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DRAWN FROM EXPERIENCE
Steve Brodner’s protest pen
BY MIKE MILIARD
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Illustrator and political cartoonist Steve Brodner has been using his pen and brush to strike back at the deception, corruption, and cupidity of American politicians for three decades. His caricatures are grotesqueries, depicting Washington’s stupid white men through distortions that evoke their true character: scheming beady eyes and unctuous smiles, wrinkles and rolls of Silly Putty flesh, all rendered with angry, slashing lines and savage, inky spatters. The just-released Freedom Fries (Fantagraphics; $29.95) is a best-of book that culls Brodner’s greatest political works to date from the pages of the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Nation, Mother Jones, and countless others. Here’s Richard Nixon, whose death inspired grossly revisionist eulogies, rising from the grave with angel wings and halo (and, yes, phallic schnoz). Ronald Reagan’s lizard-like visage is glimpsed in an infernal mushroom cloud. Bill Clinton, the New Democrat, sits corpulent and nude, tattooed with corporate logos. "There are some people who are just, like, gifts to you," Brodner, a lifelong New Yorker, says over lunch at Jae’s in Brookline. "Nixon. Or Newt Gingrich. They look like what they are. You don’t have to do anything. Just sit back and enjoy yourself." Lucky for him, the "Bush Junta" — the title of another new Fantagraphics book, compiling political art by dozens of today’s best cartoonists and illustrators (Brodner included) — offers a rogues’ gallery of ripe targets. There’s dim-bulb Dubya, of course, and Rummy the wizened warrior. And there’s Dick Cheney, who really does look as if a forked tongue might dart out of that twisted moue at any moment. "He tucks his head under his shoulders," Brodner marvels, as he mimes the conspiratorial body language of the White House’s gray eminence. "He speaks with his mouth twisted to one side. He’s got a pointed nose. And eyes ... that look like he’s searching for the place to put the dagger in. I love to draw him." But, he says, "if he happened to look like John Edwards, the mission would be the same." Brodner confesses that John Kerry’s running mate is one he still hasn’t got nailed. Is drawing good-looking people more difficult? "It’s not just that he’s good-looking. It’s that I don’t have the narrative on him yet. What matters is less what they look like than what they are. It’s all about storytelling with the features of the face. When you’re drawing a politician, you’re drawing a mask. As I said to Martha Stewart" — whose unhinged early-morning phone call earned her the distinction of being the only subject ever to complain about one of Brodner’s caricatures — "this is not personal." Translating the human face into a biting, communicative caricature requires long and close observation, Brodner says, the ability to "glean from the features something telling." He pulls a roller-ball pen from his shirt pocket as I hand him my notebook. "What I like to draw as a demonstration is how similar Bush father and son are," he says as he scribbles two dark bundles of brush, both almost vertical, curved toward each other. "You have the eyes as two bushy eyebrows" — he chuckles at the play on words — "that are very close together. You really don’t even see the eyes. The nose is pointed, a little longer on the father than the son. There’s a beaked mouth, and I like to draw it open, shouting into the void: ‘Somebody! Give me another break!’ If you were to draw the father, you’d have the head come down like this." Here, he encases the facial features within a slender stalk of a skull, and George H.W. Bush appears. "But if you were drawing the son, you’d just broaden it out to the diamond shape." He extends the jaw line horizontally, adds some rounded jowls, some pointed elf ears, and ... voilà! ... the leader of the free world. Brodner looks over his sketchy president. "Much too nice," he clucks. "Maybe the nicest picture of Bush I ever did." Then he flips the page and turns his attention to the junior senator from Massachusetts. "Kerry," he grins. "I love to just play this game with Kerry. It occurred to me one day that he looked like two ketchup bottles, one on top of the other, like you see in a restaurant when they’re trying save ketchup. Heinz ketchup, of course. So you’ve got these two ketchup bottles, and all you have to do is add the eyes over here ... and the nose over here ... and a little, tiny mouth. That’s the chin. Here’s the hair. And there ... is ... Kerry."
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