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Logan’s
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Political satire and caricature require many of the attributes of an assassin. In the 1870s, famed cartoonist Thomas Nast made it his mission to bring down the corrupt William Merry "Boss" Tweed and the New York Tammany Ring. Week after week, Nast's acerbic drawings ran in Harper's Weekly. "Stop them damn pictures," Tweed is said to have told his henchmen. "I don't care so much what the papers write about me! My constituents can't read. But damn it, they can see pictures!" He tried to buy off Nast but it didn't work. "Them damn pictures" continued and the corruption was revealed. Finally, Tweed, reduced to a fugitive, fled to Europe. In Spain, an official found a complete set of Nast's cartoon clippings in his luggage. The official did not read English but recognized Tweed in the drawings, and mistakenly thought he was a kidnapper. He was detained for the wrong crime but he got caught. I often doubled as editorial cartoonist for the newspapers we published and love that story. Thomas Nast felled the evil giant. My accomplishments were considerably smaller. Still, anyone who ever lampooned a less than sterling politician feels a kinship. I used the pen-name "L. Stanners." My editor and I decided the small deception was the right course because I was also the newspaper's publisher. After I left the newspapers and was working up a cartoon feature (lighter fare) for syndication, I used my real name. Most of my clippings have been thrown away. The following are a few I uncovered. One was a newspaper editorial cartoon ("The Candidate"), the others were freelanced gag panels and from the syndication attempt. I can't account for the dates they appeared. It was sometime during the 1970s and early '80s.
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"The Pen is mightier than
