This is one of those jokes that would only make sense to a few people and shouldn’t be shared widely. I’m going to share it widely today since it’s election day and Free Comic Book Day too. It needs too much explanation to actually be funny but it kind of means something to me.
At Squishface Studio we do an event called the Coaster Show where friends, fans and family come visit the studio, eat snacks and draw on cardboard coasters, the idea being that drawing on bits of card made for absorbing beer is inherently freeing — you don’t need to think too hard or produce masterpieces.
One year I drew this, imagining what anti-Muslim propaganda would look like if it was targeted at the comics making community (drawing fan art commissions — pictures of licensed characters you didn’t create — is sometimes looked down upon as a “crutch” for artists who want to make some money adjacent to the comics scene and whose original works don’t sell well. This is a mean way to look at it, and a put-down to young artists, who often begin their comics journey drawing other people’s characters, but fits with the nasty propaganda idea).
We have lots of old coasters on the walls at Squishface, and, recently, I spotted this one up there. I figured it might be misconstrued as actually being anti-Muslim in some way, since it’s now totally removed from whatever context it had on the day. I took it down, and it’s been sitting near my keyboard for a few months.
Today we have an election on. Both major parties have benefited from actual, real anti-Muslim propaganda, no more sophisticated than this joke, as well as by directly attacking/dismissing/ruining the careers of people with Arab backgrounds.
Gutless politicians are taking their cues from really terrible people in my Jewish community who make a career of creating that propaganda. I was on the receiving end of a firehose of that shit for a long time. I don’t swallow it, and you don’t need to either. Today, I hope we tell Parliament that. Salaam alaikum and sholem aleichem mean the same thing.
And if you want a free comic book, have this one.
Off to go grill sausages now!