Product Description

One hundred political cartoons you wanted to see, but weren't allowed to: all were banned for being too hot to handle.

Think you live in a society with a free press? These celebrated cartoonists and illustrators found out otherwise. Whether blasting Bush for his "Bring 'em on!" speech, spanking pedophile priests, questioning capital punishment, debating the disputed 2000 election, or just mocking baseball mascots, they learned that newspapers and magazines increasingly play it safe by suppressing satire.

With censored cartoons, many unpublished, by the likes of Garry Trudeau, Doug Marlette, Paul Conrad, Mike Luckovich, Matt Davies, and Ted Rall (all Pulitzer Prize winners or finalists), as well as unearthed editorial illustrations by Norman Rockwell, Edward Sorel, Anita Kunz, Marshall Arisman, and Steve Brodner, you will find yourself surprised and often shocked by the images themselves—and outraged by the fact that a fearful editor kept you from seeing them. Needed now more than ever because of a neutered press that's more lapdog than watchdog, Killed Cartoons will make you laugh, make you angry, and make you think. 100 illustrations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #364740 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Operating under the premise that it's fun to get a glimpse of something verboten, Wallis (Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot to Print) presents dozens of political cartoons yanked prior to publication. Functioning as both a compendium and history of political cartooning, the book is full of cartoons, each accompanied by a brief narrative describing why it was killed, and though some cartoons seem fairly innocuous, the background provides intriguing context. Perennially controversial cartoonist Ted Rall has several entries, including one from 1991 captioned "How Gulf War Veterans Like To Spend Their Summers," which features a kooky-looking guy burying beachgoers. It was inspired, Wallis writes, "by a report in Newsday that U.S. Gulf War veterans might be having some remorse about using tanks outfitted with earthmoving plows to bury Iraqi troops alive." Older cartoons are included, as well, like a David Low cartoon killed in 1937 that "skewered the imperialist ambitions of Fascist leaders in Spain, Japan, Germany and Italy." Catholicism gets spanked, too, as do a host of presidents, notably Clinton, Bush I and II and Reagan. With 100 illustrations, this is a commendable collection.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
If editorial cartoonists are the court jesters of journalism, using humor to speak truth to power, I^Killed Cartoons demonstrates that the monarchs who run newspapers have grown increasingly unwilling to listen. The collection rescues dozens of cartoons rejected for politics, offending advertisers, or just plain effrontery. Their artists include Pulitzer Prize winners Garry Trudeau, Doug Marlette, Paul Conrad, Paul Szep, and Mike Luckovich; renowned illustrators Al Hirschfeld and Edward Sorel; and young turks Ted Rall and Keith Knight and comics creators Carol Lay, Ward Sutton, and Peter Kuper. Sometimes the editorial vetoes are understandable, such as the I^Los Angeles Times spiking Conrad's rendition of a Republican elephant humping a Democrat donkey, but just as often what has been squelched is surprisingly benign. Historical examples include a 1952 Herblock cartoon excoriating McCarthy I^ and Nixon and a 1968 Norman Rockwell illustration for I^ Look, but "old" in this book means 1982 or 1991. Most selections are recent, attesting to increased media cowardice and irrelevance. But not all cartoon killers are daily papers or otherwise corporate-owned. A handful have been such purportedly open-minded publications as the I^ Nation, the I^ New Yorker,and I^ Mother Jones. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
A sequential reading reveals Wallis's thoughtful editorial choices as each entry builds subtly on the last. Powerful. -- Library Journal

A very positive thumbs up...a very well-gathered collection and amazing in its range. -- Gahan Wilson, cartoonist and author

[V]aluable illustration...that freedom of speech is being eroded away and nobody is either aware of it, or cares. -- Pat Oliphant, cartoonist

Customer Reviews

Slightly Disappointing
I was expecting a compilation of editorial cartoons that had been "killed" by editors for their controversial content, and to some extent, that's what this book is. But each cartoon (or group of two or three) is accompanied by a story about how and why it got cut. While some of the stories are pretty interesting, it also means that there are about half as many cartoons as I was expecting. In addition, the text often comes across as preachy (even though I largely agree with the politics of the author) and in almost all cases, gives away the punchline of the cartoon before you see it, greatly lessening the impact. As you might have guessed, I was a little disapointed in the format of this book. If you get it, I suggest looking at the cartoons first, and then reading the text accompanying the ones you want to know more about.

editorial cartoon hell
Wherein you find examples that the press within the USA is timid and still serves the whims of people who pay the advestisements and those who own the papers and whose leaning in the political spectrum often rule over sensibilities.

A previous complaint that there is too much text is irrelevant. The substance is in the illustrations and the text. They go hand in hand.

As a sidebar to this book I'd recommend the combined collections of Stephan Pastis PEARLS BEFORE SWINE, where he has written of censorship on his own little morbid strip, showing that the fears of offending any audience still rides high.

As it is, this book is pretty good. It's funny, the land of the free still cowers at offending the guys who advertise, when a little bit of truth pokes its ugly head upright.

And the Philadelphia Inquirer was the only place USA wise that printed some of those "Muhammed" political cartoons that caused an uproar in Europe.

Boo!

None of those here though.

Antidote to editorial timidity
If you're disheartened by pusillanimous publishers who lack the sand to back up their writers and cartoonists when they come up with controversial material, David Wallis is your man. In his previous work, "Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot To Print," he championed journalists whose articles were decommissioned by their fearful overseers; now in KILLED CARTOONS he's back with a book that does the same for editorial cartoonists. Clever, thoughtful, and brave.