Editorial cartooning

Frank Hansen, New Cagletoon Editoonist

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D. D. Degg May 30, 2023 1 minute 1 comment

Going down a wormhole chasing something unrelated I stumbled onto today’s Aspen Times editorial-opinion page where I found Frank Hansen who was new to me. But I liked his style so…

That led me to Cagle Cartoons, like it says in that there cartoon, where I found that Frank has been drawing occasional editorial cartoons for a few years now and drawing for many years before that. But this past March he started throwing more chips in the pot and his cartoons came at a faster pace. In early April the “Cagle Cartoons” slug began appearing in his cartoons as Frank became part of the syndicate package.

_{This TDC reporter is always happy to see a California cartoonist, though, sadly, Frank is based on the wrong side of the Grapevine.}

The Daily Cartoonist reached out to Frank about the increase in productivity and he kindly responded:

I spent a long time wondering if I wanted to keep doing editorial cartoons, but recently decided to take it more seriously.  Soon after that, I bumped into Daryl Cagle at the local LA NCS meeting and we talked about it and he offered me a chance to join his syndication package and see what happens.  All this put a renewed fire under me and I’ve tried to get out at least 3 cartoons a week.  Although this increased volume in output has yield little financially the added exposure and different audience (not just social media) has been better than expected and only inspired me more.

Frank added:

In the end, I would like to get a lot better at creating/communicating cartoons and ideas effectively and developing a style or punch that gives more attention to editorial cartooning as a whole.  It remains a fabulous way to encapsulate so much in a fast and powerful way.

Looking through Frank’s homepage at times I see traces of illustrator Ralph Steadman, Arizona Daily Star Editorial cartoonist David Fitzsimmons, and animator Ralph Bakshi among his own style.

Frank, like all artists, wants to improve but it seems he has gotten the attention of newspaper editors soon after becoming part of the package – the current Cagle Top Ten Cartoons of the Week includes two of Frank’s toons.

feature self-caricature image cribbed from Frank’s Facebook page.