Ever wanted to see Norman Rockwell'spro-civil rights cartoon of a black soldier and a white soldier withtheir blood mingling after they'd been shot in Vietnam? Too bad –
it was killed by *Look *magazine in 1968. What about Sam Gross'
cartoon, censored by Science Digest in 1985, that showed a geekplaying a videogame called “Hack into the Pentagon's Computer”?
Or a cartoon by Steve Brodner showing Rush Limbaugh to be a literal butthead (pictured above)? Brodner's cartoon was killed by progressive mag *Mother Jones *in 1993. But now you can see all of them in David Wallis' new book, Killed Cartoons,
published last month by Norton.
Wallis, who runs an indie syndicationservice online called Featurewell (note: he represents me as well asseveral other Wired writers), is a journalist's journalist, the kindof guy who lives for freedom of the press. And he celebrates thatfreedom in this tribute to political cartoonists who draw things thateditors deem too controversial to print. His anthology spares nobody: Wallisprints un-PC cartoons banned by lefty alternative weeklies as wellanti-Republican cartoons killed by Time. More cartoons and commentary after the jump . . .
Above, you can see Derf's cartoon of "Bush's Inner Circle," killed in 2002 by the Times of Acadiana, an alternative weekly in Lafayette, Louisiana. One of the interesting trends that Wallis tracks in his book is the evaporation of "alternative" publications in the 1990s. While alternative papers of the 70s and 80s celebrated indie cartoons like "Life in Hell," "Ernie Pook's Comeek,"Tom Tomorrow," and "Zippy the Pinhead," the 90s found these papers in a downward spiral. They were losing classified ads to online services like Craigslist, and editors began to worry about retaining conservative advertisers. Thus, a paper like Times of Acadiana wound up killing an anti-Bush cartoon because, at least according to Derf, "[The editor] was tired of dealing with complaints about these damn cartoons, especially mine."
Wallis, who provides context for each killed cartoon with literate and well-investigated introductions, reveals several dominant themes in cartoon censorship. Cartoons about popular politicians, as well as the Catholic Church, are often killed. Imagery that includes sex or nudity (like the two I've included in this post) are also no-nos. Wallis also comments on the way racial imagery in cartoons gets censored in ironic ways -- black cartoonist Keith Knight had a cartoon killed by a Marin County paper who worried that his jokes could be perceived as racist.
For anybody who loves cartoons -- and the dying art of political cartooning especially -- "Killed Cartoons" will be a source of amusement first, and second a source of shock that editors are so afraid to publish provocative ideas.
Killed Cartoons [book website]
