Artist and visual communicator
Picking up where strip no. 12 left off, Trump reacts to the news that he may have been acting as part of a bigger plan, and he does not like that one bit. This man is nobody’s pawn; no hand but his own guides his actions in this world. Divine intervention is foreign intervention, and Trump will not tolerate such violations of American sovereignty.
This strip offered a chance to draw Mike Pence with shocked manga eyes!
Wardrobe change! Putting on a different outfit can really get you in the right mood, so Trump has sent his suits to the cleaners and now dresses to channel his inner Jimmy Buffet. When he closes his eyes he sees sea gulls, smells salt water surf and hears steel drums. I would love to see Trump in a beach hat, but it would mess up his hair.
If some of these comics have Pence playing the Dean Martin straight man to Trumps’s Jerry Lewis, there is another fun storyline to explore: Pence the evangelical Christian politician who sees his position in the executive branch as part of god’s plan, no matter how extreme the contrast between Pence and Trump. In fact, from a strictly Christian perspective, “the idea of Trump being part of god’s plan for America is so crazy,” I imagine Christians thinking, “that it just might work.”
My main objective with today’s strip is to make my own version of Charlie Brown writing a letter to the little red-haired girl. Charles Schultz’s work is the landmark that so many cartoonists aspire to. His drawing, writing and characterization are so rich and simple at the same time, and today’s comic won’t be the last time I tell my story with the help of Charles’s inspiration.
The 4-panel comic strip trope of having a character make an observation in the final panel – more or less directly to the reader – is another challenge I set myself in this comic. In trying to become a real cartoonist, you ought to try every trick and tool that’s out there!
I get the feeling that the term “executive order” must be music to Trump’s ears. And he totally is the kind of guy who is seduced by the trappings of wealth and power. These are the themes that inform a lot of this “week’s” comics.
We’ve been wrong before about who is likely to win and to lose an American presidential election. Nevertheless, the Trump After Trump comic strip is a thought experiment in imagining how Trump might react to losing the November 2020 election. I do think that for a man whose brand is “winning,” eleven weeks of lame duck status would be unbearable.
There are many people who think that getting Trump out of the White House can’t happen soon enough, and Trump himself could turn out to be the person who wants more than anyone to get hims out of Washington D.C. ASAP.
The third panel of this comic feels like a little metaphor for Trump’s impact on the world: he waves around the symbols of power and wealth without any awareness that he may be whacking other people – even his own vice president – in the face.
Part of the romance of American history is the idea of the power of the pen. We revere our founding documents and the imagery of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence being peneed by an ink-dipped feather quill.
Trump is not immune to this fascination with quill and parchment, and I’m sure he would love a photo op of him wielding a huge feather pen while he drafts something of great consequence. But, if he were to find himself with a fancy pen, wouldn’t it be funny if something less dignified occurred?
Today’s comic strip is not just a tickling gag, but also a meditation on the very well put-together, very patient Mike Pence, who has suffered being Second Banana to the Big Orange for three and a half years. If he is the level-headed, god-loving man that he appears to be, perhaps he sees himself is a modern day Job, called to endure indignities and suffering so that god can make a point.
I don’t know what point that would be, but maybe Mike does.
In this universe, Trump wants out of office just as much as the electorate who voted against him in November 2020. Of course, I’m making today’s strip in the summer of 2020, so the election has not happened yet. We’re just imagining here, which I find cathartic. After years of making abstract paintings and other traditional art objects, here I am doing art therapy and having a blast!
I originally imagined Trump drafting executive orders on his cell phone, written in the same voice as his Twitter pronouncements. But, as you’ll see in strip no. 9 he ends up using something that is much more fun to draw and (I hope) more fun to look at, too.
As Trump sees it, why be a lame duck when you can just executive-order yourself down to Florida?
