Attitude: The New Subversive Political Cartoonists
Edited by Ted Rall
Published by NBM Publishing
Not many cartoonists release two landmark books in one year, but just a few weeks after the release of To Afghanistan and Back, Ted Rall is back with this collection of cutting-edge political comic strips and interviews with their creators.
In a time when Orwellian concepts like thought-crime and double-speak have become actual, dull-witted reality courtesy of an illegitimate, unelected coup d'etat, there can be no higher calling than subversion. Rall introduces nearly two dozen cartoonists on the front line in the war against complacency.
Some of them, like Tom Tomorrow and Peter Kuper, I am already familiar of (and in fact greatly admire). Others, like Joe Sharpnack and Clay Butler, are new to me. All share a moral outrage and stinging insight that allows them to summarize and indict a complex (if mind-numblingly banal) political landscape with just a few inky lines drawn on paper.
Rall delves into the formative experiences, artistic approaches and moral indignity that inform the work of these cartoonists. Most are best known for their appearances in weekly alternative newspapers -- I know Tom Tomorrow's delightfully blunt This Modern World from Albany, New York's Metroland -- but some, like Kuper, have risen to greater prominence.
All deserve greater attention, because they're among the few in the political cartooning profession still willing to give up a daily slot in a major mainstream newspaper, and the accompanying money and recognition that would bring. The motivating factor for most of these people is the desire to testify to the often grim, lately surreal state of reality. This sets them apart from most daily political hack cartoonists, who are apparently working for a second home or a third car in exchange for mostly meaningless strips full of what Rall rightly slams as being filled with "Donkeys and elephants, labels and tortured analogies."
Rall himself is interviewed near the end of this collection, and that is as it should be: Ted Rall's outspoken ferocity in the face of a culture of complacency deserves attention. His willingness to shine the spotlight on other, gifted and outraged cartoonists has resulted in a powerful argument for questioning authority and speaking truth to power, and he deserves our thanks. Grade: 4.5/5