I am pleased to announce that our own KosART, Stormbear, will be hosting Saturday Morning Political Cartoon tomorrow December 2, 2006. StormBear will be posting between 9 to 10 am Eastern Standard Time.
Here is a sample of his work:
Update.There was a complaint in the comment section about the title. Flip to the bottom of the page to see how I ad(cough)dressed the issue.
I visited Stormy's website He started his own little town of Cartoon characters in 2004!
His first strip for 'Town called Dobson' was launched May 1,2004. Stormy's characters are simple as the cast of South Park, crisp as a granny smith Apple, and liberally ruminate about our nation.
In his own words Stormy describes the how:
How did TCD start?
One night in 2004, I was bored out of my mind, in a hotel room with no cable and no net access. I had nothing to do. As my wife can testify, me being bored is a bad thing. So I decided I had enough time to experiment with a comic strip. That night I developed about a half a dozen characters and made three strips based on topics from that morning’s USA Today. I was off to a roaring start and got no farther. Life happens.
Why he restarted in 2006:
Why did you restart in 2006?
The first three were developed way before the dust-up concerning the Danish cartoons dealing with Islam. I had forgotten about this little side project until folks started burning down embassies because of pen and ink. I then wondered how mine, specifically the two with Johnny Allah would be viewed. When I went back, almost 2 years later, I thought they were even more poignant than before.
So I decided to crank production back up.
His characters are inspired by Fisher Price's Little People". Remember the magic of imagination play with those tiny figurines?
I wonder if Storm Bear took his Little People to Sunday school? Prehaps he played out scenes from the old Testment? In today's comic strip he talked about asking his Sunday school teacher
"Where did the water go?"
after the great flood receded and Noah's ark landed.
The Sunday School teacher had a novel way of explaining things, God took it, God hid it - "Stormy, God made the fossils." But her final solution for me was to tell my parents, "You will need to stop bringing Stormy to Sunday School, he is too disruptive."
What is your inspiration for the art of TCD?
When I started these, I needed to do them fast, hence the simple shapes. I used Fisher-Price’s Little People Toys from my childhood as a reference. It seems a lot of folks do these days. I have always found it amazing how we absorb so many things from childhood and drag them into adulthood - which I guess why we have such a booming market for Xanax. For strips 1 and 2, no one had arms, just the body and head. When I got the strip 3 (6-8-04), I couldn’t figure out how to do Communion without arms, now everyone in Dobson has arms.
Why is his poli-toon town called Dobson?:
Why do you use Dobson as a backdrop?
Dobson is where I grew up and I have very fond memories of that town. My parents moved there from West (insert incest joke here) Virginia. WV schools in the 70’s, at least the toilet I attended, were very bad places - drug abuse, sexual abuse, rape and violence. And on top of all of that was a pre-fab Christian "everything is wonderful" sheen to cover-up and ignore the ugly environment underneath.
When I got to Dobson at the beginning of the Summer of 1978, I was expecting, well, more of WV. I had three months before the next school year started so I had a lot of time on my hands. And of course, Dobson being in the middle of rural NC, there was nothing to do but ride my bike. I rode my bike over 3,000 miles that summer and never left town!
Stormys'early life was in a rough place where Hypocritters could have been breed in churches, fattened on secrecy, and empowered by the use of complusion. His earlier fears were dispelled , after moving to Dobson, as a teenager. On his first day at the new high school, no one jumped, thumped, or dumped him for being the new guy. He had expected to be pounced on, and trounced in the parking lot but found:
IT WAS TOTALLY EMPTY!!!
Not a soul around. I shook my head and thought that I had a one day reprieve. I got twenty yards and felt a tap on my shoulder. This is it! Very clever, get me when I let my guard down. Sneak up on me then pommel me for daring to move to a new school.
I slowly turned around and braced myself for fists to fly toward my jaw... then my jaw fell open.
There was the blonde girl I had been looking for all summer!
"Hi, my name is Kim! Will you walk me home?"
That is when Dobson became my home.
Storm Bear tells me he created a special Comic Strip, just for tomorrow! So please support your Daily KosArts! Visit and recommend Saturday Morning Political Cartoon. If you are a Kosart (meaning, an Artist who posts on Daily KOS), you are welcomed to your work in the comment section of tomorrow's SMPC page. (Note: All artwork posted under the Tag: Saturday Morning Political Cartoon..belongs to the artist who created it!)
Every Saturday morning search for the tag: Saturday Morning Political Cartoon to see who is hosting that Saturday. At this point, we plan to rotate KosArt hosts, so that each of us get a chance to showcase our talent, and the time commitment of creating and hosting is shared. Everyone is welcome to show up in jammies and slippers. Enjoy the show..
Hypocritter!
This is cross posted at Choice Changes.