UPDATED FEB. 2005
Cox & Forkum is John Cox and Allen Forkum. Generally speaking, Forkum (that's me in the middle) writes the cartoons and Cox illustrates them. John and I have first met in art school in the early '80s. We started creating gag cartoons in 1990 (sample below) and in August 2001 decided to try our hands at editorial cartoons.
We have since self-published two books: Black & White World and Black & White World II. We launched this blog in March 2003 to promote our cartoons, books and other products. We are not syndicated, but Cox & Forkum editorial cartoons can be seen regularly in Investor's Business Daily, The Detroit News and other publications and Web sites. (You can even spot a few in the documentary FahrenHYPE 9/11.)
If your publication is interested in featuring our cartoons, e-mail us at contact -- at -- coxandforkum.com.
We ask regular visitors to our site to consider buying our merchandise to help keep the site going. We hope you enjoy the site!
ON POLITICS
Because an editorial cartoon usually offers only a narrow slice of a cartoonist's political views, some readers naturally make assumptions about our politics, such as that we're conservatives or libertarians, particularly because we often criticize leftists. However, we are neither of those.
Most of the cartoons come from my perspective as an Objectivist, which is the philosophy of Ayn Rand. In the introduction to our first book, Robert W. Tracinski described the political perspective of his magazine, The Intellectual Activist, and in doing so summed up our perspective as well:
"TIA's outlook is not 'conservative'; we do not look backward and attempt to preserve traditional values for their own sake. TIA advocates basic principles -- reason, individualism, secularism, individual rights and capitalism -- that are still radical, unorthodox and 'politically incorrect' today. Those principles obviously put us at odds with the subjectivism and socialism of the left; but they also put us at odds with the religious and pragmatist tendencies of the right."
On the occasion of the Ayn Rand centenary, ARI released an op-ed that concisely summarized Objectivism:
[Ayn Rand's] philosophy -- Objectivism -- upholds objective reality (as opposed to supernaturalism), reason as man's only means of knowledge (as opposed to faith or skepticism), free will (as opposed to determinism -- by biology or environment), and an ethics of rational self-interest (as opposed to the sacrifice of oneself to others or others to self). The only moral political system, she maintained, is laissez-faire capitalism (as opposed to the collectivism of socialism, fascism, or the welfare state), because it recognizes the inalienable right of an individual to act on the judgment of his own mind. Your life, she held, belongs to you and not to your country, God or your neighbors.Ayn Rand understood that to defend the individual she must penetrate to the root: his need to use reason to survive. "I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism," she wrote in 1971, "but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows." This radical view put her at odds with conservatives, whom she vilified for their attempts to base capitalism on faith and altruism. Advocating a government to protect the individual's right to his property, she was not a liberal (or an anarchist). Advocating the indispensability of philosophy, she was not a libertarian.
Our cartoons are not intended to represent Objectivism; Ayn Rand did that in her many fiction and non-fiction books, which we highly recommend.
COX & FORKUM INTERVIEWS
"Dean's World" interview -- July 2003
"Eye On The Left" interview -- October 2003 (renamed "Blogs of War")
"EGO" interview -- December 2003
OTHER C&F INFORMATION
Contacting Us & Submitting Ideas
Cartoon Use Policy
Disclaimer About Links
MORE COX & FORKUM ART
C&F T-Shirts
EGO products
Free Iran: Death to Theocracy
Free Iraq
LFG Lizardoids
LFG Lizardoids in London
LGF Fiskie Award '02
LGF Fiskie Award '03
LGF Fiskie Award '04
LGF Trolls vs. Facts
TIA cover "Dead-Enders"
|