The puppet and the puppeteer

Hello!

For those of you who have been with me for a while—or, heck, since the start of my journey here on Substack—you might have seen me mention that I tend to load up on cartoons early in the week. I mean, that can’t always be the case as there are those times when a big story is calling out for a cartoon no matter what day of the week it is.

But, in general, editors tend to pick up cartoons earlier in the week...in fact, by Thursday they’re already choosing cartoons—or at least, thinking ahead—for the weekend. Sadly, these days, it’s rare for an editor to add in a fresh cartoon over the weekend. Lots of reasons for that—editors are likely overworked and underpaid, etc. But I digress.

About this cartoon: I was horrified enough when Todd Blanche was approved to run the DOJ, but then, to hear him say that he has no intention to pledge independence from The White House? Yikes.

That’s when the idea of a puppet or marionette came to mind. But I knew I needed to do a bit more with it than to simply call him a puppet of the president. To take it to the next level. And, if you know my work, I love a good visual rhyme. That’s how I landed on this idea—the visual nature of the scales of justice juxtaposed to Blanche as the marionette, the strings held by a tiny-handed Trump.

Also, a funny thing happened on the way to making this cartoon. It turned out nothing like I’d imagined. Which is to say that I didn’t originally envision showing Trump’s face. As you may know, when possible, I try to avoid drawing him, save for hints at who it is—his dumb hair, his stupidly-long necktie, etc. So I’d sort of pictured him off frame in some fashion, not as it turned out here with him stretching his arm into the air. That’s not an angle I usually draw.

When I sketched it there was even a brief moment where I thought...”hmm, that doesn’t look like a regular Koterba cartoon!” But I quickly got jazzed about it and decided not to change a thing. I love stumbling upon stuff like that, you know?

Also, after drawing it, it occurred to me that with his arm raised like that...well, it sort of visually rhymes with a particular salute often associated with this administration. But again, I digress :).

I’m grateful for your sustaining support of my human-made creativity, journalism, and satire.

Thank you for being here!

—Jeff