News-Record.com

So you're saying they're appropriate and tasteful now?

It disgusts me that you felt the need to print them now.

Doug Marlette often draws cartoons that apropriately and accurately capture the essence of situations, including our collective responses to national and international tragedies.

His recent cartoon showing death randomly picking Blacksburg, Virginia for the sudden, senseless killings of 32 innocent individuals was not a pretty picture, but it offered a powerful image of how unexplainable the event ultimately is.

After the Challenger explosion, Marlette drew an eagle staring into the dark heavens, a tear falling from its eye in recognition of our nation's collective sadness.

Not to say that other cartoonists do not achieve the same nor to imply that he never "gets it wrong," but Marlette has regularly demonstrated the ability to read and interpret our national culture and to show how we understand and respond to specific events that affect us all.

Applying those qualities to cartoons can sometimes be among the purposes that a cartoonist has.

With controversial cartoons, we love the ones that agree with us and only offend and disturb other people's universes.

But that doesn't mean that we're not quick to turn around and condemn the cartoons that challenge us to consider the side we don't so easily see or understand (nor have any desire to).

Wow, those are pretty abhorrent.

It would take a Sam Beckett to get meaningful, sad and poainful, yet weirdly appropriate humor out of this tragedy. Alas, we have no such writers, let alone visual artists. George Grosz or Otto Dix, where are you?

Well, I'm glad you have more to choose from than this collection. Makes me wonder about some people.

The only way around cartooning is to have the politicians already pre-packaged as cartoons right out of the box, like with GC commisioners and schoolboard.

Allen,
Well I had a professor finding herself trying to lighten up the atmosphere of my class last Tuesday by making a remark about Virginia Tech. Now she is infamous for her uncouth humor so I guess it was "acceptable", but as for the cartoons it's a bit too soon. It's like putting salt on an open wound. However, it just shows that America is not safe from tragedies. It could be worse...it could happen everyday.

Not that I think any responsible newspaper should have run that Peanuts knock-ff, but when you look at a lot of Schulz, you see some very dark stuff: Lucy was capable of a sadistic sort of megalomania. Poor Charlie Brown suffered from severe bouts of clinical depression (as did his creator). In a twisted "underground comix" way, the cartoon has more truth than not...(destructive will-fulfillment, revenge fanstasy, bi-polar reactive tendency).

That's true, Jim. But those were subtle themes. Nobody in the Peanuts Gang was packing heat (except, I guess, Snoopy in his battles with the Red Baron).

Hence my agreement with your decision to not run the cartoon in the general paper. But, as I said, there's much similar and "worse" in "underground comix". The German artists I mentioned also made gripping and powerful art, not just throwaway cartoons, with a lot more bite. But the real issue here is that the target of the black humor isn't just "Peanuts", but the larger entertainment culture we should be taking to task. I am addicted to "24", for example. Thank goodness I believe few children watch it, but teens very well might.

Then there's the rap lyrics, the poseurs and real posses.

Who is benefitting from the culture of violence, aside from media moghuls? Perhaps in a twisted way the politicians and policy wonks who want to play up "Law and Order" themes (oh, maybe Fred Thompson?); the ranks of professional psychiatrists/psychologists and mental health-providers (charging $100/hr and more for facility-based care), though they may honestly say they wish they were out of jobs instead; clearly the gun lobby, which would be apoplectic if their bogeymen were to quietly fade away; and, last but not least, the churches and private schools...to save us from ourselves.

Now, there's a raft of worthy subjects for satire. Once more, where is the visual artist to take them on, without fear of ridicule (for ridicule and hate are the true satirist's lot in life).