Thread by @DerfBackderf

With the release of Kent State looming (Sept. 8, everyone!), I’ve been looking back at the comics of the Vietnam Era, to see how antiwar protests were depicted in “real time.”

Example #7: the political cartoons.

This is the best political cartoon I found, by Don Wright of the Miami News. Wright was one of the new stars of the genre, having won a Pulitzer in 1966 at age 30 (he’d win another), and on his way to being one of the most widely syndicated cartoonists of the 1970s and 80s.

This cartoon ran mere days after the shootings on Friday, May 8, when political rancor was at its most crazed, the lies and misdirections were flying fast and furious, and campuses all around the country were exploding in outrage.

I didn’t find many cartoons commenting on Kent State. I was surprised by that. Wright was the only (that I’ve found) cartoonist who zeroed in on the central issue: the students were unarmed and the Guard gunned them down anyways.
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More typical was this cartoon by veteran Bill Roberts of the Cleveland Press from Tuesday, May 5, the day after the massacre. Roberts is basically just illustrating the news. That’s the antithesis of a good political cartoon. Say SOMEthing! This cartoon says nothing.

Here’s one, also from May 5, by Ray Osrin of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The message of this cartoon is: gee, something really bad just happened and aren’t we all sad about that.

In Osrin and Roberts’ defense, breaking news stories like Kent State are the hardest to write about. The story was still unfolding, we knew very little at that point, wouldn’t for months (and years!) and what was being reported was mostly lies spewing from the authorities.

But… it’s THE major headline of the day and the editors expect the cartoonist to cover it. So frequently what results is a cartoon like this one.

Mike Peters, Dayton Daily News. Peters was another standout of the new breed. Here he’s equating Kent State, also from Friday May 8, with the Middle East, where UN monitors were in place.

Now HERE’S a real head-scratcher, from Cy Hungerford of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Hungerford was infamously conservative. He was also ancient, age 82 in 1970! His career began in 1903!

This cartoon ran on Tuesday, May 5 and is a giant whopping WTF. Here we have Death, who is half protestor/ half Guardsman for some reason, running onto the Kent State campus yelling “Peace!”

Huh??

It appears as if Hungerford just started drawing, minutes before deadline, and this visual hash is what came out.

This is Ron Cobb, the greatest political cartoonist who you’ve likely never heard of. Cobb was published only in the alt-press of the era. His base paper was the LA Free Press. These papers were the ancestors of the free weeklies where I plied my craft for 20 years.

Cobb was brilliant and savage, as well as being one of the greatest draftsmen ever. He’s never gotten his due.
Surprisingly, Cobb didn’t weigh in often on student protests, and not at all on Kent State. Not sure why.

You’d think Kent State, which was the cover story in almost all alt-papers the following week, would have been a must.

This one here is from 1969. It certainly predicts Kent State.

More Cobb. Just brilliant.

Pat Oliphant, an Australian transplant, became THE star cartoonist of the 1970s, spawning a host of imitators. You can still see his influence in the the cartoonists of today.

Oliphant was no fan of student protestors.

This one by Oliphant, also from 1969, is a puzzler. The SDS activist is pulling on the “Cheese of Anarchy,” thus springing the rat trap which will kill him. OK. But WHY does the protestor want the Cheese of Anarchy? And what exactly IS the cheese of Anarchy??

Oliphant didn’t comment directly on Kent State, not that I could find.

The great Bill Mauldin weighs in after, later in 1970, an Ohio Grand Jury kangaroo court exonerates all the Guardsmen who shot students, and instead indicts the students who were shot!