“Yeah, I couldn’t think of anything to say about the shredding of the Fourth Amendment and the dissolution of the concept of privacy, so I just made a couple lame jokes a guy’s name and the NSA being blatant in their spying. I think I earned my paycheck.”
-Dana Summers
Q: Is Bill Day still at it? Is he still churning out the same bland, say-nothing cartoons that repeat an idea he’s already run into the ground?
A: Of course he is. The gun labeled ‘NRA,’ the smoke in the form of the continental United States, California as the… is that supposed to be a handle or something? Why is that there?
For that matter, why is the gun labeled ‘NRA?’ There’s more to America’s gun problem than just the National Rifle Association, William.
Honestly, this is what gets under my skin. Gun deaths and mass shootings are so commonplace we’ve grown used to them. We can chart the stages of national grief, mourning, and acceptance as soon as we hear about a shooting. Yet Bill act like it’s Groundhog Day, as if every shooting is some fresh new incident to us and he thinks he can release the same cartoon he’s done before and we won’t notice, or we won’t ask why he doesn’t say anything else.
“America has a gun violence problem,” he says to us. NO SHIT, SHERLOCK! Got anything else to add or do you just want to repeat this one line every eight weeks like an RPG NPC that can only say the same fucking thing over and over?
News: “There’s been a mass shooting.”
Bill Day: “America has a gun violence problem.”
News: “There’s been a mass shooting.”
Bill Day: “America has a gun violence problem.”
News: “There’s been a mass shooting.”
Bill Day: “America has a gun violence problem.”
News: “There’s been a mass shooting.”
Bill Day: “America has a gun violence problem.”
News: “There’s been a mass shooting.”
Bill Day: “America has a gun violence problem.”
News: “There’s been a mass shooting.”
Bill Day: “America has a gun violence problem.”
News: “There’s been a mass shooting.”
Bill Day: “America has a gun violence problem.”
News: “There’s been a mass shooting.”
Bill Day: “America has a gun violence problem.”
News: “There’s been a mass shooting.”
Bill Day: “America has a gun violence problem.”
OK! We’ve established “Shit is fucked up.” Maybe now we can move on to “How to address fucked-up shit”? You’ve been given opportunity after opportunity to address the issue of gun violence, gun fetishization, the media’s obsession with over-reporting violent crimes, the fearmongering endemic to the Right that leads to people stocking up on guns and ammo, convinced the End Times are upon us. And what do you do with this, William? Nothing! You just repeat “America has a gun violence problem.” As if that’s all that’s all you can contribute to this conversation.
And if it is, then why the fuck are you getting paid for this? Society does not need people to sit back and say “Shit’s fucked up” every other month. We need people that understand why shit is fucked up, how exactly it is fucked up, and what we can do to alleviate the fucked-up-ed-ness of our shit. Society does not need parrots to tell us what we already know, and I can not describe just how angry I feel right now to think that you got $42,000 for this lazy hackery.
Bill Day adds to the pile of Okay L.A. related word play with this lazily photoshopped together silhouette. Also…Gradients.
Glad to see that indiegogo money helped Bill step up his game.
Seriously, if you cannot communicate something other than “A bad thing happened and america is sad” DO NOT do a cartoon about it.
How about: If you can’t communicate something other than “Something happened” DO NOT do a cartoon about it.
Bill Day once again does a cartoon about guns that doesn’t say much..
How many variations on “Congress won’t do anything about guns” can one man come up with?
Speak of the devil, and he will appear.
And to answer your question, Bob, let me ask a question: which has killed more people?
Dave Granlund with the most generic cartoon: A terror attack happened! Where? America. But where in america?
At least Granlund drew his. I swear this is photoshop.
OK, I know I harp on John R. Rose disproportionate to his status in the industry, but things like this, the ‘Snow day so no school’ paper the woman is holding, just stick in my craw.
It’s so lazy. It’s so inept. It indicates that Rose lacks the basic understanding of how to convey information in this medium. I’ve talked about this before, but it’s worth repeating again.
Oh, also? It’s fucking March, and we’re still getting snowstorms on a regular basis. Yeah, nothing to see here.
I expected Bob Gorrell to release a single black panel with a caption relating it to the blackout at the Super Bowl. Surprisingly, he (and most other cartoonists) has instead seized upon the important issues of gun control, immigration and drones and Obama’s kill list.
But here’s John R. Rose to pick up the ‘lazy hack’ slack. Sure, he took the time to draw the eyes, but filling in most of the panel with solid black? Are these two at the Super Bowl, as it’s happening?
Did I mention this cartoon ran yesterday, four days after the Super Bowl? Way to be timely, Rose.
Back to merely lazy now, another entry in the ongoing series “Why I hate John R. Rose like no other cartoonist.”
1) We’ve been getting ‘Lance Armstrong as Pinocchio’ comics for a few days now. I’m not accusing Rose of outright ripping off someone else’s cartoon or idea, but as I’ve said before you need to have a certain level of timeliness as an editorial cartoonist. The general idea of ‘Armstrong lied’ has led to a bunch of other cartoons over the past week or so. There’s really no excuse for Rose being late to the party AND turning in such a lame joke (that he felt compelled to explain, another strike against him).
2) If you take one second to think about it, the joke doesn’t work. What angle would Armstrong have been looking at for his nose to get caught in his spokes as he was riding? And why would he be looking down at his tires to begin with, let alone from an angle allowing his extended nose to get caught in the spokes?
Rose, couldn’t you have just drawn Armstrong, on his bike, with a growing nose? It’d be just as pointless as this cartoon, but at least it would make some kind of sense.
