Profiled: Joe Fournier and his cartoons for The Chicago Tribune
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The Chicago Reader profiles freelance editorial cartoonist Joe Fournier who has been been sharing the editorial page with staff cartoonist Scott Stantis. According to The Reader, he’s been providing about three cartoons a week.
Fournier had to reinvent himself. If he could no longer survive by illustrating other people’s content, then he would originate the content. He tried some fairly elaborate ideas out on the Tribune, including caricatures of political figures that readers could cut out and assemble. But what worked best was simpler. And now that he’s hit his groove at the Tribune, he’s up to three cartoons a week.
Op-Art, which is what his space is called, is drawn as a series of panels, and it registers in a minor key. Fournier doesn’t kick ass, and he doesn’t mind confounding readers who can?t figure out how to respond. A lot of readers, he believes, don’t even try to understand what a cartoon says as long as they can tell whether it leans left or leans right. All they need to know is whether to applaud or dismiss it.
Here’s a sample cartoon by Joe:
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