Sacramento Bee | Fox News
Sacramento Bee editorial cartoonist Jack Ohman has refused to apologize for an editorial cartoon berating loose business regulations in Texas that potentially led to the April 17 explosion of a fertilizer plant in the town of West, killing at least 14 people and injuring as many as 200 others. Ohman wrote on his blog that he had received many complaints calling it (and him) "insensitive and tasteless" and pointed out he had drawn much more graphic images in the past to make his points.

I knew it was close to the edge, but I went with it, and I don't go with things I can't defend. I'm defending this one because I think that when you have a politician traveling across the country selling a state with low regulatory capacity, that politician also has to be accountable for what happens when that lack of regulation proves to be fatal.

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The Daily Cartoonist | That Cartoon Critic | Matt Bors
Bill Day used another illustrator's work without attribution in a recent cartoon, Alan Gardner writes. Videogame developer Zack Fowler's image of a rifle landed in a Day cartoon about the power of the NRA. (more...)

The Toronto Star | Michael de Adder | Sabrina Scott
The Toronto Star apologized for a Michael de Adder cartoon, saying many readers thought it "fed into racial stereotypes at a time when emotions were running particularly high." (Don't just take their word for it; read some letters.)

The cartoon was published last Wednesday and followed a local July 16 shooting in which two people were killed and 23 more, including a toddler, were injured. De Adder's cartoon portrayed a black toddler with the legend "Injuries to expect before they are two" and "Head laceration from a medium-caliber bullet" among less sinister harms.

On his blog, de Adder describes how he constructed the cartoon and shows his drafts. His intentions, he writes, weren't racist:

Many things affected me about this tragedy, but the bullet injury to the 22-month old girl struck a cord. I have kids. The worst thing they ever suffered was a scrape to the knee.

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The Daily Cartoonist | The Sacramento Bee
Rex Babin, a 2003 Pulitzer finalist for editorial cartooning, died Friday morning at the age of 49 "after a long struggle with stomach cancer," reports the Bee's Anita Creamer. She recalls his work:

In Rex Babin's perhaps most beloved editorial cartoon, huge hands reached down from on high to steady US Airways Flight 1549 as it floated on the Hudson River, passengers standing on its wings. ...

"That cartoon resonated with people on the flight," said his wife, Kathleen. "He heard from many of the passengers and crew, and he presented it to Captain Sullenberger when he was in Sacramento. The reaction was amazing.

"But he liked the ones that stirred up controversy. He was proud of doing that."

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The Plain Dealer decided not to publish a Non Sequitur comic Friday that depicts a bunny looking at a police lineup of other animals and saying, "They all really do look alike to me." In its place was an editor's note that said the strip "was deemed objectionable." Art Costanzo, 63, a self-professed lifetime reader of the paper, writes in a letter to the editor, "The only thing I found controversial was the fact that you did not publish it."

The paper left a blank spot where this strip would have appeared, along with an editor's note.

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The Daily Cartoonist
Alan Gardner says Stahler's cartoon in the Dispatch on Monday "has a striking similarity" to a David Sipress cartoon published in the New Yorker in 2009. Stahler tells Gardner that it's a coincidence, but Gardner points out two other cases in which Stahler's cartoons are conceptually identical to ones published in the New Yorker. (Gardner's post includes all the cartoons in question.) "As a general rule, as long as the cartoonist isn’t light-boxing, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt," Gardner writes. "Collectively, however, the matter gets harder to explain away." Update: Dispatch Editor Ben Marrison tells me: "We take these allegations seriously. Given their serious nature, we have suspended Jeff Stahler's cartoon indefinitely until an exhaustive investigation can be conducted." || Earlier: Did Columbus Dispatch cartoonist lift from humorist Borowitz? || Related: Tulsa editorial cartoonist resigns after Daily Cartoonist accuses him of plagiarism (Poynter.org, The Daily Cartoonist)

The Washington Post
Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Mike Keefe, who just took a buyout at The Denver Post, tells Michael Cavna, "It looks like nothing but a down escalator for the classic full-time newspaper cartoonist. ... The digital realm is wide open and offers plenty of opportunities. Unfortunately, most don’t come with a pay check." Cavna lists all the former staff cartoonists at Colorado papers and asks, "As Colorado goes for cartoonists, does so go the nation?" || Earlier: Despite winning the Pulitzer this year, Keefe says, "nobody came clamoring around my drawing board trying to dissuade me" from taking the buyout. (Cagle.com) || Related: The 19 journalists taking buyouts at the Post, including theater critic John Moore and transportation reporter Jeff Leib (Westword, The Denver Post) | A breakdown of the perfect New Yorker cartoon (The New Yorker)

The Daily Cartoonist | Urban Tulsa Weekly | The Washington Post
Jeff MacNelly's widow Susie tells Alan Gardner at The Daily Cartoonist that David Simpson's editor asked her to write the retraction for Simpson's plagiarism of an old cartoon drawn by her husband. "Tulsa must be in a black hole with different journalistic ethics because neither Simpson nor his editor/publisher seem repentant," she writes. Simpson apologized to Susie MacNelly, explaining that he "accidentally stole the cartoon 25 years ago" and repurposed it recently after finding it in a box in his garage. Gardner points out that Simpson's explanation implies that he ripped off the same cartoon twice. As for believing that it was his own, that's the same explanation he gave in 2005 when he was fired from the Tulsa World for plagiarizing another cartoon.

Urban Tulsa Weekly, meanwhile, posted a "rectification" on page 7 of its current issue, below the "Love letters, hate mail" feature. It says that Simpson has resigned; Simpson says in his email to Susie MacNelly that he was fired. Either way, Simpson's done cartooning: The note in Urban Tulsa Weekly says he has retired. || Culture of copying? Cartoonist Michael Bors says "swiping MacNelly cartoons was done with wild abandon before the Internet ... Simpson may have been on the extreme end of the spectrum with his slavish reproductions, but cartoonists far more notable than him have stolen from MacNelly while enjoying successful careers and none of the scorn that is now heaped upon Simpson.”