San Francisco Latino and Mission District activist groups want a public apology from freelance cartoonist Dan Siegler, reports the San Francisco Examiner. Siegler's "Puni" cartoon in the Sept. 15 edition of SF Weekly is a parody of Mayor Gavin Newsom's "Mission Possible" effort to take back the Mission District's "Miracle Mile." The phony message from the mayor asks, "Who exactly are we taking back the Mission from?" and encourages readers to select "the groups that you want removed from the Mission" from a list of 35. Among the choices are "pregnant tweenage Mexicans," "geriatric tamale sellers," and "white dot-com leftovers."
A spokesperson for the digital paper says it's obligated not to publish things that would offend "the reasonable sensibilities of our readers," Editor & Publisher reports. Rall believes the cartoon was dropped because of e-mail campaigns by conservatives. His award-winning cartoon appears in several AAN papers, including The Village Voice and Washington City Paper.
About 120 religious activists turned out last week to protest a "blasphemous" cartoon published in the Chicago Reader, reports The Illinois Leader, which bills itself "Illinois' Conservative News Source." The cartoon in question implied immoral behavior by the Virgin Mary, the pope and Jesus, the newspaper says.
Dan Perkins, who pens the cartoon "This Modern World" as Tom Tomorrow, says he and Michael Moore are teaming up on an animated feature film. "It will be a fictional, satirical narrative film, the look of which will be based on my work," Perkins says in a news release. He and Moore have been working on the screenplay since last October and expect to start pre-production in a few months.
First, it was film critic Godfrey Chesire. Now it's the cartoonist Kaz ("Underworld"), who tells The Comics Journal that he ran afoul of New York Press' "10-year rule," under which the paper reportedly fires veteran contributors to keep its content fresh. Meanwhile, the Press' John Strasbaugh denies the existence of said rule.
