I’m a bit late to this party…And frankly, I’m not really all that comfortable crashing it. But every year, many of the denizens of the editorial cartooning world get all worked up about a book called “Best Editorial Cartoons of (insert whatever year it happens to be)” which is – if you hadn’t gathered – a collection of a bunch of political cartoons drawn during the year by different cartoonists. It is compiled by the kindly veteran editorial cartoonist, Chuck Brooks who retired some years ago from The Birmingham News. The artists who take the time to submit are invariably included and are of predictably varying talent and ability, which leads to the perennial issue of: Does the book make our industry look bad? I’ve been in it some years and not others, mostly because the deadline is ludicrously early for a year’s anthology and also, I don’t really enjoy published cartoon collections (but that’s my problem…)

There are some interesting online discussions if you haven’t already looked:
Jim Borgman (an industry giant), whose blog was the surprising catalyst for this year’s online grumbling and also The Daily Cartoonist.

My take? I think it was my friend Ted Rall who recently said “One man’s great cartoon is another man’s pile of crap” or something like that.
Most readers are quite capable of deciphering which cartoons they think are good and which ones aren’t, in published collections – I’m not entirely inclined to believe that individual editorial cartoonists reputations have to rise and fall based on the quality of the work of others.
Is Chuck Brooks the rightful arbiter of the year’s “best” cartoons? That of course is subjective, but BECY is not some infallible monolith to be railed against. It is simply Chuck’s book (and he does give some of the proceeds back to the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists…) Absolutely anyone else can get off their lazy behinds, round up their favorite cartoonists and do the same if they so choose. And they can call their anthology anything they want. “Absolutely Crappiest Editorial Cartoons of the Year” would be a hot seller, IMHO.

I’m busy compiling my submissions for that one as we speak…