Your Tax Break at Work

Launch Date
August 2001

Background
This cartoon comes out of many discussions with friends about the backward nature of the tax cut. The fourth panel is almost a direct swipe from Mark, so he gets part of the royalties. I kinda felt that any one of these panels could have stood on it's own, but none is overwhelmingly funny. So instead I decided to cram them all into one cartoon and hoped that it worked.

Original Sketch
Admittedly, my George W. continues to evolve. Even if you look at just the comics I produced this month you'll see a lot of variation in facial structure. I just can't decide exactly how he should look, although I think I'm getting close. In my defense, you'll note that what has stayed the same is the confused eyebrows, the large ears, the pouting lips, and the elongated forehead (like his father); I just haven't quite decided on the perfect proportions.

At first I thought this would be another press conference, but that became cumbersome; and besides, I had already done a "Q & A with W" this month. So instead I went for a pretty straightforward piece and decided to "break up the monotony" by having different expressions and panel formats.

Inking
I used a brush for everything, which meant that I didn't quite get the lines that I wanted (especially on George's hands). But I need practice with the brush if I'm to get better at it. This seemed like a good practice piece. Except for the black background haze, I kept the inking to contour lines. It was very difficult not to ink in George's suit or to make additional shadow lines.

Lettering
Yuck! Even though I measuered everything out, the title still looks like crap. I had to do a lot of touch up with white paint, and still it looks crappy.
I think I've also decided that next time I'll try to center all the text in the word balloons since right-justifying really hasn't produced the look that I want.

Ultimately
Except for the title, I'm fairly pleased.