Categories: Megapundit

Megapundit Extra: Please explain this cartoon to us

As the blog.macleans.ca community is already deep in thought about the New Yorker‘s Obama…

by selley on Tuesday, July 15, 2008 4:32pm - 0 Comments

As the blog.macleans.ca community is already deep in thought about the New Yorker‘s Obama cover (which we think is brilliant, by the way), we thought it would be a good time to solicit opinions on The Globe and Mail‘s Saturday editorial cartoon.

We know about Hellboy (though we’re not intimately familiar with the story), we understand the reference to 2050, and we think that’s supposed to be Stephen Harper. Other than that, we’re pretty much stumped. Interpretations are most welcome.

Tags: climate change, confusing editorial cartoons, Hellboy

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Mike G

My best guess is that it’s supposed to be saying that by 2050, we will still have this big ugly guy sitting around – I don’t think it’s meant to be Harper – spewing smoke out of the top of his head, but hey, he’ll be slightly lessened in power at least.

If I’m right, that sure is a weak excuse for a cartoon. No drawing of Natynczyk in Muslim robes?
Paul Wells

Harper paid lip service at the G-8 to modest climate-change reductions by 2050, reducing climate-change hell to mere heck. Not too opaque, surely?
http://www.macleans.ca Chris Selley

So “Heckboy” indicates his slightly diminished power? It’s as good a theory as has been offered to me thus far…
D

What Paul Wells said. I thought it was fairly (read: blatantly) obvious.

Seeing that you rate the New Yorker cartoon as “brilliant” says volumes as well. I thought it was a sad, unwitty exercise in recycling. Then again, that’s what “Megapundit” does I suppose.
http://mrsinistergreg.blogspot.com Greg

Don’t forget that Harper is a Christian and so he would be Heckboy, rather than Hellboy. I like the horn stumps as smoke stacks. Funny.
Garnet

Tying the news to a movie release is a standard move for editorial cartoonists. And when it’s a real reach conceptually, this is what you get.
Johhny D

Presently, the hell with climate change

2050, aww heck, we shoulda done something.
dot

I agree with Chris. This is an editorial cartoon that needs a Coles Notes to go with it.

My take: Harper is characterized today by the environmentalists and left as evil (hellboy).

By doing nothing until 2050 (well beyond his tenure), all his climate change `sins` will be long forgotten (heckboy).

My other interpretation: He wears his heart on his head (left and right ventricles have run dry and are puffing smoke)
http://blog.macleans.ca/category/blog-central/national/megapundit/ Chris Selley

Thanks for the support, dot. Perhaps I ask too much of editorial cartoons, but casting Harper as Hellboy (about which I know nothing), inserting this “Heckboy” thing – which, like Greg, I thought might be a reference to Harper’s social conservatism – and asking me to put it all together is just more than I can handle on a Saturday morning. I need instant payoff, baby. No doubt a personal failing, or one of my generation.
http://redtory.wordpress.com/ redtory

Pretty obvious isn’t it? By 2050, Harper will be slightly less evil. (Also dead, but that’s another matter.)