Farewell to The Nib

I was saddened to learn that The Nib will be ceasing operations later this summer. For ten years The Nib, helmed by founder Matt Bors and co-editors Mattie Lubchansky and Eleri Mai Harris, has been home to some of the most exciting topical and political cartooning.

I was a regular contributor to The Nib from 2016-2018 before my day job designing books made it difficult to keep up with the demands of drawing topical comics on a schedule—the Trump era made certain the news cycle traveled at the speed of light.

I thought I’d share some of my favourite Nib comics, along with some other things I created for the site over the years, including this alternate logo that was used for some stickers and other things:

And this lettering/masthead for The Nib’s newsletter, The Inkwell:

Some comics

These probably look better full-size on the web, if you’re reading this newsletter on your phone, but here are some of my favourite Nib comics. You can also check out my contributor page over at the Nib for more. Perhaps I’ll eventually make a little home on my own website to share all of them, but for now, enjoy this small sampling.

Covfefe? Pee tape? Remember when the Internet was full of explainer graphics trying to make sense of Trump’s Russian connections? Hard to believe that the run-up to the 2016 election is what I’d call “simpler times”.

And on the eve of the election, I had this single-panel cartoon filed away, scheduled to run the next day, when we are all but certain Trump was going to lose:

Oops!

An entire line-up of “Trump losing” cartoons needed to be scrapped. But Matt had an idea to breathe new life into this one. We ran it anyway, but with a new caption:

“Ours was not a campaign, but an incredible movement.”

Pretty good.

Trump’s win, would of course continue to fuel the Industrial Editorial Cartoon Complex for four years. Like, who could forget when he took aim at Canadian dairy tariffs…

Or when he held up that bible for a photo op, the same way all completely normal people hold books. The dude just loves Jesus, as we all know. A real role model.

Extra stuff

In 2018, the Nib created a wall calendar. For each month, a different artist illustrated a national day of recognition, and I had the pleasure of finding a way to celebrate the oft-overlooked Baby Boomers:

And when the Nib began experimenting with animation, I wrote and designed these two segments, which were animated by the team at Augenblick Studios:

And finally, my response to the prompt “What do you want done to your body when you die?” from the Death-themed first issue of the Nib’s print magazine:

A huge thank-you to Matt, Mattie, Eleri, and everyone else who worked to create The Nib. I’ll be pouring out a bottle of ink in its memory.