Ok, here’s the Michael Jackson cartoon I promised you all on Twitter.  Let me know what you think.

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Darrin Bell, the cartoonist behind the syndicated strip “Candorville,” has revealed the changes he had to make to his July 7 cartoon about the death of Michael Jackson.

“I can’t let you do this,” Bell’s editor, Amy Lago of the Washington Post Writers Group, told him after seeing the unedited strip.

“Apparently jokes about pedophilia, even mild ones like this, aren’t allowed on the comics page,” Bell posted on his blog. “But thank God for the Web!”

The strip was one of a five-part series where Jackson visits the dreams of Lemont Brown, the comic’s main character.

For newspapers, Bell re-wrote the last two panels. The third panel of the syndicated version features Lemont, the main character in the strip saying, “What the heck. You entertained me so I’m willing to overlook your stupid decisions, your possible depravity, and your embarrassing naivete. In the last panel Jackson responds, “Thanks,” with Lemont saying “It’s the least I could do.”

The unedited strip has a third panel that features Michael Jackson asking, “I sure did touch people, didn’t I?” Lemont replies, “So you admit it?” The strip ends in the fourth panel with both Jackson and Lemont asking each other, “What?”

“”There are certain detestable acts, such as rape and pedophilia, that can stop some readers from finding any humor whatsoever in a strip,” Lago told Mike Cavna on his Comic Riffs blog. “Darrin’s original strip brought back the pedophile accusation in Panel 3. And also turned it into a punchline. I found that insensitive and felt it would have been hard to defend to anyone who has been the victim of a pedophile and feels that the subject is no joking matter.”

“Some believe that’s for the best, because he was never convicted and because he’s dead and should be left alone,” Bell said.

“But I have to admit that as much as I admire him and his music, he handed people who don’t believe him plenty of reason to doubt his veracity. And I’ve never believed that we should only speak well of the dead. That’s dishonest.”

View the entire series of “Candorville” strips featuring Michael Jackson, as well as both the edited and unedited versions of the controversial comic, click here.

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Here’s part two of my lunch interview with Jeff Parker of Florida Today, Mike Peters of Mother Goose & Grimm and the Dayton Daily News, Monte Wolverton, brilliant weekly editorial cartoonist and Mad Magazine alumni and the Ottawa Citizen’s Cam Cardow. We’re all here in Seattle at the annual Association of American Editorial Cartoonists convention talking shop about the future of editorial cartooning.

In this video, we speak about social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter aiding us as cartoonists. You’ll even see a glimpse of me peek in and speak about the night Michael Jackson died, and how I was able to shoot ideas by my Twitter followers (follow me on Twitter here), ending up with a cartoon that resulted from their suggestions.

Here’s the cartoon I ended up with (and note the thank you I added for all my twitter followers):

Check back for more videos from the convention.

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Something must be wrong with me. Three giants of showbiz died two weeks ago, yet I wasn’t a big fan of any of them.

Ed McMahon? He was a very talented pitchman. But I preferred the hilarious send-up of McMahon, in the guise of “Hank Kingsley,” on “The Larry Sanders Show.” Actor Jeffrey Tambor’s signature Kingsleyism, “HEY, now!” is probably quoted more often than McMahon’s “HEY-OHHH!”

Farrah Fawcett? I never bought that famous poster. She wasn’t my type. I didn’t like “Charlie’s Angels,” and my least favorite of the trio was Ms. Fawcett. Never did care for that “feathered” hairstyle she inspired, either. To tell the truth, I didn’t watch a lot of TV in the mid-1970s. I was too busy disco dancing. But if I had been watching, I probably would have preferred “The Bionic Woman” to “Charlie’s Angels.” I’d forgotten about the bionic Lindsay Wagner until just recently, when she started doing commercials for the Sleep Number mattress company. She look pretty good at age 60, and a bit sleepy, too — just right for the ads!

Ah, but what about Michael Jackson? McMahon had talent, and Fawcett had looks. But Michael Jackson was pure genius — the finest overall entertainer since Sammy Davis, Jr. For about a decade, he singlehandedly rescued the recording industry.

Yet, throughout Michael Jackson’s career, I just never quite got the adulation. In the late 1960s, the Jackson 5 had a string of number-one Motown hits, and they were great to listen to on my AM car radio. But I much preferred Sly & the Family Stone. When Michael launched his solo career in the late 70s, I liked him more. But as a singer and songwriter, in my opinion, he was no match for Marvin Gaye or Bill Withers.

By the time Michael Jackson became a superstar, I’d mostly lost interest in “pop” music. Not the artsier rock of the 1980s — a lot of that stuff was pretty good, and its influence on popular music today remains strong. But the big, arena-filling popular musical acts, whether delivered by heavy metal bands, or R&B sirens Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, or the two biggest acts of that decade — Michael Jackson and Madonna — left me cold. And while Michael Jackson’s dance moves were incredible to behold, I found Prince’s choreography far more intriguing.

Perhaps that makes me strange? However, speaking of strange, I have to hand it to Michael Jackson. He was a weird pleasure to caricature! The skin whitening procedures to obscure his vitiligo, the odd experiments in plastic surgery, the bandito face kerchiefs, the sequined glove and epaulets — all made Michael Jackson an enduring subject for caricature. In fact, in terms of rendering, Jackson made the caricaturist’s job easy. Over time, he reduced himself to a stark black-and-white image. The white, mime-like face, the sharp cut of his reconstructed nose, the dyed black hair hanging like tendrils, the eyeliner and false eyelashes…all of these provided great tools for the caricaturist.

Sunday night, Michael Jackson was honored and memorialized at the BET Awards. Actor Jamie Foxx declared on Michael’s behalf: “We want to celebrate this black man.” As though the audience needed to be reminded that Michael Jackson was indeed an African-American. However, from a caricaturist’s odd point of view, Jackson had personally transcended race. He wasn’t of mixed-race, of course, like President Obama. Whether on the illustrated page or in photographs, Michael Jackson was, literally, both black and white.

Thanks so much for visiting. If you’d like to see more samples of my work, please click here.

…By the way, a question for you dance experts out there: Since Michael Jackson rarely, if ever, danced with a partner, unlike Astaire or Baryshnikov, couldn’t he best have been described as a “hoofer?”

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Like most people, hearing the news about the death of Michael Jackson was a shock to me.

And like most editorial cartoonists, I thought, “I guess I should do an obituary cartoon on him.”

Obituary cartoons are usually drawn because either the cartoonist is very affected by the subject personally (whether or not the deceased was prominent), or — more commonly — because they were too prominent to ignore, and people will be talking about the deceased the next day. These obituary cartoons try to encapsulate what made the person notable, and throw in some praise (or in some rare cases, contempt) for what they did.

Even though I’d already worked on two cartoons that day, Michael Jackson was clearly too big to be ignored: I needed to draw something.

The first internal debate was what aspect of the man to focus on, and would the message be positive, negative or indeterminate. Jacko was a complicated case, very talented and deeply weird, with unproven allegations of child abuse and a freakish alien appearance in his later years.

But he was a HUGE pop star, influential and successful, with the biggest-selling album in history and legions of devoted fans worldwide… he was easily the biggest musical act since the Beatles, with nobody as big since. And since the preference is to speak well of the dead, I chose to focus on Michael the musical artist, not Michael the weirdo.

I came up with this image playing off his iconic “moonwalking” (taken to a literal level), representing his dancing as well as his isolation and sometimes other-worldliness, with a shooting star to acknowledge his short, glowing, troubled, brilliant and tragic life trajectory.

It’s an OK obit and looks decent, but it was rushed… and this is where obit cartoons can run into problems.

The problems are either doing a cliché — usually something involving St. Peter and the Pearly Gates, and there have been a zillion of these — or doing cartoons similar to what other cartoonists might be doing for the next day. In this case, several of the other cartoons I’ve seen in the early going also involve Michael Jackson doing moonwalk steps, and in the same outfit no less.

Why this happens can be explained by the cartoonist though process. Those trying to focus on Jacko’s success, as opposed to his weirdness, would hone in on his greatest days: the “Thriller” masterpiece album from 1983 and his groundbreaking music videos from that period, perhaps most notably on the song “Billie Jean.” Jackson wore the fedora, sequinned single glove, white socks and shirt, black dance shoes and a sparkly suit, and astonished viewers with his then-new moonwalk steps. He went on to have other signature looks (leather jackets, sunglasses and militaristic jackets with epaulets, medals, braids and other bling), but the “Billie Jean” look was from his best days, before his multiple plastic surgeries and slipping album sales.

Plus, every cartoonist was facing a deadline. There’s not really time to slowly play with a dozen ideas if you want to get the drawing out NOW. So, you go with a recognizable image and iconic symbols… and hope the rest of the editorial cartooning community doesn’t do the same thing for the next day.

Immediately after the 9-11 attack in 2001, a slew of cartoons involving weeping Statues of Liberty were drawn (including by me). Same thought process: “I need something dramatic, simple, bold… and RIGHT AWAY… something to personify a tragedy to New York City and to the U.S. — but what symbol could give a convey New York City and the U.S. at the same time, and ideally, be human enough to react emotionally to this tragedy? Hey— the Statue of Liberty!!” And so, that’s how similar cartoons arise.

Anyhow, I know my Michael Jackson tribute doesn’t convey the entire scope of the man…but with someone as complex and troubled as him, it would take several cartoons.

And doing a bunch of cartoons to commemorate one individual… would be no thriller.
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Be sure to see the huge archive of my work (organized by topic area) on my web site at http://www.greenberg-art.com

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With the death of Michael Jackson, cartoonists are confronted with a dilemma: focus on positive influence his music had on millions, or on the more darker aspects that plagued him until his death. Daryl Cagle had a great post about the thought process that goes into coming up with an idea that is both timely and funny, while at the same time tackling some of the tougher issues in Jackson’s life.

Mike Luckovich, the staff cartoonist for the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, completed this challenging cartoon which appears in today’s paper. Thus far, 65% of people voting on the ajc.com website give the cartoon thumbs down.

“I find this cartoon offensive and hateful,” posted a reader on the CNN site. “Michael Jackson was a musical genius, philanthropist and set an example on how to use your celebrity to make the world better.

Mike will be on CNN today at 1p EST to talk about it, so tune in. I’ll post a video of it as soon as it appears on their website.

What do you think of the toon?

And while you’re waiting, you can view more of Mike’s cartoons here.

UPDATE: Here’s the video from CNN of Mike Luckovich’s appearance. It’s just a shame how quickly that have to squeeze him in.

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