Over the years I drew him a lot, and at least once put him in In Contempt.

It’s funny how often owners supply voices for their pets. Certainly it’s a form of anthropomorphism, but it’s also a process of getting more in tune with your pet’s personality and translating their intentions. Crash was a very sweet-natured, innocent fellow, so I could imagine him responding to the wider world with alarm and concern, but without cynicism. I had been tempted to create a comic strip series of our relationship, contrasting my grumpiness with his more childlike take on the world. This strip was the sole result.

So long, Crash, it’s been good to know ya.

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Anyhoo, page 2 of “Out to Sea” is up at Wanderlost. I really enjoy drawing these giant waves. I think that may be my whole motive for the story, an excuse to draw huge undulating mountains of water full of foam and darkness. All for a little pig to ride upon.

Don’t worry — there is actually a story to go with all of that.

And the last strip for In Contempt. I discuss my reasons for this decision below the cartoon post, so please read it if the thought of a Contempt-less world leaves a little hollow spot in your soul. It does mine, honestly. I wish I could clone myself to do all the stuff I want to do. But who would feed him? He’d eat all my cookies!

I want to elaborate here on my caricature project. Mostly I want to develop a portfolio to send out to local pubs and get some illustration jobs. A little side money. But it’s also an artform that has always intrigued me, at least when it is done right. The idea entered my head (with some prodding from Barry Deutsch) after David Levine died a couple months ago. I have always loved his work, the acidic bite of his pen and ink, his elegant cross-hatching, his ugly yet apt exaggerations of distinctive features. His only rivals to my eye had been the great Stephen Brodner — whose water colors are beautifully gritty and sense of form like a Bob Clampett cartoon on acid (which says something); Pat Oliphant, when he’s not being a racist shit; Ralph Steadman, to whom many owe a huge debt, including Brodner; and Barry Blitt, who got into trouble for satirically combining all of the crazy racist paranoia about the Obamas into one New Yorker cover during the election. Those guys are my models. There are other great ones, but these artists put the poison in the ink well.

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Heads up: Next week’s cartoon will be the LAST cartoon strip for In Contempt. I will talk about it more then, as well as my plans for the site. But I wanted to keep y’all posted.

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This was fun to draw. And I totally avoided the Harry Reid “Negro” tongue fart, NBC’s restoration of mediocrity, Sarah Palin’s inevitable admission to the Murdoch stable, and, I dunno, some bullshit about health care. Or sex robots.

Hey, did you know that Ted Kennedy’s old Massachusetts seat could go to a GOP wingnut, torpedoing the last zillion months of appeasement of Blue Dogs and sinking what is nominally deemed Health Care Reform? Nate Silver registers doubts about the Rasmussen poll sparking all the speculation, but concedes “there’s also a chance that Coakley could lose even with a less-than-worst-case turnout scenario.”

So just another year of “I thought we’d do better than that.”

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This should have appeared on Tuesday as part of my promise two or three months ago to resume twice weekly posting in January. But that promise was made before a) I got a stomach virus, b) my oven caught fire, c) I got a head cold and d) I lost my Wacom Stylus. All that in one week, the first of the new year, new decade. It portends not well, methinks.

Also and but so: Said promise was made before I came to the conclusion that In Contempt should conclude a decade (on and off again) run at the end of January. In other words, I plan on bringing the strip to a close. I really enjoy doing the political cartoons, but there are other projects I want to do. Wanderlost needs more attention and has more stories to tell. I have a graphic novel idea I want to develop for consideration by publishers. Last year I learned how to animate with Flash and enjoyed that. Unfortunately I don’t have a buttload of time to unload a buttload of ideas. So something had to give and it is In Contempt.

Ergo, the last strip will appear on January 27th. I’ll have more to say about that, the future of the site when it appears.

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Page 26 of the “Search Party” story line is up at Wanderlost. Ma Pig gets an unwelcome surprise.

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No cartoon next week. I’m taking a break for the holidays so I don’t ruin them for my family. Which pretty much wraps up 2009 for In Contempt.

Wanderlost will not appear this week, but will appear next week. Don’t worry (if for some reason you would), my family won’t suffer because of it. They will prolly be too distracted by the Wii we’re getting them.

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And today’s installment of the “Search Party” story of Wanderlost.

I didn’t do a Lieberman cartoon, because, really, as much of a dick as he is, his exaggerated power merely underscores the political witlessness of the Democratic leadership. According to Mike Madden, here is what we have to look forward to:

They managed to kill not just the notion of a public health insurance option, but also the compromise Democrats had hatched just a week ago, which would have expanded Medicare a bit instead of launching a government-run insurance plan. That’s not the end of the damage. To get the bill through the Senate, Democrats will probably have to fund its $900 billion price tag by taxing expensive health benefits packages, instead of with a new tax on the rich, as the House prefers. Some sort of language restricting access to abortion under the new, government-supervised insurance exchanges will be thrown in, as a sop to win Nelson’s anti-choice favor. Access to Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor, won’t be expanded as much as many progressives want. And yes, the bill would dole out $50 million to groups teaching abstinence-only sex education plans, which helped buy the support of Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.

That’s $50 million toward programs that don’t work, of course. Nice job, changey pants.

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First up is In Contempt, today treating the delicate subject of the “Climategate” e-mail scandal with the surgical precision of a five-year-old with safety scissors. Can I sell it or what? I draw my analogies from life.

Next is Wanderlost, the 24th page of the current “Search Party” story line, wherein the barnyard is out en force, braving the extreme cold and snow to find the run-away Sheldon. Enjoy.

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