Comic art spares no one

The publication of cartoons in a Danish newspaper depicting caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed has raised a storm of protest in many parts of the world. I was thinking about these protests while supervising the final session of the Agora Days South Park class. Jono and Rohun played The Super Best Friends episode, in which Stan goes to Jesus for help in extricating his buddies Kyle and Cartman from the clutches of the Blaine-tology cult. As South Park aficianados know, Jesus is a regular (highly caricatured) character on the show. This episode, which first aired on July 4, 2001, brings together the "Super Best Friends," who are caricatures of other key religious figures: Buddha, Mohammad, Krishna, Joseph Smith, Lao Tzu and (oddly enough) Sea Man. Apparently today's protesters do not tune their television sets to South Park very often.

Graphic novelists also understand the power of cartoon art. I just finished reading our copy of the late Will Eisner's The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (GN Ei87p). The Protocols is a notorious forgery that was originally concocted to convince Tsar Nicholas II that Jewish leaders and bankers were scheming to take over the world. The forgery succeeded well beyond its original purpose. Eisner masterfully recreates the story of its perpetuation. Here are couple of his sequences:





While Eisner's book does not directly parallel the work of the Danish cartoonists (or, for that matter, the South Park opus), all of these creations illuminate the power of media and medium, word and image.