Yeah, I know we are now a week past Star Wars Day (ie. May the 4th) but this one only came to me a few days later. 

If you're a Star Wars fan, I hope you enjoy it. If you're not, you should check out this documentary. You'll understand it on a whole other level then. 

May the Fourth be with you all! 

For the past few years at Easter, I’ve done an Easter cartoon. Some have been more humorous than others, but all have tended to fall on the ‘dark side’ of humour. See here and here for two examples.

For this year’s Easter cartoon, I decided to go decidedly dark. And for good reason.

When I was young, the strongest experiences I had of Easter were the dark moments that infused the traditions of my religious upbringing: the Stations of the Cross, Passover Feasts, Stripping of the Altar services, and early morning dawn services that always began in darkness. They were powerful and emotive experiences, and fed me spiritually at that time in my life.  While we also had Easter eggs, they always came after the church bit.

Although I’ve long abandoned my traditional faith, this year, for some reason, seeing all the Easter eggs in stores hit me more keenly than other years. While I certainly don’t mind a bit of chocolate, and acknowledge they have a vague connection with the ‘new life’ concept that churches tout, there is something inherently tacky about them that repulses me. The commercial preoccupation with these shiny, sickly-sweet chocolate eggs sucks any real meaning out of Easter for me; as do the kind of sickly sweet mega-church versions of Christianity that I still see (mostly) dominating in modern Christian expression. Hence the cartoon.

I’m in no position to preach anything to Christians however, so I’ll let others more eloquent writings do that. This piece from George Armstrong says what needs to be said pretty well.

Anyway, rant over. Happy Easter everyone! 

With the passing of Rev Fred Phelps Sr today, it seemed fitting to dig up this very old cartoon of mine, drawn at some point back in the 1990s around the time I first heard about the Westboro Baptist Church. Looking back on the cartoon now, I note that I couldn't bring myself to depict that most memorable and hateful of signs that this "church" always waved at their protests. 

Quite appropriately however, I've added some colour to what was, until now, just a black and white picture. It's reflective of the two points of view at odds here, funnily enough. That is, black and white thinking, as opposed to an acceptance that the world is a rainbow spectrum of different people with different beliefs and different sexual identities. 

It's comforting to know that while the memory of the hate inflicted by this man and his "church" - which they would describe as "Christian love" - may live on, the hate itself is slowly dying a bit more every day in this world. If nothing else it has turned more people away from such hate, and toward a greater acceptance of all humanity, so that's something - strangely - to be grateful for. 

Rest in peace, Fred Phelps. May your hate rest in pieces. 

I've been listening lately to a lot of comedy by Bill Hicks, partly to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his death, but mostly because he's still so damn funny. 

If you know anything about his comedy, you may agree with me in thinking he would have appreciated this cartoon.

RIP Bill Hicks. Thanks for all the wisdom and the laughs. 

One of the joys of cartooning is realising you've hit on an idea completely unexpectedly in the midst of an everyday conversation. The above cartoon is such an example, and so my 13-year old son Ari deserves a co-writing credit for it. 

We're still slowly working on launching his own cartoon site at some point in the future, but for the moment, check out some more of Ari's own cartoons here, here and here! 

It might not be immediately obvious, but the above cartoon is a small homage to one of my favourite musicians of all time; Lou Reed, one of the founding members of the Velvet Underground, and an accomplished solo artist in his own right, who died last week aged 71.