So, Bors is the only American cartoonist I really follow, for a number of reasons. He has a nice, clean art style, is good at producing clear, thoughtful images, and builds humorous situations out of insane situations (The flat-top gun-nut dude is always brilliant, from “Lattes = Freedom” to “Does everyone feel safe? I feel safe!”). But more importantly, he doesn’t just follow his side and parrot ideas that make no sense, or are fundamentally horrible and bigoted, like Lester, Ramirez, and the other awful cartoonists that people on the internet have introduced me to.

He draws things that he has opinions about, and draws them in a way that makes it clear he’s put some thought into them, rather than just throwing a grotesque caricature over someone he doesn’t like and calling it a paycheck. I’m not against caricatures, even monstrous ones; see the British cartoonists Steve Bell or Martin Rowson, both of which have very bizzare art styles, and draw real people in distorted ways that have grown over time. They don’t use labels to tell their stories, they use caricatures and imagery that have actual meaning, not just ugliness slapped beneath a “This person is bad” label. That’s how it should be done. You shouldn’t be able to just draw someone who “isn’t really Sandra Fluke, honest” as fat and ugly just because you want to call them fat and ugly.

So as an outsider who struggles to grasp parts of American culture, such as its fascination with guns and military, its veneration of the rich and vilification of the poor, and the selective worship of The Constituion, and to a lesser degree The Bible… Bors’ cartoons are a relieving sign that there is some sanity amongst a medium seemingly flooded with bile and blind rage.

We don’t like Bors because he’s a whiny bitch. It’s because he whines in a thoughtful, intelligent, humourous way, about things that we think need to be whined about.

Having worked as a caricature artist in theme parks for several years, I have known artist who have made livings for themselves for decades drawing only one face. That’s right. You can draw the same face over a 100,000 times and as long as you give each face a different haircut, make sure you give them the right eye color, skin tone, and hair color people will keep lining up and getting a drawing done. Even though it their drawing looks just like the person who got theirs right before them. The general public isn’t much for critical judgement. It’s just one drawing and the know nothing about art.

The point is an individual can make a living creating crap, but if everyone in the industry is making crap the audience will lose interest over time. This is where editorial cartooning has shot itself in the foot.

So what’s my point? Plagiarizing someone else’s work, and getting paid for it, is a breach
of professional integrity. You learn by copying others, you are paid
to develop your own work. Self plagiarization is more corrosive. There’s nothing unethical about plagiarizing your own work. Its lazy, sloppy, shows you lack interest in your profession, but there’s no real wrong doing per se. Your audience will eventually catch on to your bland repetitiveness even though they won’t catalog your transgressions.

Its the culture of sameness perpetuated by syndicates, newspaper editors, and lazy self-plagiarizing cartoonists that destroyed the industry as it stood. Jeff McNally type editorial cartoons were fresh and interesting in the 1970s. That was 40 years ago.

40 years of sameness killed the market.

There are a growing number of cartoonist making a living online and none of their work conforms to the traditional standards of the nearly dead professional printed industry. Editorial cartoonists are struggling much harder to make a go of it online because:
A)The vast majority of them draw in a similar fashion, use a similar format, and write similar gags.
B) There’s a lack of interest in editorial cartoons as a whole. If you talk to someone under thirty when they think of editorial cartoons they talk about the artist in the guy in the Onion who satirizes blowhard conservative editorial cartoonists. Think for a moment… one of the most well known artists in the profession is someone who parodies the art form.

People love political content, people love political humor, but political cartoons? The tuned out long ago because the work has been such crap for so long. Rebuilding that interest will take time. Good luck aspiring editorial cartoonists.

is there a non-billday level of self-reproduction that is ok?

like, say you really nail santorum’s sweater vest and want to copy’n'paste it a couple times but draw his lying weasel face new each time?

i can’t really draw, so i can’t compare.

for all i know, you derive extreme happiness from each time you get to recreate each sweater vest.

BETTER is subjective. i’ll give it to you as POPULAR.

the marketplace constantly picks huge stinkers.

and you speak as if there is an actual equal choice between comparable options..

can you go to the news-stand and be able to decide on 2 different newspapers that have similar articles, coverage, journalistic integrity, etc, etc, but one of the major differences is that paper A has non-hack cartoonists employed while paper B has hacks?

a handful of people in charge decide what they think will sell and they run with it..

you go to the news-stand and can:

1. purchase the (probably only remaining) local paper that the editors/publishers believe will sell the most by dumbing down anything they can.
i.e. their front page only shows the inane (local school children jump through sprinklers, area middle-aged man shovels snow, go local high school sports team!)

or 2. grab the (probably only remaining) free alt-weekly that might have a cartoon that might be the same as the above, or not so “hacky”.. i have no idea.

this isn’t coke vs. pepsi.

While I am not a cartoon critic, this was kind of clear to me that Mr. Fish does that. But “That Cartoon Critic” seems to be shocked to find that out. Now one may or may not like what Mr. Fish does, but picking out this or that example and yelling “This is what Mr. Fish does!” elicits a “Yeah doh, captain obvious.” reaction from me.