P'blizh'd

On October 11th, I got a message from Samantha Strong of The Daily Universe. She liked the cartoons a lot and said there was definitely a way for me to be involved with the opinion page. I emailed her with the cartoons as .jpeg files and awaited a response.

In the meantime, I came up with a couple more cartoons:


Two approaches to solve our budget problems.

Senator McCain gave a plethora of shout-outs to Joe the Plumber in his last debate with Senator Obama. He claims that the Obama Tax Plan wouldn't help out Joe the Plumber. Senator Obama claims that the McCain Tax Plan would help out Joe the CEO. Who's to say?

On October 20th, this Joe the Plumber Tax Cut cartoon was published in The Daily Universe! I am now twice published in a newspaper with a circulation of 18,500.

I hope there's more to come.

Previously Published

Oh, looks like I haven't posted this one:


This is one that actually did get published in The Daily Universe, in March 2008. When I was desperately looking for a job, I made an attempt at becoming a permanent cartoonist for BYU's newspaper. Unfortunately, I was handled rather unprofessionally. I wasn't just not hired, I was not communicated with. I dropped off a folder of cartoons, and never heard from them again. The only reason I even knew I was published was because my friend Andrew Thacker happened to notice my artwork in The Daily Universe one morning. A little while after that Charlotte Carter (now Myers), another friend and a former Daily Universe employee, returned the folder of cartoons. The guy in charge of the editorial page never even called me. For all I know he never existed.

But, this semester I see the staff has changed and there's someone new manning (or, should I say, womanning) the editorial page. We'll see if I can get a reaction.

I'm Not Afraid To Get All Mavericky In There

I took another whack at The Daily Universe. I've recently been more involved in educating myself on the election, what with my Political Science 314 class, my roommate Bert van Uitert, and my own personal drive to be an educated voter. Of course, in that process, I find plenty of ammunition for satire and mockery.

This one is my favorite. It says something to all those Mormons who stand atop their no-caffeine soapboxes. (Senator McCain is drinking Surge there, shipped all the way from Iraq, in case you can't read it.)

Senator Obama's foreign policy seems to be to catch the Axis of Evil on the rebound after President Bush dumped them. I'm no foreign policy expert, but if Senator Obama does the opposite of whatever President Bush did, that's probably a step in the right direction. (Once again, hard to read who is included in that clique of girls, unless you recognize each national leader by their face. If so, I commend you for your photographic memory of world affairs. I had to look up these guys on Google. Anyway, from left to right that's Kim Jong Il of North Korea, Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad of Iran, and Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan.)

I wonder what Osama bin Laden is thinking when he watches the debates on his TV in his cave... Here they are, two candidates for the president of the United States, trying to win votes by proving that their way of killing Osama bin Laden is the best way. How interesting it must be to be flipping channels and to come across two politicians arguing about how they're going to kill you.

If only...if only...

We should have seen this coming, America...

So, we'll see if The Daily Universe decides to use these for anything.

Other than that, I don't have a lot of animation/cartoon news. This semester I'm too busy worrying about 17th century American literature, Spanish syntactigrams and progressivism in the presidency to worry about animation. Which I need to turn around before I completely forget what I want to be when I grow up.

I'm thinking that I'll take a lighter load next semester. I'll take the two classes that Ryan Woodward advised me to, and a couple others. Probably Communications 101 and Spanish 355. Not only will I be able to focus more on animation, but my job is going to go ka-razy next semester. Less homework would be nice.