It doesn’t seem there’s any way around it: so far, 2023 is a Big Bust as far as editorial cartoons go.

We now have proof of that, at least in the form that counts for the educated classes, a statement by an elite college professor,
in the New York Times,

they reinforce a sense of camaraderie,” said Jennifer Aaker, a Stanford business professor and co-author of “Humor, Seriously.” Her colleague and co-author, Naomi Bagdonas, added that [such] workplace humor, including on social media, can help people deal with the “exceptionally unfunny times” we are living in.

[Sigh] “Exceptionally unfunny”; that‘s what a PhD buys us, but hey — it pretty much nails it.

Not that there’s any shortage of wit, talent or opinionated  dedication among surviving cartoonists.  But it seems from our corner that everybody is on tenterhooks, or in a kind of suspended animation, holding their breath and waiting for two big “shoes” to drop:  one shoe is the unofficial kickoff of the high-gear period of the 2024 presidential race, which could be marked by Joe Biden’s entry, or New Hampshire/Iowa moving  their primaries to this coming summer,

The other shoe, of course, will be when [do we still have to say “if”?] someone actually indicts #45.

Or maybe it’s just a matter of a lingering sense of  “overwhelm” mixed with physical, medical & social exhaustion. Darrin  Bell’s strip “Candorville” evokes this very well:

So do these . . .

The “equal opportunity” conservative future: starvation for Grandma, crushing debt for college grads, and generalized anxiety for everyone else . . .

 How do you say “Oh, Sh*t!” In Portugese??

 Will a Golden Ticket save our bacon now??

Sure enough, the jail cell above overflowed when they started raiding “The Magic Kingdom.” This rodent evidently refused to don the red cap, and was able to say “Gay” for more than sixty years and got away with it. But those liberal commie days are over.

Still, all the wise old heads tell us that the human imagination is unstoppable . . .

Read on, sir: read on . . .