How Did I Miss That Ho Chi Minh Was A Cartoonist?

I always used to think that if I looked hard enough, I'd shake free some sort of hidden cache of pornographic comics penned by Martin Van Buren or something similar, some sort of comics past for a U.S. President that everyone had known about but subsequently forgotten. I'm still looking for Rutherford B. Hayes' gag panel, but apparently in doing so completely overlooked the fact that Ho Chi Minh was a cartoonist in the 1920s for the newspaper published by the anti-colonialist group I think it's fair to say he spearheaded, both going by the name "Le Paria." The future world leader even went by the name "Nguyen-O-Phap" for a while, which I guess means, roughly, "Nguyen who hates the French." (He later changed it.)

This article interviews a writer of a history for Vietnamese cartooning touches on that work, and also suggests that the development of political cartooning within a culture depends on the judicious attention of smart editors willing to use cartoons in the most effective way. It's not an argument you always hear, with some placing 100 percent of the credit for any improvements in the form on the shoulders of the artists themselves.
 
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