Tightening Them-There Belts

(Originally published 12/1/2010)

Since the late 1960's, the incomes of the middle and lower classes, approximating the bottom 98% of all earners, have declined steadily (in real dollars). The ultra-rich, especially the top 0.1% that have gained enormously during the same period, have now concluded that for any recovery to succeed, "everyone" must sacrifice; demonstrating their ignorance of the long-term sacrifices already made by all but them

About this comic

This was my very first attempt at doing a political comic. I sketched it in pencil (with many erasures) on standard lined note paper, and was surprised that I could make it look like anything (much less as it looks above).


But the original was quite small—about 4" high—and so the quality, especially with the typical ink pen used to ink it, isn't very high. (See the original here.) The original also suffered from ink splotches that had soaked through from prior doodlings. My second comic, also done on note paper, is better in great degree because the original drawing was larger.

I should also note that I drew two later drafts of this same comic, theoretically "improvements", but that I wound up keeping the original version. Despite its limitations I liked it best.