Posted in: Comics | Tagged: political cartoons, rob rogers, Thomas Nast, trump
Fired Political Cartoonist Rob Rogers Keeps Cartooning About Trump, Now on Patreon
Former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial cartoonist Rob Rogers has just announced that he will continue creating political cartoons with the assistance of a Patreon page. Rogers is also still syndicated via Andrews McMeel Syndication. The cartoonist was fired by The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week for making fun of President Donald Trump too much. Publisher John Robinson Block told Politico:
He's just become too angry for his health or for his own good. He's obsessed with Trump.
I think perhaps that's a little more revelatory about the overall situation at his paper than Block intended, but I'll save that for a separate post I'm working on regarding this matter. Rogers is one of the best political cartoonists of his generation, living in one of the most politically turbulent times in our nation's history. Block's statement is like saying LeBron James is too obsessed with basketball. The best do what they do.
Meanwhile, "fired the best political cartoonist in the country during the Trump era," just became a line in paragraph one of every bio blurb that will ever be written about Block. But I digress.
As a student of American comics history, I have to admit I'm looking forward to watching this situation continue to unfold — as I suspect it's going to give the mainstream audience its best look at the power that this form of comic art can have in a very long time. Greatest-of-All-Time political cartoonist Thomas Nast (whose name is on the Overseas Press Club of America award which Rogers has won twice) influenced the course of American politics in ways that Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, or Jon Stewart can only dream of doing.
I'm looking forward to seeing Rob Rogers's political cartoons for some time to come. His first cartoon as a freelancer is a scorcher, and is also the perfect example of why we need his talent right now. Stay mad, Rob.