Picking subjects to cartoon about is a tricky thing. I wrote in an earlier entry about how
the summer silly season makes it a bit challenging to pin down a topical subject that’s the current talk of the water cooler circles. I took this Monday off leaving some delicious issues to bake and grow stale…and then become fresh again (after I initially thought the issue was long past expired.) So drawing cartoons is a balance between covering the different levels of news goings-on, i.e. world, national, provincial, and local stuff, and being sure not to miss the really topical news stories of the day. The big story may not gel for a few days, so it’s easy to get ahead of yourself by cartooning too early, or missing the the story altogether in case the story gets overtaken by other events. What I’ve got to keep reminding myself is that I can’t cover everything. By missing one day in the news cycle, however, you can’t help getting upset when good news stories come and go.
Today I face a whole list of great stories I can draw on, but the trick is figuring out which one will appeal to a broad audience and have the most shelf life. The Muslim world vs. Pope Benedict XVI issue continues to go on. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ranted in front of the U.N. last night, and Stephen Harper appears tomorrow. The Chairman of the CBC quit his job for a rather comedic reason, and the Liberal leadership race goes on with some interest which I haven’t had the opportunity to comment on since early June.
