We stopped running Alex Miel's Tales from America series about the time they stopped running, but there were a few that came out after, and on the day that the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee meets to hash out what to do with Michigan and Florida--and this being a Saturday, the home of Saturday Toons--here's one last panel. I think Alex really has a keen eye for boiling down current events, does a nice drawing job, and can be wickedly funny.
As I mentioned a while ago, Alex Miel our primary cartoonist (if by primary you mean we rip his toons off his page and print them for our own content) has cut back on the site output. With what I'm paying, I find that hard to believe, but OK!*
The last couple weekends I just haven't made it over there to look, even though he said he might have a couple a week, which is plenty if they're good. Mostly they are. But I figured its days as a weekly feature were numbered, so I didn't feel bad about letting a couple weekends lapse.
I finally went over there, and these are three really great, really cutting and yet funny panels. The first one is called "meanwhile 3" and rings a familiar tone:
I mean, a blown-up child is not everyday fare for a cartoon, but it took a couple looks for it even to register with me. With the release of Pew data showing a notable decrease in people's awareness about Iraq--and certainly a rapid decline in stories about the war, this hits the right note.
Next is one that strongly echoes 19th and early 20-Century political cartoons. Although the last one of the three is actually my favorite, this is the most creative and I think lasting cartoon:
This last one made me laugh hardest, because Geraldine Ferraro is so fucking stupid. Just shut UP, already! And stop putting mikes in her face, media, it's not mandatory that we hear from Geraldine. We've done OK since 1984 without you, you crazy old bat. Here's how you see it, I guess:
So I got the word a while ago that Alex Miel, mutually-agreed "house cartoonist" for the last few months at LO, was ramping down the production at his Tales From America site to pursue other (hopefully more lucrative than the glorious "in-kind" dollars from me) projects. It would not go away entirely, but the output would become more irregular and offer less weekly choice for the featured toon.
This set me to such depression that I didn't even run one last week. Pills, booze, Patsy Cline records--nothing shook the malaise.
I got over it of course--I've never even met or spoken with the guy, actually--but now and then I still look wistfully through past piracies--er, "encore editions"--of his panels every Saturday at LO. And despite his promised disfocus, what did I find this week but several more panels to choose from--all of them spot-on topical and sometimes wickedly funny. So here's an OFI moment: not one, not two, but three-maybe-four-depending-on-how-you-count toons from the nearly departed Alex Miel! Right on.
These last two probably require the author's preface, written on Super Tuesday:
My home state has no voting today and I'm not even a registered Democrat, so far be it from me to tell you which way to swing. But I have taken the liberty of posting unaltered photos of each candidate in an attempt to help you clarify your final decision.
In a fairly dumbed down entertainment world, I like how sophisticated some of Alex's ideas are, expressed as cartoons. The he said/she said robotic idiocy of the mass media is a major frustration to progress, and in three silent panels Alex gets it right...
The response to my review of Alex Miel's Tales from America was universally favorable, and Mr. Miel has graciously consented to allow LO the chance to feature his cartoons on Saturdays. So here's Volume 1 of Tales from America, brought to you by Loaded Orygun.
I've come across a cartoonist some of you may already know, if you were a PSU student for instance or are a Too Much Coffee Man reader: Alex Miel. Crazy as it sounds, it's actually hard to be both witty and succinct as a writer, AND decent or interesting as an illustrator. I'm pretty critical of so-called "amateur" cartoonists; from the early panels I've seen of Gary Trudeau I never would have hung with him expecting to see Doonesbury flourish just a few years later.
So let's give some of these a try, and because he really does pump out several good cartoons a week, maybe we can start featuring them on Saturdays, like I so much used to enjoy in the Saturday Washington Post. We need a good illustration feature from an Oregon artist!
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