Pages

7/15/08

When the Elephants Come to Town

Our local alternative paper, City Pages, published its second (now annual) Comix Issue where they ask local artists to submit cartoons based on a common theme. The Republicans are holding their national convention in St. Paul, Minnesota this year, so naturally that ended up being the theme this time 'round.

I'd missed out on last year's issue, so I was looking forward to trying my hand at this year's. The question was, what to do? How to stand out? I had a feeling that for the most part the cartoons would be angry, vindictive affairs (as would be expected in an alternative publication, especially cartoons dealing with the RNC's national convention coming to one of the bluer parts of Minnesota) and frankly, it just seemed to easy to rant, boil, and foam, or to make the typical parodies. As a result, I didn't come up with an idea until a day before the deadline. And to my delight, it was among those chosen, although it only made it online, and you can click the strip below to see it.




I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that it didn't make it to the print version, but I am happy with the strip, and I think I prefer it this way rather than had I gone the ugly boiling rant route and been in the print version. Not that I think that would've secured a print-version spot, as there are a couple cartoons that aren't all angry and ugly that did make it into print, such as Steven Stwalley's "Pink Elephants on Parade" and Carl Nelson's "GOPzilla" - both are well-drawn and funny, or at least to me, and refreshing compared to the typical crap like "Welcome Evangelicals" and "RNC Sneak Preview". I'm not going to link those last ones - if you want to see them, find 'em yourself. Bleh.

So if you get a chance, check out the strip. Oh, and let me know if you catch the metaphor.

Good luck,

K

2 comments:

Amy K. M. said...

um......what does it mean when it says go directly to our sites and view them from there???

Unknown said...

Hey, Amy - turns out they didn't allow direct linking to the strip, so I changed the link to a locally hosted version. Clicking on the small strip takes you to the full-sized one now. Thanks for the heads-up and sorry for the confusion.

Good luck,

K