“Bloom County” had five times the edge of the work I do now. In 1986 I had a cockroach scream, “Reagan sucks!” in print size that took up the entire cartoon box. Nobody blinked — 1,000 newspapers, quiet as a mouse. Now I draw a woman wearing a Muslim scarf, and the frantic publisher of the Washington Post Co. is on the phone at 9 p.m. telling me — I am not making this up — to adjust my character’s hair so she doesn’t look too unkempt.
Fear doesn’t so much rule the wood pulp news industry. More like pee-on-themselves existential terror.
The Ethereal Voice
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