Illustration I did last week for Metro Silicon Valley, of Mitt Romney, naked. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I was one of a number of artists who contributed to a tribute poster for Matt Groening after he announced last summer that he was retiring his long-running and hugely influential strip, Life in Hell. It was a secret, until the poster was presented to Matt, which finally happened last week. You have to download the .pdf of the poster to see it in full, which I recommend you do — it’s pretty great.

Matt Bors has just unveiled his animated version on Daily Kos.

Go, check it out, now. It’s awesome.

Rep. Paul Broun: “All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory … all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell.”

Punchline: Rep. Broun sits on a key congressional science advisory committee.

Bill Nye is not amused.

The Plutocrat attacks!

Read it on Daily Kos.

Salon declares them dead. Carly Carioli at the Phoenix disagrees. Sharp-eyed readers will note a paragraph or two in the latter with which I am compelled to agree.

…adding, a thought about nomenclature: whenever the subject of these papers comes up, people inevitably ask “alternative to what?” And yes, admittedly the idea that the weekly press stands alone as the alternative to the mainstream press is outdated, though the best of them still provide content you won’t find in dailies — but it’s a name. People understand what it refers to. You don’t “dial” a telephone anymore, either.

So I had a few, um, distractions last night, but the focus of the evening was really movie night with my nine year old. I’ve had mixed success introducing him to the original Star Trek series, so I decided the 2009 reboot might be more appealing to a child of the 21st century. And it was fun watching it with him . It’s a great fast-paced roller coaster of a movie — I was calling it Star Trek X-Treme when it first came out.

But there are some hugely bothersome plot points. The movie’s three years old, and I assume that anyone who cares has long since seen it, but I will nonetheless follow internet conventions and bury the spoilers below the fold.

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Following up on last night’s news…

1. Just to keep things in perspective: A lot of people have been laid off by VVM in recent years, and I don’t want to conflate the impact of this on my life with what they have had to face. They lost their livelihoods; I lost a client paper.

2. I tweeted that I’d been in the Voice since 1995. Looks like the actual year I started was 1997.

3. Once upon a time, there were two major altweekly chains — Village Voice Media and New Times. I ran in numerous papers in both chains, but the former were always much more receptive to my work, and a lot of their papers were run by people who had become friends of mine over the years. In the mid ’00s, the New Times people took over VVM and fired my friends and imposed the New Times template on their papers.

4. In January 2009 in the wake of the economic meltdown, the corporate honchos at VVM decided to save money by dropping cartoons across the chain. It was presented to cartoonists as a six month suspension; this turned out not to be what you might technically call “true.”

5. I was vocal in my criticism of VVM at the time (adding: though not as vocal as I remembered; see updates below). I have been told management was not amused.

6. My only bulwark was the editor of the Village Voice, Tony Ortega, who fought some serious battles to get my cartoon back into his paper, and to keep it there. It didn’t change the fact that I’d lost a dozen other major cities (give or take), but Tony was a mensch, and out of respect for him, I dialed down the public criticism of his bosses.

7. Tony resigned from the Voice a couple weeks ago. He is now writing a book on Scientology and blogging on the subect here.

8. Tony’s editorship wasn’t even cold in the ground when word came down from corporate hq to kill the cartoon. Obviously I cannot know with certainty why the decision was made, but it seems pretty clear to me that somebody was itching to pull that particular trigger in a big damn hurry.

9. Print still matters. I know that we’re living through the print-to-digital transition and someday newspapers will be a quaint artifact of the distant past — but do not confuse the spectre of Someday with the reality of Now. That future may be coming, but we do not live there yet. I still make the majority of my income from print publications. I still reach a lot of readers through print publications. Things will be different in the long run, but as Keynes famously observed, in the long run we are all dead.

10. I am grateful beyond words to the editors of the many fine weekly newspapers which continue to run This Modern World. If there’s one in your community, please let them know you’re out there and that you support their work.

11. If my kid ever sees my Twitter feed from last night, I’m gonna owe a lot to the swear jar. And yes, we actually have one. I blame The Simpsons.

(Updates below the fold)

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As some of you know, a few years back the powers that be at the Village Voice chain decided to shitcan all cartoons across the chain (costing me over almost a dozen major cities in a single day — it was like a nuclear first strike on my career). The one exception for me was the Village Voice itself, because editor Tony Ortega was a hardcore fan of my cartoon, and fought some serious battles to keep it in. He resigned a couple weeks ago, and I’ve been waiting for the axe to fall there, and was not remotely surprised to learn just now from the interim editor that my cartoon will no longer be running in their paper.

Those of you with long memories may recall that this was supposed to be a “six month suspension” from the chain — it’s now in its fourth year, and with the loss of the Voice, it’s looking pretty complete.

At least I’m now free to say what I actually think about the people who run that chain, but I think I’ll save that for another day.

If you’ve been considering joining SPARKY’S LIST, this would be a good day for it. This is one extremely good thing about the internet: the assholes who make these decisions can’t kill my cartoon, as long as readers are willing to support it themselves.

Update: an amazing, overwhelming response overnight. Huge thanks to everyone who signed up for Sparky’s List as a result of my Twitter rampage.