502 RALL, TED
RALL, TED (1963–). Ted Rall is an acclaimed editorial cartoonist and columnist. He
is currently president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, a group
dedicated to the promotion of editorial cartooning and association between editorial
cartoonists. Rall publishes three cartoons and one column weekly through Universal
Press Syndicate.
Rall was inspired to try editorial cartooning after meeting artist Keith Haring on
a subway platform in Manhattan in 1986. He posted cartoons in his neighborhood
in New York until he succeeded in syndicating his work in a number of weekly news-
papers. Eventually he became syndicated by now-defunct San Francisco Chronicle
Features, and moved to Universal Press Syndicate in 1996. Rall’s cartoons espouse his
politically liberal perspective, and are distinct in a number of ways from established tra-
ditions of editorial cartooning. Unlike traditional editorial cartoons, Rall uses multiple
panels in a strip format instead of a single panel, a style typically used by cartoonists in
alternative weekly papers. Rall also avoids traditional caricature styles in his cartoons:
in traditional caricature, an artist will emphasize and exaggerate the physical appearance
of a known person in order to suggest something about that person’s personality. Rall
infrequently illustrates known fi gures; instead, he prefers to satirize the reactions and
behaviors of anonymous, everyday people. Frequently Rall does caricature known fi g-
ures, yet sometimes he does not: Rall’s depiction of former President George W. Bush
is as “Generalissimo el Busho,” a haggard, angry fi gure in a fascist military uniform who
bears no physical resemblance to Bush.
Rall has also applied his craft to extended graphic narratives. Rall created a graphic
novel parody of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as 2024: A Graphic Novel , and
documented his travels through Afghanistan as a correspondent for radio station KFI
and Th e Village Voice in the book To Afghanistan and Back , both published by graphic
novel publisher NBM. Rall also edits a series of collections of cartoons by new editorial
cartoonists in the Attitude series, also published by NBM.
Robert O’Nale
RAW. Th e brainchild of New York underground cartoonist Art Spiegelman and his
wife and co-editor Françoise Mouly, RAW was from the start a groundbreaking graphics
magazine and the premier anthology of its day for experimental and international comics.
From 1980 to 1991, the sporadically published RAW helped to develop innovative car-
tooning talent outside of mainstream comics and assembled a stylistically diverse body
of work that explored the formal and narrative capabilities of comics as a medium. With
lavish production values unprecedented in a comics publication, RAW also promoted the
idea of comics as a serious art form. Moreover, through its forays into book publishing
and especially its serialization of Spiegelman’s landmark Maus , RAW infl uenced the
developing concept of the graphic novel as an artistically and commercially viable form.
RAW emerged from Mouly’s experiments in printing and her burgeoning interest
in comics as well as from Spiegelman’s editorial work with the underground magazine
Arcade (1975–76) and his dissatisfaction with existing venues for publishing comics.
