The Pulitzer for eCards

It isn't novel for the Pulitzer in cartooning to go to someone who isn't funny. But this year the prizegivers branched out by giving the award to Mark Fiore, a man who took the unfunniness that is the curse of his profession and brought it to a brand new medium. With his online animations, Fiore added a new dimension to an art form, proving that editorial cartoons could be more than just witless and insipid: They can be poorly paced as well.

If you'd like to see some samples of Fiore's work, go here and here. If you'd like to gouge your eyes out afterwards, you might find the discussion here useful.

Comments

[Episiarch]

Wow, this dude makes Bok look like Berke Breathed.

[Art-P.O.G.]

I agree. I don't think politcal cartoons have to be double-over-in-pain funny, but they shouldn't be simply painful.

[Episiarch]

I think this guy is pro-torture, because he seems to be trying to do it to us.

[Jeffersonian]

Seriously...swinging a brickbat at NPR because it's too conservative? I bet he thinks Democracy Now! is an adjunct of the Michael Savage show.

[Jesse Walker]

I should give some context for that one: He made it when CPB chief Ken Tomlinson was reportedly trying to push NPR and PBS to the right. Fiore may be untalented, but he isn't insane.

[Bill Beahan]

Jesse, Mr. Tomlinson was trying to reel NPR and PBS in from the far left. That truth isvstly different from wht you scribbled.

[Paul]

Well, Jesse's technically right. Any move from the pegged-needle position NPR and PBS are in now would technically be pushing it to the right.

[Art-P.O.G.]

You just said what we were all thinking.

[Pip]

I left a comment on the second linked cartoon. Had to.

[Warren]

Agreed. I was planning on posting "at least he's better than Bok" till I watched a couple. Jebus Kryste, that shit is shitty. I've seen wittier flash animation created in Jr High detention.

[Art-P.O.G.]

They don't have to be funny, but I'm pretty sure Fiore was going for satire rather than some sort of stone-faced gut-punch.

[&]

Editorial cartoons have to be funny?
Isn't that rather like saying editorials have to be funny?

[Jeffersonian]

Are they picking Pulitzers at random out of phone books these days?

[db]

Walker, I hate you for linking to that crap. I hate myself more for following the link. I almost hate myself enough to click the second link...

Wow, that sucked.

[samuel]

Amen Brother ... AMEN !

Were can I find a Throw your rage page we I can dissipate my rage for having been tortured by reason

[db]

If you'd like to gouge your eyes out afterwards, you might find the discussion here useful.

You didn't say there was _audio_, too. I don't want to lose two senses in one afternoon.

[Tman]

It's a shame the guys from Cox and Forkum didn't get more recognition while they were doing their cartoons. They had some great cartoons that were actually funny too.

Not to mention the way they tried to subvert the Iranian regime's "Holocaust Cartoon Contest".

[Matt Welch]

Because really, what's more funny than Rachel Corrie as a pancake?

[Tman]

I thought that was hilarious. She was the classic example of what the Fiskie Idiotarian award is for, insanely stupid people doing incredibly stupid things, like standing in front of a bulldozer that can't see you as it tries to remove a terrorist bombers house.

Are you saying I should feel bad about that cartoon or something?

[Art-P.O.G.]

Very interesting stuff. I keep mentioning that I'm a cartoonist myself, but it only increases my respect for these guys' work.

[Art-P.O.G.]

I also will say that their decision to depict Corrie in a two-dimensional medium adds layers of depth to the piece.

[Tman]

Not to mention the burning Israel/US flags, which was a nice touch.

Seriously Welch, you don't really believe she was a martyr do you?

[Barack Obama]

Rachel Corrie as a latke is a lot funnier.

[heller]

Another succumbs to Rachel-mania. Not you too, Matt!

[Paul]

She was misunderstood. They thought she was part of the landscaping.

*ducks*

[Jeffersonian]

Rachel Corrie as a crepe?

[Shelby]

(1) If it saves just one lunatic anti-Israeli protester's life, it's worth it!

(2) So your point is that even Cox and Forkum's lamest effort is a hundred times better than that Fiore crap? Again we agree.

[lunchstealer]

Um, seriously, this guy got a Pulitzer and Homestar Runner didn't?

[Art-P.O.G.]

Hell, I'd put Salad Fingers a tier above this.

[heller]

Homestar Runner is too refined for the Pulitzer.

[Dwight Brown]

Maybe next year they'll give the Pulitzer to "Kelly".

[ps]

Reason has a lot of nerve critiquing unfunny political cartoons. Something about the beam in thine own eye...

[Art-P.O.G.]

Bro, those examples are way unfunnier than the Friday Funnies. And Walker admits that political cartoons are a tough format to achieve LULz in, but Fiore took the humorlessness to a whole new level.

[ps]

I was actually referring to Bagge, not Bok.

No argument that Fiore's are much, much worse than either.

[The Art-P.O.G.]

I actually like Bagge's work, but to each his own.

[Slim Charles]

What's wrong with Bok?

[Marc]

We all understand hatin' on Friday Funnies, but hatin' on Bagge? Really?

[mitch]

The Buddy Bradley story in the brandy new Hate Annual had me laughing so had I cried. Bagge is the man.

[P Brooks]

If you'd like to see some samples of Fiore's work

*best Chico Marx accent*

Aaaaah, you no fool-a meeee!

[Dog's New Clothes]

Wow. That Nader 'toon made me physically ill.

Apart from being poorly drawn and narrated, it just parrots the Dem conventional wisdom about Nader from 2000. If only Nader hadn't run, Gore would have been elected and we wouldn't have had any wars, and we would have single payer health care and global warming would have been reversed, &c. Thanksralph!!!!!!1

I disagree with Nader about a great many things, but when he says that Republicans = Democrats, he's absolutely right. On all the issues in that caveat on the badly rendered blackboard, Democrats and Republicans are essentially in agreement. This Fiore hack is so blinded by political tribalism that he doesn't get that.

Oh, and as much as it pains me to say it, these animated eructions are even worse than the Friday Funnies.

[Paul]

I take it this guy thinks only Democrats are the future.

[Ron L]

A good cartoonist works sarcasm and caricature, 'stretching' the truth to make a point.
Fiore simply lies.

[John]

He kind of is funny, if you think of him as some kind of ironic statement about bad political cartoons.

[Ron L]

Sort of second-level irony, since he's such a tyro at it?
Laughed at because he *isn't* funny; the Carrot-Top of supposed 'editorial cartoonists'...

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[cartooner]

This is a tough crowd! Visit our animated satire website, we ain't progressives, and throw an eTomato at us!

[JW]

Just to echo what everyone else has already said.

Holy.
Fuck.

Was this an event from the Special Pulitzer?

[Strawman]

As the Pulitzer was presumably awarded on the basis primarily of work in 2009, why are your examples against from 2004/5?

[J.M. Heinrichs]

Those were his best years?

Cheers

[Jesse Walker]

Just linking to some of his most memorably awful work. Don't worry, he hasn't improved since then.

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