 We we talked backstage about the fact that we did not have any right-wing political cartoonists tonight and That was for a couple of reasons. One of them is that they're kind of Unicornian in their rarity, but also I don't know. I just I didn't want to turn the evening into a You know, he said she said he said whatever so but here's my question to you Why aren't why aren't there more right-wing political cartoonists and feel free to be as slamming as you want Because they're not funny Because hating on you know defenseless or you know people that can't defend themselves or you know Minority groups, it's not funny, you know, that's their to me that that's why there's no conservative comedians They're funny because they're all they do is I mean just watch Fox news when they try comedy You know, it's just all racist joke after racist joke. I think it depends though I think I know of a I mean, I'll name a couple who I think are funny Even though I think their views don't align with me and it depends on where they fall on the spectrum of right-wing craziness and it's one guy that I met who actually we were Discussing a little bit before coming to this is Mike Lester who's a right-wing cartoonist and as far as his politics I don't agree at all, but I think he's a great cartoonist and can be very funny But I think he's kind of you know nuts when it comes to political stuff and then Nate Bieler is another guy who does More conservative I would call him more conservative than right-wing, but you know, it's like we were talking about about Jeff McNally, yes was a conservative, but now he would probably be called a liberal Communist. Yeah. Yeah, exactly I think most satire has to do with poking power in the eye. That's the problem for right-wing Cartoonists, there's not much that they're inclined to to poke Except for you know powerless people, which is not as you were saying not so fun. It's not as funny Yeah, I always fall back on my herd John Stewart was trying to get pinned down by Terry Gross when he was on her show She was trying to get him to confess that he was a journalist and he said no no no what we do is in journalism We do what is in journalism He said look the reason we fact-check and the reason that we do so much work to back up and make sure out of the humor that We create stands the test of scrutiny is that jokes don't work unless they're true And I'll always fall back on that you know, so that that to my mind is why Perhaps there aren't as many conservative course units because maybe the facts are on their side. I Think it's anatomical Mostly because I mean the woman was made from Adam's ribs, so there's a rib tickling is that there's less ribs and males So I think it's easier to Tickle your own ribs isn't that's a very conceptual response Do we have any questions from the audience raise your hand and someone will come with a mic and hit you So the orange man has responded to SNL which You know in his view is not very funny. Has he tweeted about any comics? We're trying to earn that Trump Tweet I would I welcome it. That would be amazing. I think cartoons are probably really hard for him The one sentence the one sentence caption his attention span doesn't quite make it to the end of the caption The consensus in the green room before coming up here was that I mean we mentioned that You know who's who's he gonna tweet about first among cartoonists and that's gonna be very difficult because he doesn't read So it would have to rise to the level of being on Fox news So there's gonna be some dust up it will happen But I think it's only gonna happen once a cartoon gets picked up by cable news He only watches he only watches television and that that's his entire consumption I think we should do more captionless cartoons. There's no words Yes, then maybe Like an airplane emergency manual or something like that just all pictures Airplane emergency manual How about over over there? How long did it take you to develop your like final cartooning style or are you still working in developing it? I think you answered your own question It's a never-ending process you just keep learning keep doing it and hopefully one day you you've actually learned the craft You can't go to cartoony University to learn his crap Let the do it. I think it's I think one thing too, and I don't know what you guys think about this, but I think no I agree I Personally it never I never will stop. I mean it'll it'll keep developing or get you know Better hopefully maybe it'll get worse as I age you never know But the I think the more interesting thing is how people develop their style initially and and for me it was basically trying to copy People whose work I really admired and respected and then falling way short and developing my own style from that So it's it's a matter of just you know Seeing what you love and trying to incorporate it in your work, and then for me It was just you know you kind of find your own way eventually all the flaws become your style all the things you're trying not to do That's your style. It's good point I just think it's really I think it's important to remain really open to influence You know to keep to keep to be to be very impressionable and to keep you know Searching out influences and to remain dissatisfied, you know my own style I don't when I look back at cartoons. I've done and I just I don't like them very much, and I want to keep getting better I'm actually gonna copy the the dumpster fire and the dead Yeah, I'm going that route I'm gonna start doing animation actually Tom. I wanted to ask you Do you draw on paper or on a tablet paper? Oh, yeah draw on paper. It's a very laborious process Yeah, paper and then watercolor and then scan it and then touch up the scan So I might as well just draw digital in the tree and the trees you're killing too Only son You have someone I Have a statement and a question the statement is I Could not Read the individual signs in the women's March, but I hope that you're aware of we shall overcome and The question and please Forgive me. Um, it's not it's not a funny question. Where are the women? We tried There there is almost no liquid doesn't have a real budget for this series and so the only women political cartoonists that we thought were recognizable enough live Not in the Bay Area. So that was a challenge Unfortunately, the profession is at large much like our Congress is not represented Very few. Yeah, it's not representative of the population. Unfortunately. I mean, they're there I know I can only speak on behalf of the New Yorker because I'm just I sort of know The sort of editorial ins and outs of that a little bit more But they're they're making an active push to try and recruit more female artists and the next editor the current editor Bob Mankoff is retiring in two weeks and a woman will be taking his place as the cartoon editor So hopefully that'll mark a shift Back in the back there. Thank you In reference to the last question at the risk of seeming a bit too guerrilla girl. I am a woman I am a political cartoonist and I brought some work for each of the panelists whose work I very much The hustle is real What's what's your name since this is being broadcast live I'm working on a graphic novel about Howard Lee Oh Thank you Marshall during the Vietnam era his court martial Resulted in the GI anti-war movement and his anniversary. He's 80 years old. It's a brilliant man Funny is all get him And he's still practicing medicine in the Bronx serving the poor Serving his conscience and so Human have inspired me so much and your work Thank you, thank you for speaking up great. Thank you I'm sure she'll be happy to put some of those out front so people can grab them as they go Okay, go ahead. Hi. I just wanted to say hello to the animator let you know you have a kindred soul in the audience I'm from Kansas City raised there and love it Yeah, we moved we were living in Burke I grew up in El Cerrito and we were there two years ago and really love Kansas City. It's a great town Yes, I take back all the sneery things I said Flip the third maybe the lady here in the white Can you hold on while you get the mic there real quick? Well, it's for the broadcast. They won't be able to hear you I'm just wondering if living in Kansas City has influenced your work because Kansas City, I know is not as perhaps politically liberal as Berkeley and San Francisco Perhaps my partners from Kansas City also I mean, you know when I was living in Berkeley. I was drawing in my studio now in Kansas City drawing in my studio So the view out the window changed slightly But yeah, it's it's a little bit of a liberal oasis in the middle of red country So the immediate interactions we have my wife as a theater director And that's why we moved to Kansas City because she's doing a new play festival from in the case you rep So our circle remains artists progressives that kind of thing, but you are more aware I mean we do in our neighborhood There's a lot of Bernie posters and we live next to a university and a lot of students came around and knocked on Our doors and asked us to vote for Bernie, but if you go just a few blocks outside There's a lot of Trump flags flying so it keeps it keeps you in perspective. Yeah, it gives you a little bit more of a counterbalance I Find that we have a bubble here. Yes. I find that almost anywhere in the US as long as you're not too far from a campus A major campus you find a little bit of Berkeley. That's that's wonderful. Yeah almost any state I've been to I found You know that kind of ferment just because of the the campus sure kind of opening minds and So it is an oasis You were mentioning how you're close by the campus. Yeah. Yeah, certainly certainly Yeah, my my grandparents have a farm in Ohio and you're Oberlin and you go to Oberlin and it feels all of a sudden very kindred in a way Yeah, any centers of learning you find that same feeling as you do in Berkeley for sure Yeah, I just have to speak for For the right wingers here for a minute again. Here. I am doing it again. Geez. I don't know how this happened I snuck in One thing so so I was born and raised in California But my mom's side of the family is from Idaho and that's not the most liberal of states by any means and so I mean, I think one of the ways that I was shaped politically and as a cartoonist was the ability to joke with people who you don't agree with and to kind of Give them shit and take it back and and you know kind of have this rapport and realize that they are not the enemy But that you can make fun of them and they can make fun of you And I wish there was more of that, but I think we're long past that right now, dude I miss arguing economics and capitalism with like Republicans what happened to those people? They're gone. There's just you know, I am of the I'm in the punch of Nazi camp You know, yeah, the Nazi wants me dead. I'm least gonna take a couple of his teeth out You know, I'm nonviolent, but you know if you're calling, you know, I've gotten so much Like Trump fan hate mail for I changed my Twitter name to registered Muslim for a little while and I like message me on Twitter is like I can't wait for Trump to win so we can torture you You know, and he was not like some kind of comedy writer He was serious some dude in Ohio, you know, and then also it was in Kansas City But yeah, no, it was a bonus for him because then he also wanted to deport me, you know And I'm like dude, you know, I'm I was born in San Diego. I'll be back in two hours I actually live near Trump University. My house is online. So I actually live right I talked to those people all the time They're very nice. Can I say one more thing? Kansas City Home of universal syndicate, which is now Andrews McMill syndication, which is our syndicator for you Few of us you click go comics calm You can go on go comics calm and get like every single comic strip That's out in the universe sent to you every day, you know, because you know save a tree or whatever, right? But our universal, you know is was known for Taking chances on, you know, Dunesbury the boondocks La cucaracha and and lots of other, you know, very edgy and You know out there strips that are not totally mainstream plus a bunch of mainstream stuff So shout out to Kansas City and to barbecue I'm a vegetarian I live in Kansas City I actually have a quick question for you guys myself, which is a Tom shared that awful awful You know email or letter that he got that was just so incredibly mean-spirited and Granted as a political cartoonist you have to have something of a thick skin, but does it ever get to you? I mean, do you ever or do you just have to develop an armor when it comes to this kind of thing? Asmus, and I know it gets all kinds of hate mail. Yeah, I'm emotionally numb Love anymore I try don't even try to love me, okay Just stop it I mean, it's not pleasant. You don't you don't enjoy it, you know, it's not like the greatest thing to pop up in your inbox But it's just it's just the sort of it's people who don't feel like they have a voice You know trying to express themselves and we have a platform to express ourselves I've always found that they Do you respond to them when you get an email? No, no, no, I mean I received that email on the same day I received an email from someone saying you know I appreciate we're doing I don't agree with your points of view, but you know I believe that you should be able to express yourself, and I just wanted to say that so I mean there's degrees to these things I just shows out because it was the most heinous and eye-catching I've always cracked up because sometimes I'll get an email and I don't respond to all of them But sometimes I'll get a really nasty email like that and respond You know, thanks for writing, you know just something very innocuous Thanks for writing guess we're not on the same side of the fence or whatever haven't your email and then they'll just come back And they'll be like oh my gosh. I I'm so sorry. I said that I just needed to get it off my chest So a lot of it's like that and and honestly it's for me anyway I don't know about you guys, but it's I always write. Thank you for your readership. Yeah Those people that write me and they read my strip every day, and then write me a nasty message, and I'm like I Keep boosting my numbers I have the opposite experience where I get a lot of love mail, and then I send back really hateful stuff And then they send hate mail Do we have any more audience question there's a man that's been raising his hand right there For those of you who work closely with editors or and on a daily or weekly basis I'm just curious with a change in the political climate Has there been a change in your editors views in the sense of there are lines that they didn't want you to cross before that? Now are kind of free-willing or are they concerned about you know, you may want to do something very Vocal and a very very strident in there saying well, maybe not I'm just gonna curious had or is it just business as usual. I think it was worse than the Obama actually Believe it or not because there was a sense of protecting the guy, you know, he's he's our first African-American president. You can't really Say certain things. He means well whereas now it's hey fire away We all hate Trump. So it's ironically is my my experience is the opposite My editor just checks for typos They you know she I've never had an editor that's like told me not to do anything. They don't do that The Chronicle doesn't allow scrotum anymore Yeah, I had a whole thing of scrotum jokes going for weeks and they finally stopped me Yeah, the word or there is such a thing as too much. I did not know there was such a thing as scrotum jokes, okay Oh, yeah, it's a it's on the what do they call that reddit? Google asthmus in scrotum. Yeah Images I'm only like for me person I'm only restrained by you know the New Yorkers top hat and white gloves. They don't they don't let you go so far I mean I had some Sample Trump 2020 reelection campaign posters that I wanted to put up on the website And they nixed the ones that were like two nooses as the O's Then a KKK hood with the eyes of the O's the 2020 so you can't you can't cross those lines on that platform although David Remnick the editor is very much Obviously opposed to Trump and he's you know I called you know our sort of a state of emergency the way that Trump called the news media the enemy of the people and So he's letting the journalism I think take the vanguard of that resistance and the art still has to stay more of it sort of humorous You know a scrotum can make the letter W Was that there in the Bush era was that you found that out there you go Google asthmus in scrotum Bush era This is really going downhill Maybe one more question this man up here Do somebody have a oh, I'm sorry. There's a man with the mic back there. Hold on one second So my question is about Your process and how many how many strips how many cartoons we we don't see that you created Be thankful you don't see those ones Well, I'm kind of a weird case because for me once I start producing the thing I've got to finish it because otherwise it's I I don't think ever yeah I've never actually created an animation and not you know released it somehow, but I do actually now Kind of calling back to the last question, too I have a foot in both worlds a little bit now because I do a daily still cartoon with KQED here as well that's out on social media But is very different from my animation, which is a little more to the jugular It's more in the New Yorker genteel style. I'd like to think anyway Do you do one a week of the animated or I do you want? Yeah, one a week in the animated and then a daily of the a lot. It's crazy Yeah, it's made it it works though, you know, that's where motion capture will hopefully save my behind Yeah, it'll be drafts and drafts and drafts, you know of just refining for me is mostly refining the caption Getting the wording exactly correct, you know go agonizing over that is where I do most of the editing for my jokes Yeah, I actually included preliminary sketches of a lot of the ones you see and other trump cartoons in the book For me you get all my crap The Chronicle laid off all the editors, so I don't get it at all Last one there I spelled stroke them wrong and that was They never they never told him the chronicle folded. He thinks he still works there Hey Don two words scrotum capture Okay last question you guys are proof that That it's it's not a good idea to Adjust to a an ingest world, especially you Mark I just I've heard from the others How what else they do, but I'm wondering how do you make how do you make a living by this? Very very carefully It's well, it's a variety of things. I mean in I used to when I first started doing animation I basically started selling the animation the same way. I was selling print cartoons before that You know knocking on editors doors and essentially self-sindicating, which is how I'm still doing it self-sindication a little bit through patreon I don't know it's which is basically like a an ongoing crowdfunding thing like Kickstarter So it's it's starting to at least the writing on the wall for me Anyway has started to bypass those editors and go directly to people who like my stuff So while I might not have a book I do have a patreon campaign So you you know people can go there and it you essentially you get the cartoon But you also can see behind the scenes and get more bells and whistles that way So it's it's a variety and then also doing the the daily cartoon with KQED is part of it, too So yeah, it's it's it's you know working for yourself. It's Entrepreneurial juggling something like that Did winning a Pulitzer help and how do you win a Pulitzer? Yeah, you know when I first started to I sound like a really old fart now, but when I first started to apply They didn't accept animation. They didn't accept online entries. And so I essentially Did a fuck you entry for like three years four years and I would after like a week after I submitted it I would get a call, you know, hi, this is blah blah from Columbia University Calling about your entry in my heart. It's like oh my gosh and and then they say do you want us to? Mail back your entry It out So persistence and then they finally changed the rules and and it helped a little bit But it wasn't it's so hate mail work. That's what you're saying. Yeah hate mail. Hate mail is more important But a big part of it, I'm sure for all of us here is that with The the exposure you get you get, you know a request from all sorts of places So so you you don't just do your daily thing. You also do extra projects and So between all those things you managed to make a living I'm a Hollywood whore And it's working out pretty well it sounds like Can't get much better than Pixar I want to we need to wrap it up because the library has very firm hours that we need to be gone I wanted to tell you that our next one of these wonderful panels will be on May 31st, that's the one that we mentioned earlier called such a nasty woman female authors respond to Trump and we'll have Some amazing the amazing novelist Christina Garcia Carolina de Robertis. Ia de Leon Vanessa And more and so I encourage you to to respond to that and RSVP and please come out It's free like all of these are and I want to thank our amazing amazing panelists tonight As well as the San Francisco library Joan Jasper Joan Jasper and her crew and her wonderful sound people Please go to litquake.org for future happenings and thank you so much for coming