DARYL CAGLE Hi everybody. This is, Caglecast from Cagle.com and Cagle Cartoons Newspaper Yyndicate. It's all about political cartoons and cartoonists and about the news and issues. These will be the top 10 most reprinted cartoons in America from last week. I'm Daryl Cagle, and I am here with, Brian Farrington, our editor here at Kegel Cartoons. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON Hey, Daryl, DARYL CAGLE We're gonna talk you through all the cartoons. Be sure to subscribe and visit Caglecast.com to see all the cartoons in case you're, getting the audio podcast. And you need to look at some, pictures and all you're getting our descriptions. So, Brian, you wanna get started? BRIAN FAIRRINGTON Yeah, let's get started and see what the, popular cartoons of last week were. DARYL CAGLE So this is the number one cartoon, and this one is by, Rick McKee. And I think this is just a brilliant cartoon about the, the high price of eggs. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON Yeah, it is. And also, the way Rick chose to capture that iconic, image from, Indiana Jones. And also the fact that it has no words, and so it's just an image. Very powerful. And I can see why editors would. Would've, chosen that one is the most, DARYL CAGLE Also not a metaphor we see very often. I don't recall ever seeing an Indiana Jones cartoon. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON I don't either. I'm a big fan of Indiana Jones. We've seen it a hundred times, and so it's very recognizable for me. maybe not my my kids, but for me, and, I thought it was brilliant. I even sent, Rick an email saying that was a great cartoon. DARYL CAGLE e've seen a whole lot of cartoons about the high price of eggs. You know, editors like cartoons that are neither from the left or right, liberal, conservative, and everybody can agree that eggs are expensive. So this one offends no one. And, and no one writes a letter to the editor. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON Yeah, and this is the kind of cartoon that, like you said, editors like, because it's not, political one way or the other necessarily, and it's sort of the man on the street, mom and pop at home and how it affects them. Inflation and eggs are the hot topic next to AI taking over the world. It's expensive eggs, so, DARYL CAGLE And classified documents and classified documents. Those are sometimes left or right. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON right. But, yeah, this is a great cartoon and I, it's one that I don't, it's no mystery why it was number one this week. DARYL CAGLE Congratulations to Rick on this one. So here's the number two cartoon. This is artificial intelligence, which is one of the hot topics right now. This one's from John Darkow who draws from Missouri. And the chat GPT says, "Crime War pandemics, climate change, riots, hatred. Unplug me now." And the technician says, "Boy, it IS intelligent. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON Yeah, I, another, hot topic. And it's gonna be a hot topic, especially in our community, for a long time. But, I can see, I can see a lot more cartoons about chat, GPT and AI coming down the pike. So DARYL CAGLE Editors love the chat GPT cartoons. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON It might put editors outta business. So we'll see how well they like it down the road. DARYL CAGLE Oh yeah. You know, back to that one. They had a, a little, kind of a mini scandal about the CNET site, having their articles written by AI and, I think that's, Very disturbing. And, cartoonists are all talking about how our artificial intelligence could be replacing the editorial cartoonist soon because, AI draws cartoons so well, BRIAN FAIRRINGTON Well, in this current incarnation, it can copy existing, basically it, It generates what's fed into . it IT has trouble repeating the same thing. So if you had a comic strip, for example, and you had to repeat the same characters, it couldn't do that in its current state. But it will eventually. It's like every other computer chip where it's improving, doubling on itself in a short period of time. That's exactly what will happen. So it'll be interesting to see in a couple years, five years, 10 years, what happens? DARYL CAGLE It also seems to have trouble drawing fingers. fingers kind of turn into spaghetti and turn into things, but, yeah, I'm afraid they're gonna solve all those problems. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON So then it'll be lawyers suing about copyright and the trademark. That's where it'll end up. So we'll see what the , DARYL CAGLE Well, I don't know. The artificial intelligence passes the law school exams. They may be suing each other. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON That's a low bar, no pun intended, but, DARYL CAGLE oh dear. Okay, so this one's by RJ Matson, our brilliant cartoonist from Maine, who drew for many years for The St. Louis Post Dispatch and its a billboard that says, "Got classified documents in your house? Call one 800 -WHOOPS." Because everybody's got talk secret documents in their house. And I see why editors like this because both Democrats and Republicans have top secret documents in their house. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON Yeah. This is a bipartisan cartoon for sure. So, and editors like to, especially in this climate, they like to choose cartoons that aren't gonna generate a lot of phone calls, and this is one that sort of hits both sides equally. So its easy to see why this one was also, one of the most downloaded of last week. DARYL CAGLE This one is by our anonymous cartoonist Rivers. We don't tell anybody who Rivers is, and this one has the ground hog talking to a bear, the ground hog says "Dohave any idea the amount of pressure I'm under? Millions of people rely on me to make or break the plans for spring "And the the bear says, "Dude, you work like one day a year." BRIAN FAIRRINGTON Love the voices. Daryl, you have a another profession in mind? DARYL CAGLE oh, I love you too, Brian. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON Yeah, this is a great cartoon, hitting two tones at once, with Groundhog Day and, the price of, things. So yeah, it's a great cartoon. Rivers has a classic, cartoon style, very reminiscent of, what editors love to run. So DARYL CAGLE And Rivers is great, and you don't have to know who Rivers is. Uh oh. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON Another angry editor calling us . DARYL CAGLE Oh boy. We do get calls from angry editors. Yes, yes. All right, here's a ground hog cartoon from Dave Whamond, a brilliant cartoonist from Canada who we say is an American cartoonist, because if we said he was from Canada, the editors would not want to, well, I shouldn't say they wouldn't want to print his cartoons. They would just find his cartoons to be invisible. Editors like, American cartoonists in America and outside of America, they like non-American cartoonists and editors, just don't like to cross borders with their cartoons. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON You know, Dave is a cartoonist that draws a lot of gag cartoons and things like that, and he, he sort of did it in the way he set this up. It's a groundhog day, so it's timely, obviously. Groundhog Day was this week, but it's sort of a word pun with the shadow ban. Obviously the shadow from Groundhog Day. Shadow Banning being a thing. So it's sort of a play that he, he chose. And, editors scramble for holiday cartoons, Groundhog, 4th of July, new Year's. all those kinds of things are very popular. DARYL CAGLE And since this is mostly an audio podcast, I will read this, a Big Sign says Groundhog Day and the two Groundhog Day, officials and top hats say, "Where's the groundhog?" The other one says, "He said something controversial on social media and he was shadow banned." I think that's a funny cartoon. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON Yeah, that works. DARYL CAGLE Okay, so here's another artificial intelligence cartoon. You know, we're seeing a whole lot of these. The two robots shaking hands. One says, "You're hired and, the people waiting in line to get a job curse in cartoon comicana and say, "Artificial intelligence. Bleah. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON Yeah, again, we're gonna see a lot of AI cartoons, for quite some time. And this is just another take on it, but, yeah, so we're gonna see a lot of these. DARYL CAGLE They're taking our jobs. All right. This cartoon is by our conservative cartoonist, Gary McCoy. It's a couple in the kitchen. Mom is cooking on the gas stove and dad says, "Hmm, what's for dinner, honey?" And she says, "Your favorite, liver and onions." And the little boy says, behind the door, into the phone, he says, "Hello, FBI? I'd like to report a woman using a gas stove." So this is a conservative cartoon because, conservatives are up in arms about, liberals wanting to ban gas stoves. And they have in a couple of places in, in California, they're talking about doing it here in LA BRIAN FAIRRINGTON And that worries me because I love my guest stove. I can't imagine cooking on something, not a gas stove, but there's gonna be some pushback on that. But this is definitely a hot topic amongst the conservative and the conservative circles. And Gary certainly peeled that onion as it were. But yeah, it's a hot topic and Gary's one of our, hard-hitting conservatives, and we'll see, see what else he has to come up with. DARYL CAGLE Oh, here's another one from RJ Matson up in Maine. And another government secrets cartoon. And we're looking at a drop off like you would have for Goodwill with your old clothes and it says, "Got government secrets? Safe and secure return." That's funny. It's a nice composition. You've got the capital and the Washington Monument in the background, a jogger in the park. Love the cartoon. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON Yeah, and it is a great drawing, great perspective. Very simple. It sort of plays both sides. And now I think that's why it's popular. It doesn't really focus necessarily on the conservatives or the liberals or Democrats or Republicans. It's sort of across the board which right now, that's what the topic is. Yeah. Great cartoon. DARYL CAGLE Another non-partisan cartoon. Okay. Here's another cartoon by John Darkow, our cartoonist in Missouri. And, you got the guy in the top hat who's the official at the ground hog thing with Poxatawny Phil who says, "You don't believe in climate change, but you want a very rodent to tell you the weather for the next six months, weeks It was weeks, not months. I'm going back to bed." I thought that was a funny cartoon. Yeah, that's a great one. And, what's, what's not for an editor to like? You don't get any angry letters to the editor when you have an angry groundhog. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON Yeah. Great cartoon. And very timely. DARYL CAGLE Okay, and this is number 10. It's by our conservative cartoonist, Dick Wright. AND the Democrats are looking at speaker McCarthy with his vacuum cleaner that's sucking up, probably the three Democrats that he kicked off of the committees, and the Democrats say, "Has anybody seen Schiff or a Swalwell around?" And, this is a very conservative cartoon, taking glee in knocking those Democrats off of the committees. So I'm kind of surprised to see this show up in the top 10. Once in a while partisan cartoons show up in the top 10, but not a whole lot, more likely to see a gas stove than BRIAN FAIRRINGTON ... Well, this story was a big one, well the story was a big one that got a lot of play outside of the classified documents and groundhog and AI. I mean, this was a big story, so I can see editors wanting to, sort of move away from that. And that's a great Kevin McCarthy caricature. Dick really nailed him, so, but yeah, it's a great cartoon. Dick's one of our, popular, he always shows up. He's probably our most popular conservative cartoonist. so he's DARYL CAGLE By and large, the conservative editors tend to print the same cartoons that the liberal editors do, which are the cartoons no one would disagree with. But, more often, of course you'll see conservative editors picking up the conservative cartoons. And you know, most newspapers are tiny little papers that are in rural and suburban areas, and they tend to have, conservative readerships. So, those little papers play to the readers, and our statistics, you can see our statistics here. We get a graph of what cartoons perform well, and you'll see that a lot of the same cartoonists show up at the top. We have about 60 cartoonists that we represented in our group, and we have about 500 newspapers and we deliver about 120, 130 cartoons a week. So it is very impressive to see the same guys always rising to the top. The editors do have their favorites. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON Yeah. And, another statistic is today, most newspapers are considered weeklies, and they have been for probably a decade now, and most of them have circulation under 5,000 a nd that's been holding steady in those small rural areas for the better part of the last decade. That those are the bread and butter, and those are the ones that are holding steady. It's the larger markets, that are struggling, but the smaller ones seem to be holding in there. So fingers crossed. DARYL CAGLE So, hey, we, yeah, we worry about that because, you know, we're a business that sells to newspapers and as newspapers disappear, so does our business. So, fingers crossed. But, editorial cartoons, we're gonna try to find a way to make them survive. Editorial cartoons are important. We've got a larger audience for editorial cartoons than we've ever had before, just because of the web, but the web doesn't pay it's newspapers that pay. So our profession is endangered. And, we worry about that, so, come to Cagle.com, and look at the cartoons, subscribe to Caglecast and just being part of one of our fans and watching all of these things, it helps the profession BRIAN FAIRRINGTON That's right. W e appreciate, we appreciate our fans and readers and we appreciate them and all they do to keep the great American art form of editorial cartoons alive. DARYL CAGLE Okay, so we'll have another Caglecast for you soon, and we'll do the top 10 every week and we're gonna have some interviews with many of the world's top cartoonists here. And that'll be lots of fun. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON Anything to add, Brian? looking forward to interviewing those guys. hopefully they'll get a lot of background and, hopefully people will tune in. We'll be a lot of interest. DARYL CAGLE This is just our second episode. There will be many more. And thank you for coming, and I'll see you. See you soon. BRIAN FAIRRINGTON Thanks DARYL.