perhaps Chris Muir will be, and remain, todays smart, honest "Calvin n Hobbes."
Posted by: beets at April 27, 2004 at 04:59 AMIs that quite a fair characterization of Doonesbury? I also thought Trudeau had stopped drawing, but according to his website, it's only the inking and possibly the colorization that's done by an assistant, which is significant but still quite different from "not drawing". (And while I think Trudeau's mainspring of political humor has been winding down since the '90s, I really can't fault the art.) Come to think of it, could we persuade Ted "draws with his armpit" Rall (in the felicitous phrase of Mr. Lileks) to do this? Nowhere to go but up, after all.
The real challenge, of course, would be the Perl script that pulls text from "Democratic Underground" and combines it with the few actual "Boondocks" cartoon panels to produce new strips.
Posted by: Chris at April 27, 2004 at 05:20 AMBoondocks is a hit and miss cartoon. half the time its funny, half the time its retarded.
Posted by: Oktober at April 27, 2004 at 06:54 AMTrudeau MUST still be drawing Doonsbury, because would he really pay someone to NOT DRAW people, but instead just draw feathers and hands and whatever else he's passing off as characters these days? I'm also laughing to myself at the thought of McGruder racking his brain to write four panels, throwing balled up pieces of paper on the floor.
Posted by: Hiram Bingham at April 27, 2004 at 06:59 AMI dig Chris Muir, beets, but you may have noticed that he doesn't exactly draw his strip either.
Posted by: Sortelli at April 27, 2004 at 09:52 AMI did notice that, Sortelli. A lot of panels look similar between daily strips. But that's OK, he puts out a decent strip with good humor, and does do a fair amount of drawing. So he's still on my "links" bookmark.
Maybe he still has that day job?
Posted by: JeffS at April 27, 2004 at 10:06 AMI'm pretty sure Muir assembles his strip on a computer using art he's already drawn. I used to do that myself, but it carries a certain stigma. I think his strip would be a lot better if he drew every frame. His characters have these great flowing poses . . . and they never change.
Besides, if he was going to be like Calvin and Hobbes he'd have to crush other cartoonists off of the funny pages by demanding more space and after a few years of brilliance he'd need to turn into a boorish primadonna. I'd rather not see that happen! O_O
Posted by: Sortelli at April 27, 2004 at 10:47 AMIf you go and look at the earliest Doonesburys, you see Trudeau's actual drawing style-- pretty rough. Early on he handed inking over to a guy with a better hand. It's not that different from Walt not animating every frame of Mickey Mouse (or ANY, after a while), and at least he still writes it, and is clearly engaged with his strip, no matter how doctrinaire and obvious it often is these days.
MacGruder is a strange case-- he's really kind of the Jayson Blair of cartooning, a guy who maybe got success so fast that he only has contempt for the guilty liberals who threw it at him. He seems to be very angry and bitter, and he has done none of the work necessary to make his characters develop and take on multiple dimensions; he just uses them as mouthpieces for extremely obvious didactic points of little interest or originality. It's a waste, on many levels.
Posted by: Mike G at April 27, 2004 at 10:51 AMAll in the Family”—to be just controversial enough to draw attention, that is, without getting kicked off the air, by creating another Archie Bunker type, a “character who just spouts off ignorance.” He finds this line of reasoning suspicious. “As I understand it, the creators and the networks originally thought, O.K., well, this show’s going to be great, ’cause everybody’s going to get the joke that Archie’s a lovable idiot, and people are going to look at it as a satire of racism,” he said. “They found out that the reason people loved the show is because they agreed with Archie Bunker.”
Ha ha ha ha!
That's true about Calvin and Hobbes; Muir is doing well, let's not have an early burn out!
But, yeah, I'd to see more hand drawing there.
Posted by: JeffS at April 27, 2004 at 11:18 AMYoung Aaron does need to conserve himself. After all, homophobic, misogynistic young black men are so hard to find these days...
Posted by: Richard McEnroe at April 27, 2004 at 11:34 AMBoondocks is not at all funny. MacGruder, on the other hand, is quite hilarious.
Posted by: S.A. Smith at April 27, 2004 at 02:04 PMIn the article, Jack Newfield said:
"...Who is [McGruder] to insult people who have been putting their careers and lives on the line for equal rights since before he was born?"BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!
“At a certain point, I just got the uncomfortable feeling that this was a bunch of people who were feeling a little too good about themselves,” McGruder said afterward. “These are the big, rich white leftists who are going to carry the fight to George Bush, and the best they can do is blame Nader?”Again, BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!
Posted by: Jim C. at April 27, 2004 at 02:55 PM
What I find hillareous is that McGruder is the perfect product of the guilty white liberal establishment, a self-righteous, effortlessly racist little turd who feels proud to bite the hand that feeds him. Watching him fling feces at his white enablers and paymasters must have been one of the most delightful specticles in modern history.
Regan probably felt this way when the Iranians and Iraqis were slaughtering each other. I love the way Mr Rebel is worrying about saying anything too inflammitory in case he jepordises his movie deal. What a worthless piece of shit.
Am I the only person who gets the feeling that despite McGruder challenging everyone 40 years or over to a fight, one bitch-slap would send him sniveling and sqealing to a lawyer?
Posted by: Amos at April 27, 2004 at 03:05 PMAmos:
Am I the only person who gets the feeling that despite McGruder challenging everyone 40 years or over to a fight, one bitch-slap would send him sniveling and sqealing to a lawyer?
Actually, that would bring on a team of lawyers, professional counselors and therapists, and probably the ACLU. With Jesse Jackson offering his services.
Posted by: JeffS at April 28, 2004 at 02:54 AM