Traces the history of racial caricature and the ways that Black cartoonists have turned this visual grammar on its head Revealing the long aesthetic tradition of African American cartoonists who have made use of racist caricature as a black diasporic art practice, Rebecca Wanzo demonstrates how these artists have resisted histories of visual imperialism and their legacies. Moving beyond binaries of positive and negative representation, many black cartoonists have used caricatures to criticize constructions of ideal citizenship in the United States, as well as the alienation of African Americans from such imaginaries. The Content of Our Caricature urges readers to recognize how the wide circulation of comic and cartoon art contributes to a common language of both national belonging and exclusion in the United States. Historically, white artists have rendered white caricatures as virtuous representations of American identity, while their caricatures of African Americans are excluded from these kinds of idealized discourses. Employing a rich illustration program of color and black-and-white reproductions, Wanzo explores the works of artists such as Sam Milai, Larry Fuller, Richard “Grass” Green, Brumsic Brandon Jr., Jennifer Cruté, Aaron McGruder, Kyle Baker, Ollie Harrington, and George Herriman, all of whom negotiate and navigate this troublesome history of caricature. The Content of Our Caricature arrives at a gateway to understanding how a visual grammar of citizenship, and hence American identity itself, has been constructed.

A lavishly illustrated, witty, and original look at the awesome power of the political cartoon throughout history to enrage, provoke, and amuse. As a former editor of The New York Times Magazine and the longtime editor of The Nation, Victor S. Navasky knows just how transformative—and incendiary—cartoons can be. Here Navasky guides readers through some of the greatest cartoons ever created, including those by George Grosz, David Levine, Herblock, Honoré Daumier, and Ralph Steadman. He recounts how cartoonists and caricaturists have been censored, threatened, incarcerated, and even murdered for their art, and asks what makes this art form, too often dismissed as trivial, so uniquely poised to affect our minds and our hearts. Drawing on his own encounters with would-be censors, interviews with cartoonists, and historical archives from cartoon museums across the globe, Navasky examines the political cartoon as both art and polemic over the centuries. We see afresh images most celebrated for their artistic merit (Picasso's Guernica, Goya's "Duendecitos"), images that provoked outrage (the 2008 Barry Blitt New Yorker cover, which depicted the Obamas as a Muslim and a Black Power militant fist-bumping in the Oval Office), and those that have dictated public discourse (Herblock’s defining portraits of McCarthyism, the Nazi periodical Der Stürmer’s anti-Semitic caricatures). Navasky ties together these and other superlative genre examples to reveal how political cartoons have been not only capturing the zeitgeist throughout history but shaping it as well—and how the most powerful cartoons retain the ability to shock, gall, and inspire long after their creation. Here Victor S. Navasky brilliantly illuminates the true power of one of our most enduringly vital forms of artistic expression.

Explores how the suffering of African American women has been minimized and obscured in U.S. culture.

Winner, 2021 Katherine Singer Kovács Book Award, given by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Winner, 2021 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards for Best Academic/Scholarly Work Honorable Mention, 2021 Harry Shaw and Katrina Hazzard-Donald Award for Outstanding Work in African-American Popular Culture Studies, given by the Popular Culture Association Winner, 2020 Charles Hatfield Book Prize, given by the Comic Studies Society Traces the history of racial caricature and the ways that Black cartoonists have turned this visual grammar on its head Revealing the long aesthetic tradition of African American cartoonists who have made use of racist caricature as a black diasporic art practice, Rebecca Wanzo demonstrates how these artists have resisted histories of visual imperialism and their legacies. Moving beyond binaries of positive and negative representation, many black cartoonists have used caricatures to criticize constructions of ideal citizenship in the United States, as well as the alienation of African Americans from such imaginaries. The Content of Our Caricature urges readers to recognize how the wide circulation of comic and cartoon art contributes to a common language of both national belonging and exclusion in the United States. Historically, white artists have rendered white caricatures as virtuous representations of American identity, while their caricatures of African Americans are excluded from these kinds of idealized discourses. Employing a rich illustration program of color and black-and-white reproductions, Wanzo explores the works of artists such as Sam Milai, Larry Fuller, Richard “Grass” Green, Brumsic Brandon Jr., Jennifer Cruté, Aaron McGruder, Kyle Baker, Ollie Harrington, and George Herriman, all of whom negotiate and navigate this troublesome history of caricature. The Content of Our Caricature arrives at a gateway to understanding how a visual grammar of citizenship, and hence American identity itself, has been constructed.

Discover the fast, fun art of drawing comic portraits! Face Off shows you how to draw life like never before. Caricaturist Harold Hamernik shares the secrets to capturing the sillier side of friends, family, celebrities, strangers—any face that crosses your path. 40 step-by-step demonstrations show you how to sketch whimsical and expressive likenesses while developing your own quick, loose, improvisational style. You'll get expert instruction on: • Drawing eyes, noses, mouths and other features. • Creating portraits in front, three-quarter and profile views. • Adding color to your caricatures, either by hand or via computer—instruction you won't find in any other book! • Tips for making a likeness more masculine (skip the eyelashes), more feminine (lengthen the neck), younger, older, sexier, goofier—all while making a portrait your subject will love. • How to draw hair as two simple lines, why drawing the parts of a face in the same order every time can cut minutes off your work, and tons of other handy tricks of the craft! Practice the simple techniques in this book, then start drawing! It's the most fun you can have with paper, pencils and markers!

Discover the fast, fun art of drawing comic portraits! Face Off shows you how to draw life like never before. Caricaturist Harold Hamernik shares the secrets to capturing the sillier side of friends, family, celebrities, strangers—any face that crosses your path. 40 step-by-step demonstrations show you how to sketch whimsical and expressive likenesses while developing your own quick, loose, improvisational style. You'll get expert instruction on: Drawing eyes, noses, mouths and other features. Creating portraits in front, three-quarter and profile views. Adding color to your caricatures, either by hand or via computer—instruction you won't find in any other book! Tips for making a likeness more masculine (skip the eyelashes), more feminine (lengthen the neck), younger, older, sexier, goofier—all while making a portrait your subject will love. How to draw hair as two simple lines, why drawing the parts of a face in the same order every time can cut minutes off your work, and tons of other handy tricks of the craft! Practice the simple techniques in this book, then start drawing! It's the most fun you can have with paper, pencils and markers!

Memoir in cartoons by the longtime cartoon editor of The New Yorker People tell Bob Mankoff that as the cartoon editor of The New Yorker he has the best job in the world. Never one to beat around the bush, he explains to us, in the opening of this singular, delightfully eccentric book, that because he is also a cartoonist at the magazine he actually has two of the best jobs in the world. With the help of myriad images and his funniest, most beloved cartoons, he traces his love of the craft all the way back to his childhood, when he started doing funny drawings at the age of eight. After meeting his mother, we follow his unlikely stints as a high-school basketball star, draft dodger, and sociology grad student. Though Mankoff abandoned the study of psychology in the seventies to become a cartoonist, he recently realized that the field he abandoned could help him better understand the field he was in, and here he takes up the psychology of cartooning, analyzing why some cartoons make us laugh and others don't. He allows us into the hallowed halls of The New Yorker to show us the soup-to-nuts process of cartoon creation, giving us a detailed look not only at his own work, but that of the other talented cartoonists who keep us laughing week after week. For desert, he reveals the secrets to winning the magazine's caption contest. Throughout How About Never--Is Never Good for You?, we see his commitment to the motto "Anything worth saying is worth saying funny."