Big Fat Whale creator Brian McFadden will be the commissioned cartoonist in the New York Times’ Week in Review section starting Sunday.
According to Matt Bors Brian will the featured cartoonist for “a few months” and before the space is rotated to other cartoonists.
“The strip will cover something topical, but it can be anything from the week’s big story to something that slipped through the news cycle’s cracks,” McFadden said. “As long as I have something unique and funny to say about it, I can make a comic about it.”
NYT Op-Ed page art director Aviva Michaelov tells Rob Tornoe that there are a lot of cartoonists out there they want to feature.
I say cool beans.
This could push some innovation. I’m now pretty interested to see the Week in Review. I couldn’t say that before.
Excellent choice.
He should fit right in:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/06/24/nyts_david_carr_middle_places_home_of_low_sloping_foreheads.html
Apparently Mr. Carr suffers from sloping forehead in mouth disease.
I like McFadden’s first comic in the Times, the idea of the unemployed forming their own state. He could develop that one nicely. I do agree, though, with cartoonists interviewed for the E&P article who felt the Times should have kept the political cartoons, or at least some of them, along with the new comic. Or maybe they could’ve run both for awhile to see how the new comic idea goes. Still, McFadden has the new approach off to a good start.
Brian is a great choice and very unexpected, though certainly deserved. He’s not the kind to hold back from either a good joke or a subversive piece of political insight; fortunately they tend to go hand-in-hand with his work.
The NYT’s new political comic strip may be first rate satire but it’s still sad that the old gray lady has finally totally eliminated editorial cartooning from it’s pages.
It’s too bad there’s one less avenue for reprints but that’s the selfish me talking.
I would pick a new original exclusive editorial cartoon over rehashed reprints (except for mine of course) any day.
The most influential newspaper in the world just advanced our profession and pushed someone’s career. My only quibble is that they should do it everyday, not once a week.
And the cartoon is an editorial cartoon. Some of the editorial cartoons they were reprinting weren’t very editorial in nature at all.
Bottom line is this marks the first editorial cartoonist hire since Scott Stantis was hired at Chi.Trib. Sept. 1, 2009.
That’s 22 mo. or almost two years of two (count ’em) TWO cartoonist hires. Compare that to the firings and it’s obviously easier to get a head coaching job in the NFL.
Milt, why don’t you consider the comic in the Sunday Times an editorial cartoon?