Tag: 2021

Trump After Trump #50

Trump After Trump Comic Strip 4-panel strip

Trump Is No Longer Our Concern, Right?

Trump and Pence have parted ways in this story, and now Trump is left with the only person who really understands him. Don-Don, the little, stuffed Donald-Trump-looking doll whose face is contorted into a permanent yell.

Where do we go from here? Anywhere? Has this comic strip said all it needs to say? Do I want to continue to draw Trump? These are the questions I’m asking myself right now. I have not told a lot of the storylines that I thought I would tell when I first dreamed up this idea.

I wanted Trump to go to therapy and be under the care of a Latina psychologist; I wanted him to try to befriend black people; I wanted him to start an AM radio show about critical thinking. All of these ideas involve bringing in new characters, which is the most exciting prospect. Fifty comics that are laser focused on Trump can wear a fellow out.

In fact, maybe I could continue the comic strip and just call it After Trump, which is really the thing I’m concerned about. Trump can still be in the strip, but we could explore this whole time we’re in and the time we’re heading toward.

That’s what on my mind tonight. And even though today’s last panel just shows some randos that I made up to symbolize Americans sheltering in place and watching the Presidential Inauguration, it was exhilarating to get to draw someone new!

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Trump After Trump #49 (Sunday)

Trump After Trump Comic Strip 4-panel strip

Pence Issues Trump a Parting Challenge

Does anyone call Trump “Don” or “Donald”? It’s hard to imagine. Trump is on record as loving when people call him “sir” or “mister president,” so I don’t see why he should change his mind just because he’s no longer president.

Now that it is Inauguration Day in this comic strip, we can bid farewell to the lame duck period. Mike “Bible Mike” Pence is going his own way to preach his message of hope and comfort to the masses. What’s next for Trump?

One answer to that question could be “nothing.” Drawing 49 comics from one storyline has been a great experience for me, and I am happy with the product. That said, I don’t know how much time I want to spend thinking about and drawing Trump, and it’s not like Trump After Trump has blown up to a point where people would be sad to see it go.

For now, I’m writing and drawing, working toward closure. But, as my friend Sean advised, I’ll be sure not to kill Trump off just in case I find that y’all want more Trump After Trump.

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Trump After Trump #48

Trump After Trump Comic Strip 4-panel strip

Trump Is Under Stress and Could Use a Healing Message

I hope this comic strip doesn’t set up an expectation that something is going to happen with the box. I drew it to symbolize that Trump is heading out of office soon, now that it’s January 21 in Trump After Trump world.

If the document box is, in fact, a gun in the first act that fails to fire by the final act, at least it jumps off the table in the last panel.

As for the content of this comic, I love using Trump as a vessel for all that I find distasteful about the excessive pursuit of profit. And I think I’ll leave it there. Cheers!

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Trump After Trump #47

Trump After Trump Comic Strip 4-panel strip

Trump Understands His White, Evangelical Christian Supporters

My Trump loves the letter “T”, and – regardless of what he learns about the cross and its symbolic power – he prefers to see the letter “T” when he encounters crosses as necklaces, tattoos, car stickers, etc.

Pence will soon be moving on to his post-politics life; so, without him as a Christian foil in the comic strip, I look forward to moving on to writing about Trump’s shortcomings as a leader rather than playing in the gulf between Trump as a public figure and his Great White Wall of support from American evangelical Christians.

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Trump After Trump #46

Trump After Trump Comic Strip 4-panel strip

Trump Gives Pence a “T” to Wear Around His Neck

One of my favorite experiences raising a secular family is when my daughter was little and pointed out the window as we were driving through suburban Las Vegas. “Look! That building has a “T” on top of it!” That is not a direct quote, but I hope the paraphrasing captures her excitement at seeing a letter of her recently-mastered alphabet perched on top of a big building.

And that was the day that she learned what a cross was and what it meant.

So, I return to the fertile cartooning ground of making fun of the gap between Trump and his evangelical base. For someone as egomaniacal and apparently unreligious (at least in his public behavior) as Trump, I wouldn’t be surprised if he recognized his supporters’ crosses as the “T” that indicates Trump enthusiasm.

I hope there is a broad and public reckoning over white Christian support for someone who personifies the opposite of their professed values over the years of the Religious Right.

In the meantime I will make cartoon jokes about that contradiction and hope I’m not the only one laughing.

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Trump After Trump #45

Trump After Trump Comic Strip 4-panel strip

Trump, Pence and Don-Don Toast 2020, an Unforgettable Year

I am committed to pre-celebration.

Trump After Trump started as a way for me to do a sort of visualization therapy: I imagined the end of the Trump presidency and watched him withdraw from the public eye during the lame duck period, which is not exactly in character, so I tried to keep his need for control and his narcissism on full display.

I still hope very much that he does, in fact, withdraw from the public, but I am not optimistic. We’ll see.

In any case, I have enjoyed spending the past 4 months in a future, fictional lame duck period. And now, with this comic, I am dispatching 2020 early, and moving into 2021. The memes have been declaring 2020 a year that we definitely won’t miss, so lets just get it over with!

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