Let's start with Prickly City, where, for the last couple of days, Winslow has been looking for Carmen and we have what I guess passes for a happy ending now.
It is indeed scary what passes for reasonable these days.
It's also scary and depressing, by the way and excuse me for being a Grinch, what passes for original at the moment, which is to say that I'm very glad those kids in Thailand were rescued, but enough already with the cartoons about rescuing Trump's imprisoned children.
Professional pride should stop you from making a cartoon based on an idea that absolutely everyone else in the entire industry has already done, but, beyond that, the underlying principle doesn't hold: Yes, we were focused on the kids in Thailand, but the conceit only works if we weren't simultaneously focused on the children in cages here.
That is, the point of such a cartoon would be "Why do you care about this when you don't care about that?" and people clearly do care about that.
The other point might be "Wouldn't it be nice if, having solved this crisis, we could also solve that crisis?" except that we pretty much -- knock wood -- seem to be getting that crisis in hand.
It would be nice if all the kidnapped children were in one place in a cave and all their parents were gathered in one place outside the cave and the only problem was physically bringing the children to the waiting parents but I'm not sure how you'd draw that cartoon anyway.
But here's a Steve Artley cartoon that riffs on an old principle that remains true and is particularly relevant at the moment: There is a substantial group, currently gaining a great deal of power, who care desperately about the unborn but who don't give a good God damn about them once they're out of the womb.
They don't want to give them health care, they don't want to feed them, they don't want to provide education for them.
It's an old song, except that it was public pressure, not some great moral awakening, that caused these heartless automatons to stop using small children as hostages and putting them in cages.
Now comes our newest nominee to the Supreme Court, and President Trump promised to only appoint pro-life justices but today says he never asked Kavanaugh his opinion, which he probably didn't have to, given that this is the one time the prez has accepted advice and we can logically suspect that the rightwing group which handed Trump his list of prospects did ask the question.
In any case, Kavanaugh served as a pro-bono attorney for a group of conservative relatives that was seeking to gain custody of a small child who, contrary to the custody agreement in their divorce, was the victim of an international kidnapping by his mother, who then died.
The father had legal custody not only as the surviving parent but according to their custody agreement, but he was a socialist, and so Kavanaugh stepped in on behalf of the highly conservative relatives the child had never previously met.
As a single dad, I found it a little chilling, and I got a kick out of Jeff Danziger's take.
Fortunately, it happened during the Clinton administration and the custody agreement prevailed over rightwing political pressure.
I'm not sure little Elian would be returned to his father these days.
Okay, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be.
The Cuban government being the one opponent of democracy in general and the USA specifically that Dear Leader hasn't hugged to his bosom, which brings us to today's
Three-Way Juxtaposition at the End of the World
It was nice to be able to place these in order, starting with the foolish puppetry starring little D. Johnny Trump, to which I add a photo of the original because it's the only wig more ridiculous than the one he wears in real life.
And to spare confusion, I would note that "Johnny" was Senor Wences's (literal) hand puppet, while "Pedro" was the head in the box.
In "The In-Laws," Richard Libertini's insane dictator called his hand puppet "Pedro."
However, just as you should not confuse the real, 1979 "In Laws" with the 2003 schlock remake, so, too, you should not confuse Libertini's homage with Senor Wences' genius, nor Putin's unconvincing version of the gag.
Meanwhile, Luckovich proves that it's possible to breathe life into a cliche: The Bull in a China Shop would be mediocre if he hadn't added the leash, combined with Putin's cheerful "I see nothing" attitude.
And Powell riffs on the real war games being practiced. I saw a posting on Facebook yesterday in which someone claimed -- with a hashtag and we know you're not allowed to simply invent hashtags -- that there is a mass defection of influential Democrats to the Trump camp.
I'm pretty sure most of Putin's troll army is better trained than that.
In any case, the game is afoot.
And the foot is in your ... nevermind.
Other Juxtaposition Which Needs Little Commentary
I'm so glad Sheneman comes ahead of Stahler in my feed, because I was a little puzzled by his cartoon but then found Stahler's version much easier to parse.
Beware of subtlety, my friends. It confuses the readers.
Speaking of confusing cartoons
I like Ed Hall's take on a potential Hillary 2020 campaign, but I was confused by a sudden burst of cartoons on the topic, since I hadn't heard an announcement.
So I Googled and there have been baseless predictions since Nov 2016, but the latest flurry seems to come from this highly speculative column in the NY Post, which apparently got the rightwingers fired up, but nary a mention in anything more mainstream and leave us not forget that "tabloid" is not just a format:
It's a state of mind.
The whole thing reminds me of this elaborate, classic tribute to Bo Diddley who, at the end, echoes my response:
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