Local Look Awesometown Editorials

Author notes

Old-Age of Innocence

Awesometown

on Oct. 20, 2007

As it turned out this week the opinion page just happened to be a color position in our paper, and I was asked if I wanted to run my comic in color, so this is my first comic to print in color in the newspaper. Which is kind of exciting for me. Since the whole "doing the comic in color" thing started as something special for the people on the web, I never really planned on seeing my comic in color in the paper… I must admit it was pretty cool to see, and I'm really glad it printed well.

Color isn't really a huge thing for editorial cartoons, traditionally they are black and white which is how I started, but after seeing that alot of editorial cartoonists are using color or starting to use color, have comics available in both color and black & white, or are doing a color comic for the web with black & white going in the newspaper, I really felt that I needed to make sure I was comfortable working on comics that could be printed in both color and black & white… which is why I was keen to see my comic print in color, finally I know how my coloring prints in the newspaper, and I have at least one example I can put in my portfolio.

The comic is based on a local story of a man who was found not guilty of attempted murder largely in part to his age. The whole ordeal makes a mockery of our justice system… and is furthered by my comic. I didn't do any research for photo reference of the lawyer and old man, mainly because I was sort of unclear as to how far I could go before being open to a libel suit, so I just drew a generic lawyer and old man. I really need to work on finding out more about the ethics of editorial cartooning, I'm sure most of it is judgement call, but I'm sure there are some journalisim rules that would be handy to know as well.

The look of the comic was very likely influenced by random episodes of Law & Order, any movie about law or lawyers, Harvey Birdman, and the video game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney… which is a kick ass game.

Anyone who would like to read more about the story this comic is based on feel free to click here or here.