AAEC President Nick Anderson of the Houston Chronicle and WPWG said a major reason for the Ink Bottle honor was Bennett’s work as AAEC president in 2005-6. During that “tumultuous and eventful” time, recalled Anderson, Bennett worked on such things as finding a new management company for the AAEC, upgrading the organization’s Web site, diversifying the AAEC’s membership by attracting more alternative cartoonists, and responding to the eliminations of high-profile cartoonist positions at the Los Angeles Times and The Sun of Baltimore.

“I was amazed that it even got made [into a movie],” Jones said. “And there I was at the premiere [last month], walking the red carpet. It’s such silliness. I’m not into the whole celebrity culture thing.”

An excerpt from Kal’s post:

You would expect to find suppression of free thinkers like cartoonists in authoritarian regimes. But there are many new emerging democracies that are also struggling with issues of freedom of expression.

Many of these young democracies are former soviet era protectorates. After decades of Communist single party rule they have no tradition of robust, healthy and open political debate. These nation’s powerbrokers are skeptical and distrustful of criticism. These new countries struggle to embrace political dissent in the media and cartoons.

Azerbaijan is one of these countries.

Azerbaijan is a small secular Islamic nation of enormous potential. It is blessed with a literate population, a strategic location and an important resource: oil.

It is also a democracy… of sorts

» Jerry Craft, creator of Mama’s Boyz, has illustrated a new children’s book called “Hillary’s Big Business Adventure” for children ages 4-8.

» Hong Kong-based cartoonist Larry Feign has had his comic strip Do Not Disturb adapted to stage and television. The comic strip, which only appears only on his website, attracted the attention of Former BBC script writer Lawrence Gray liked the premise of a work-at-home father as the basis for a live action television series.

» Tom Richmond’s MAD blog is celebrating its second anniversary. Congrats on a fine publication, Tom.

» Retail creator Norm Feuti is working on a second strip.

» Single and Looking (AKA Out of the Gene Pool) may have left newspapers, but fans can pick up a copy of Matt Janz’ book collection of the feature over at lulu.com.

» Keith Knight, creator of The Knight Life, was recently featured in the Washington Post’s “Meet the Comics Pages” online chat. Transcript has been posted.

» Ed Hall was recently honored in the first Sunshine Sunday Award for Editorial Cartoons. The award is presented by the First Amendment Foundation and is given to the best political cartoon created for Sunshine Week.

Does the cartoonist’s religious view trump the celebrity’s religion in an obituary cartoon? For a Christian cartoonist, who believes that his own religion is the only correct religion, is an obituary cartoon an opportunity to show that the celebrity’s religious views were wrong - as the dead celebrity would surely know by now, as he is really at the Pearly Gates right now?

He received response from Scott Stantis, Steve Benson, Steve Nease, and John Deering. Most responded that the setting was an easy vehicle to make a larger point.

Specifically Scott Stantis wrote:

I did, indeed, mean George Carlin at the Pearly Gates as an irreverent commentary within the cartoon. I readily admit I have drawn my fair share of pearly gates and crying mascots in the past. But recently I have tried to take my inspiration from the obit cartoons of Pat Oliphant. When he does do them he places them in some kind of context of the persons life and impact. With George Carlin, (of whom I consider myself a fan), his contribution to comedy and social discourse was to tear down the walls of conformity and ridicule the overly serious. His anti-religion screeds grew longer and more serious near the end.

Hence, a cartoon I hoped would be viewed as irreverent. At least to those familiar with the subject.

Rob Tornoe, who was the first to point out Sean’s re-drawings, now alleges that today’s cartoon by Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial cartoonist David Horsey is a rework of a cartoon that was originally drawn/published back in 2001.

The Bad Cartoonist railed on Jeff Stahler back in February for redrawing the same cartoon (different dialog balloons) within a months time of each printing. Back then he wrote:

It appears that most of the cartoon was simply redrawn, so at least he didn’t trace himself, but the lines on his wife look suspicious. In either case, he was so short on ideas he took a cartoon that he did LESS THAN A MONTH AGO, changed the text and clocked in for a full days work. What? Has drawing yourself become too time consuming that you have to borrow a cartoon from yourself? Most cartoonists wait at least a quarter before they start to rehash their old ideas, but one month is pushing it. At least he remembered the mug

What is the standard when it comes to reworking one’s own cartoons. Is it laziness as the Bad Cartoonist suggests? Time-Efficiency? Acceptable practice? Would George Will get away with re-running a former column, with slightly word changes to address a different topic - or the even the same subject.

What do you think?

UPDATE: David Horsey, in addition to the comments below, has written a blog post on his blog regarding the matter.

However, I wasn’t trying to deceive anyone. I assumed plenty of folks would remember the cartoon. It was reprinted in the book Tornoe has on his shelf, From Hanging Chad to Baghdad, and I’ve used it over and over again in public presentations. When I read that Pres. Bush was closing his term in office having tea with Queen Elizabeth, I thought it would be fun to revisit the image I had drawn of their first tea time, to give it a new spin and, for online readers, present it in color. It didn’t seem like such a controversial idea. Apparently, I was mistaken.

A Father’s Day cartoon drawn by Milt Priggee has garnered a strong reaction from military folks. The cartoon depicts a dead soldier with what may appear a blown off skull and leg, with a note lying next to him with the words, “We love you Dad.”

Reader reactions and Milt’s reactions have been posted on Daryl Cagle’s blog.

One military man wrote: “Sir let me say that I am all about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, but the cartoon [is] very careless…. You could have brought your point across by being just a little more subtle. We will continue to read your cartoon but I feel that we should receive some sort of apology for this particular cartoon.”

Priggee replied: “This cartoon was not drawn to lift any spirits but to show the public how and what military families have to deal with. This cartoon was drawn to make people mad, mad enough to demand some accountability from their elected officials for not supporting our fellow citizens who volunteered to protect our country.

Where are the Editors on this stuff? Do they find the fact that someone they pay to draw cartoons thinks he can mirror his own work and turn it in for the day? You see things like this, you look at the identical and predictable cartoons being drawn every day and editorial cartoonists wonder why we’re getting laid off.

I flipped the one around and made two images…

When overlaid, you can see he didn’t even eyeball it, but traced almost the entire cartoon.

The line art of the two cartoons are shown above in red and blue color.

The original cartoons can be seen by visiting the Delona’s archive and selecting the April 6, 2008 date and the June 10, 2008.

Requests for a response by Sean’s editor have not be answered.