comics

Speaker of the House Auditions

This entry was posted in comics and tagged Congress HouseGOP Jim Jordan Kevin McCarthy Lauren Boebert Matt Gaetz Republicans Speaker of the House Steve Scalise on by
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Nine months after he barely squeaked into the speakership, Kevin McCarthy was ousted by the Ding-Dong Caucus. I was pleasantly surprised the Democrats didn’t bail him out for the sake of “norms, bipartisanship” or some other bullshit. McCarthy refused to make any concessions to earn that kind of unprecedented act and deserves to be the historical footnote he is.

More shutdowns and parliamentary brinkmanship are sure to ensue, but they were already going to under McCarthy. Best to make the Republicans flail around and demonstrate just how unfit for office they’ve always been.

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Sucky the A.I. Vacuum

This entry was posted in comics and tagged AI art art artificial intelligence plagiarism technology on by
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Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, or whatever you want to call it has practical applications. From sorting the Pentagon’s bloated budget to doing whatever it is middle managers do, it has its place. Creating original art is never going to be one. The whole enterprise involves lifting from the work of others and mushing them all together. And until there’s a chip that creates sentient inspiration, the results will always be derivative.

This won’t stop executives from using it to cut costs. The WGA knew this, and that’s why they held firm and guaranteed that AI works won’t ice out the writers. Most of pop culture is already a boring mix of stuff that already exists, and A.I. would only make it worse, much more quickly.

Anthropomorphizing terrible tech is now a recurring bit that started with this A.I comic and Cruisey the self-aware car. Let’s see if I’m the John Henry of ripping myself off and can beat the machines to running it into the ground.

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CEO’s Scab Shows

This entry was posted in comics and tagged Amazon Apple Bob Iger David Zaslav Disney HBO Jeff Bezos Netflix Reed Hastings Scabby the Rat strikes television Tim Cook TV unions on by
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I was originally going to mock Drew Barrymore and Bill Maher for scabbing when they announced they were putting their shows back into production while the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes are still going on. Unlike CEOs, some celebrities are capable of shame, and both changed their minds after a week of ridicule. I still had to put a Maher jab in here ’cause he sucks.

If the strike continues much longer, the studios’ pipeline of new stuff will dry up. They may think they can wait the unions out, but audiences are less patient and won’t keep their subscriptions autorenewing if the only new stuff they’re getting are reality TV and game shows.

If these CEOs can’t get their shit together, they deserve to be bought out by UPS, a company that realized averting strike for a few million in benefits is better business than losing billions to stick it to the unions.

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Kevin McCarthy’s Inquiries

This entry was posted in comics and tagged Congress HouseGOP impeachment Kevin McCarthy Matt Gaetz Speaker of the House on by
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This week McCarthy announced the House’s Biden impeachment inquiry that the Ding Dong Caucus demanded to get their support for his speakership. It’s going to be real dumb and full of garbage that the media will dutifully cover as straight news to appear to be objective observers of the two parties.

In good news, no actual legislation except some stopgap thing to avert a shutdown will get through Congress this session, then nothing is going to happen legislatively until after the 2024 election. So hopefully I won’t have to draw this guy again for a while.

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Cruisey

This entry was posted in comics and tagged cars Cybertruck self-driving cars Tesla transit transportation on by
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San Francisco let these things loose on the streets earlier this year. While there haven’t been any fatalities, many accidents have already happened. There’s no real point to driverless taxis except to avoid paying people to drive them, especially in cities that have priced the labor pool out to the exurban hinterlands.

As a pedestrian and cyclist, I never want to see one of these things attempt to navigate Boston streets. They’re more of a threat on the roads than this week’s college new arrivals are to the bridges over Storrow Drive.

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Republican Textbook Fair

This entry was posted in comics and tagged book bans books censorship education Facebook Republicans on by
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My birthday and the long weekend almost coincide, so I’m getting this out early. Stores are already past back-to-school season and stocked with Halloween junk, but it’s still summer to me and my poor beleaguered air conditioners.

The attempts by Republican-led states to rewrite history seems laughable, but we got everyone to forget a pandemic that’s still happening, so anything’s possible.

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Georgia Jail Kids

This entry was posted in comics and tagged coup Donald Trump Georgia Jenna Ellis Kenneth Chesebro Mark Meadows Rudy Giuliani Sidney Powell on by
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Despite all the indictments, the ones in Georgia are providing the only mugshots. Trump’s hasn’t been released as I’m posting this, so this artist’s interpretation will have to do. A mugshot isn’t a conviction, and hardly a consequence at all, but we have to take our schadenfreude where we can these days.

Garbage Pail Kids came out when I was five and I was enthralled. I’d get them instead of candy for at least a couple years. The handful that survived are framed and hanging in my living room.

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Dagnut Dalrymple’s Culture War Country

This entry was posted in comics and tagged country music culture war police police brutality pop culture Willie Nelson on by
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Two reactionary country songs got a lot of coverage this summer and I’m sure the mockery (including this cartoon) will only strengthen their victim complex. Until they’re in prison being sung to by the ghost of Johnny Cash, they’ll be just fine.

Modern country has gotten so formulaic, all the creative voices in it strain to call it something else like Americana, outlaw, folk, or as call ’em all, “the good kind.”

I listened to a lot of Willie Nelson albums while drawing this, and it’s a toss up between “Teatro” and “Red Headed Stranger” for my favorites.

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