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News: Cartoonists Hold Kerry “Bake Sale”
posted May 27, 2004
May 27, 2004 -- Continuing the resurgent tradition of political involvement within alternative comics circles, in late May St. Louis cartoonists Ted May, Kevin Huizenga and Dan Zettwoch began in late May an effort to raise money for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry by doing a series of commissioned sketches. "We'd all been kicking around the idea of selling custom drawings and original comics pages on the USS Catastrophe web site (usscatastrophe.com) for a while," said Zettwoch, "But connecting it to the presidential election was 100 percent Ted [May]'s idea. The money will go to Kerry efforts in the cartoonists' home state of Missouri, where polls indicate the election will be closely contested.
According to Zettwoch, the sale went "well enough to mess up our comics-making schedules." The cartoonist pledged to go back to goofing off once the deadline for campaign contributions had passed. "The response has been generally positive," he informed the
Journal, "except from my family in Kentucky. And parts of the Internet." One of the signs of positive support is that cartoonists David Lasky and Donna Barr stepped up the sketch plate as the original three began to drop out.
Although federal election guidelines made this a short-term offer, this may not be the last time the trio works in the art-for-charity arena. Kevin Huizenga told the
Journal, "It's been pretty successful and fun to do, so maybe we'll make this an annual thing and try and raise money for Doctors without Borders or leukemia research or something, and maybe get others involved. I'd like to try something like that."
Originally Appeared in The Comics Journal