You are what you listen to

The editor of La Prensa asked me to try coming up with some cartoons targeted at youth issues.

So this is my first stab at that.

I asked a Mexican businessman in Miami, a Puerto Rican graphic designer in Chicago, and our school's Spanish teacher for help with my translation.

Miami gave me the top version, the Spanish teacher just gave me some tweaks for this bottom version, and Chicago thought I had hit it right on the first time. I don't know if she'll use either, let alone which one- (editors are always too busy to anwer their email,) but I like them well enough to go ahead and post them here.

Here's, roughly, the English translation:

"Hey Kids! I've got everything you want-
Heavy metal with anger, hate, and violence
Gansta rap with sex, drugs, violence, and greed
And of course Mexican border drug smuggler ballads with drugs, guns, violence, and accordions!"

Who doesn't love accordians?

Here in Western Iowa, a lot of the farmers listen to "Polka Party" on the AM radio at Noon. Funny story, once we were driving home to Phoenix from Iowa for Christmas. We were somewhere West of Gallup on I-40 (near old 66) and my farmer-in-law found a station playing some great accordion & "oompa" music.

When the song ended, neither of us could understand what the DJ was saying. I couldn't even make out any Spanish. Turns out it was Tejano (Mexican border) music (not German Polka), but it was being played on the Navajo Nation (reservation) radio station.

Just goes to show you that accordians know no borders.

Historieta Política

¡Viva Posada!

I've been on the phone with the editor of La Prensa, Iowa the Spanish language newspaper. They publish in, Carroll, Storm Lake, Spencer, Perry, Ames, and Des Moines. If she likes my calaveras cartoon, this could be a bigger market than the Mapleton PRESS was. Of course, I barely know much "Spanglish," so I'll need her help translating, but that may force me to use far fewer words so that the images carry the joke. Who knows. We'll see how this goes.

This one has been corrected for better Spanish.

Here is the English:
The Mexican skeleton asks, "We're all the same under the skin, right Mr. King?"
Rep. Steve King replies, "Get away from me with your drugs and diseases!* We should've kept you out with electric fences like cattle!"

*April 27, 2006, the Des Moines Register published an op-ed piece by Steve King regarding the planned May 1 "Day Without an Immigrant" rallies.

King said "(without immigrants) Our hospital emergency rooms would not be flooded with everything from gunshot wounds, to anchor babies, to imported diseases to hangnails..."

Happy Editorial Cartoonist's Day y Feliz Dia de los Muertos.