Everyone recalls that Jeff NacNelly was a great political cartoonist, but once in a while it's good to look again and remind ourselves how truly great he was.
MacNelly had a special gift for portraying collections of morons-- a handy talent for political cartoonists.
He presents the most complex scenes with ease: elaborate architectures from difficult angles, rooms full of people in dynamic poses, complicated machines.
But as long as we're revisiting MacNelly's talent, let's put aside his obvious showy talents and consider a different standard: the way he handles a tiny sketch of an individual. For example, look at the way he draws a dissident on the gallows:
Or in the following cartoon, note his tiny drawing of President Nixon walking the plank:
Without bells, whistles or pyrotechnics, these simple treatments of a single human form are incredibly revealing. It would be easy for a cartoonist to handle these tiny images as stick figures. Many cartoonists today would. But MacNelly's sensitive, descriptive line captures important observations about posture, stance, paunch, clothing. Note the sagging belt and pants on the malnourished Iranian dissident. MacNelly noticed and drew the puffed out knees on Nixon's pants, or the shoes that project out over the edge of the plank. Note, too, the anatomical liberties MacNelly took with the way Nixon's head fit into his shoulders.
MacNelly's wonderful talent shows up even in the tiny, humble corners of his drawing.
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