I got my copy of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists’ “Golden Notebook” in the mail today. It’s the 50th anniversary of the organization’s newsletter, and if you have any interest in the world of editorial cartooning, you need to find a way to get your hands on it. Editor & Publisher claims the book will be made available for sale to the public, but I’ve looked all over the AAEC’s site for a link and I can’t find anything. (My copy was sent to me for some reason – I’m not a member, so maybe it was a review copy?)

While it is built around a history of the AAEC, no history of a cartoonists’ organization would be useful without the relevant context providing a backdrop, and thus the AAEC’s history ends up becoming a history of American editorial cartooning for the past 50 years.

There’s a lot of stuff that will be pretty meaningless to anyone who doesn’t care about who the officers have been throughout the years or what the admission to the convention was 30 years ago (there’s a Paul Fell sighting on page 81), but there are also some reprints of classic articles like “The Rise and Fall of the Political Cartoon” by Henry Ladd Smith from the May 29, 1954 issue of the Saturday Review and “Why Political Cartoonists Sell Out” by Lee Judge and Richard Samuel West from the September 1988 issue of The Washington Monthly.

The book is in no way a simple glorification of its members – one of my favorite articles is “Editorial Cartoonists & 9/11,” subtitled “A cliche’s high-water mark, or, Liberty wept.” It includes quotes from cartoonists’ discussing the onslaught of cartoons depicting the Statue of Liberty crying in the aftermath, including some damning statements like this one from Ted Rall: “The problem is…the Statue of Liberty crying, with a hole in her chest or with a model airplane smashing into her side only conveys one concept: Lazy Editorial Cartoonist.” (More quotes from the discussion can be found on the AAEC’s website on this page)

I unfortunately have no idea how much this thing costs, but someone at The AAEC should be able to help.

Last week, a story was making the rounds about a column written about suburban Chicago newspaper running television ads boasting of the awards won by a cartoonist it had fired months before. On the surface, it seems pretty slimy, and it seems pretty juicy. No surprise it picked up steam. Criticizing the heartless newspaper companies is about as fashionable as it gets in the cartooning world.

But now Editor & Publisher has a follow-up that shows the good guys and bad guys might not be as obvious as initially suspected, particularly since the media ethics critic who wrote the original column didn’t even talk to some of the people he quoted and misled some of those he actually did speak to.

No disrespect to anyone else, but one of the coolest wedding presents we got came from our friends Van and Amy Jensen. Van and I used to work together at the Daily Nebraskan, and he has since moved on to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette as I have moved along to my freelance cartooning career. Well, long before Van ever went to the DemGaz, I knew of cartoonist John Deering from other friends that worked there. I’m admittedly probably too hard on the whole world of editorial cartooning on this site, but there are a handful of cartoonists whose work I really admire, Deering being one of them, and most of the rest are listed over in the links section. Van has since come to know Deering, and the two are working on a graphic novel together and have started their own Drink & Draw Social Club.

So the other day, I was looking around on the internet and saw Deering’s cartoon with Transformers in it, and I was simultaneously thinking “This cartoon is awesome” and “Dangit, why didn’t I think of that?” It was that perfect kind of professional envy when you wished you’d found a way to make a point that well (and found a way to justify drawing Transformers in an editorial cartoon, which I have only succeeded at twice in the past 8 years).

Well I was very excited to open a package that came in the mail the other day – our present from Van and Amy, who weren’t able to make it to the wedding – and find the original of this cartoon. I am now a proud parent of a John Deering original.

Thanks, guys!

I just received this e-mail in response to this cartoon:

Hi, Neal. The Mayor’s office got a big chuckle out of Sunday’s cartoon! However, it inaccurately stated the Mayor’s position on the issue of Harry Potter. To set the record straight, Mayor Beutler will be making a generous personal donation to Lincoln City Libraries at 9:45 a.m. tomorrow at the Eiseley branch, 1530 Superior. He would like to invite you to attend to acknowledge you and your cartoon for inspiring his donation. He will further demonstrate his interesting public persona at that time.

Although some will probably use this as evidence of a secret liberal conspiracy between the cartoonist and Democratic mayor, I do think it’s kind of cool that it inspired him to make a donation. I can’t make it, but I’m curious to see how the mayor’s “interesting public persona” will manifest itself at the appearance…

(and for the record, I’ve never met the guy or spoken a word to him, so if there is a secret liberal conspiracy, it is also secret from me.)

UPDATE!!! I have been informed that I am now known as “He Who Must Not Be Named” at City Hall…

UPDATE UPDATE!! Here’s a copy of the press release for the scrapbook, mom.