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Cartoonist draws attention to Courier
OTTUMWA — One newspaper’s loss is another’s good fortune: Famed Iowa cartoonist Brain Duffy will have his editorial cartoons featured in the Ottumwa Courier.
While he was still an artistic student attending high school in Milwaukee, Wis. — and long before being published in 400 newspapers nationally — he went to his local newspaper and met the cartoonist.
“That’s the thing about editorial cartooning: There is no Cartooning 101. He taught me what tools I’d need, what paper to use and how to synthesize the subject down into something the reader can catch in two or three seconds,” Duffy told the Courier on Thursday.
He had been practicing by copying comic strips. But an editorial cartoon and a comic have one major difference, he said.
“A comic strip is always looking to get to a punch line at the end,” he said. “With an editorial cartoon, it’s to get to a meaning at the end. What drives the emotion of [the editorial cartoon] is the subject.”
As far as subject goes, he said if it’s in the news, he’ll comment on it. And that’s where he gets his subjects.
“If there are six front page stories, the biggest one, the one everyone is talking about, is the one you want to focus on,” he said.
And though a recent corporate decision means his art will no longer grace the front page of The Des Moines Register, it will be seen on one front page.
“The [Courier] editor was talking about running my cartoons on the front page,” Duffy said. “If that’s true, they’ll be the only ones in the nation running them on the front page.”
Courier Editor Judy Krieger said Duffy’s color cartoon will appear every Tuesday on the front page of the newspaper beginning next week.
While Duffy’s fight over ownership of his art is ongoing with the Register, he said, there are some positives about leaving there.
“That’s past history,” he said. “I’m glad to be able to be in newspapers in cities like Ottumwa.”
In general, he said, some “cartoons” will be serious while others can point out how silly something seems to the artist, especially, he said, when people start taking issues a little too seriously. And while Duffy said that “it’s up to the cartoonist to make sure it makes sense to people.” he added that it’s often necessary for readers to have some basic knowledge of the subject in question.
For example, Duffy disliked a recently-spotlighted cartoon depicting a chimp shot dead by police along with a mention of the stimulus bill. The message wasn’t clear, he said, forcing readers to put their own interpretation of the message with the cartoon. He said he tries to think about his message, not go for shock value.
“I won’t draw some grotesque, ugly image,” he said.
If people are upset when looking at his editorial drawing, he said he wants it to be because the message concerns them.
“[I want to] make people think: Do they agree with the [message of] the cartoon? What do they think about the subject? And if they don’t like [the editorial cartoon], why don’t they like it,” he said. “Then, they’ve formed an opinion. If I get hate mail, it means it’s successful because it means somebody was thinking about what I said.”
Mark Newman can be reached at 683-5358 or by e-mail at mgnewman@mchsi.com.
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