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Controversies Editorial cartooning

Sean Delonas catches flack for duplicating self

1 minute 14 comments

In what might be best described as Bad Cartoonist fodder, Sean Delonas, editorial cartoonists for the New York Post, is catching flack for drawing two near-identical cartoons that appear to be mirror images of each other. Politicker.com editorial cartoonist Rob Tornoe was the first to call attention to the cartoon, and yesterday Matt Bors leveled strong words about the cartoon in on his blog.

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.

Delonas Beatie Overlay
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.

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Comments 14

  1. How about requests for a response from Sean Delonas?

  2. I e-mailed him personally about eight hours before I posted this on my blog. No response.

  3. Gawd people! It’s HIS WORK! Silly silly silly. Who cares. If he did this to another cartoonist he would be wrong, BUT he did both cartoons. Rob and Matt need to get lives and focus those “eagle eyes” on important stuff. Silly wabbits.

  4. You’re right. I have no life. There’s no issue whatsoever with a cartoonists tracing and publishing old cartoons.

  5. I have to agree with Matt, J.G. If Sean Delonas had cartoonist’s block that day, why not let The Post run another cartoonist’s original cartoon in the place of his poorly-disquised rerun?

  6. To paraphrase Andy Warhol….cartooning is anything you can get away with.

  7. In his memoir “Things I Didn’t Know,” Robert Hughes (Art Critic for Time magazine) referred to Sean Delonas’ “work” as” ill-drawn….., with ….clumsy hatching , and Neanderthal wit.”
    I agree, and the publisher Murdoch, hasn’t paid peanuts to get this monkey.

    David Renwick
    Christchurch
    New Zealand

  8. David Renwick’s comment from a month ago is particularly and weirdly apropos today, given the latest uproar about Delomas’ “monkey” cartoon!

    On the original offense — those who say “what’s the problem, it’s his own work” are missing the point. Self-plagiarism is a sin in journalism just like plagiarizing others. Journalists and cartoonists get paid for submitting new work, not retreads.

    Unfortunately, comic-strip writers/artists sometimes do the very same thing and most often get away with it. If you’ve run out of creative ideas, go work for Mickey D’s. Want fries with that?

  9. The attempt to make a so called cartoon by Sean Delones is sickening to say the least. What a twisted, cinical piece of trash for all Americans to see when they open up the paper hoping to read and see images that will give them a lift in these troubling times. Sean you have a gift and I see you have chosen to use it to WOUND when you could use it to lift up those who are truly suffering. Such a waste but isn’t that what got us in this mess…people very much like you. It’s no wonder that newspapers are having a hard time surviving when they publish for the greed driven only.

  10. Loco Moco is right but didn’t go far enough. Plagiarizing one’s own work and getting paid for it is essentially a form of fraud. It also displays a clear proclivity for dishonest behavior. Were we to review all of Delonas’ work, would it reveal theft from others as well? It wouldn’t surprise me. At least, this behavior exposes Delonas as a cheap hack, but then that is obvious from the content of his work, most especially his current chimpanzee junk.

    As for this twit J.G. Moore, perhaps this person should take an ethics class in order to better understand the issue, and in the meantime spare us the lightweight babble.

  11. I’ve never heard of this man before all this dreadful chimp cartoon business happened today. And having researched a backlog of his work, I now know why I’ve never heard of him. He’s awful. Just awful.

  12. Does anyone know what the cartoonist looks like? I looked for a picture, but couldn’t find one. Judging by his frequent depiction of distorted body parts, I wonder what he looks like himself.

  13. I thought the monkey in that cartoon looked a lot like Rush Limbaugh.

  14. I give the New York Post about 3 more years to survive until they ultimately become “TOAST”. Today marks the last time I will EVER read or have anything to do with this piece of trash they call The New York Post!

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