Left Handitude Is On The Rise!
May 2nd, 2025 Barry Posted in LGBT cartoons | No Comments »
The guest artist for this strip is Naomi Rubin! Naomi is a longtime friend of mine and a wonderful cartoonist. Her work is much more influenced by Japanese comics than mine or Becky’s, which provides a neat visual change of pace.
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon has four panels. All the panels show a 1950s or 1960s married couple at breakfast at their kitchen table; the husband is reading a newspaper.
PANEL 1
A big caption at the top says “1955.”
HUSBAND: Oh no!
WIFE: What’s wrong?
HUSBAND: Left Handitude is on the rise!
PANEL 2
The husband holds up the newspaper, which has a graph showing rapidly increasing left-handedness.
HUSBAND: Look at this! When I was a kid in the twenties, you hardly ever met a left hander! Now five times as many self-identify as (choke! gasp!) leftwardsly!
PANEL 3
A close-up of the husband, looking disturbed and suspicous.
HUSBAND: What could be causing this unnatural increase? It must be a social contagion! Or sinistrous adults grooming naive youth with their sick southpaw ideology!
PANEL 4
The wife has a hand on her chin, looking thoughtful; the husband makes a dismissive gesture.
WIFE: Maybe it’s because we stopped whipping kids who write with their left hand?
HUSBAND: Don’t be ridiculous.
CHICKEN FAT WATCH
PANEL 1 – The character Link from Legend of Zelda is sitting on a shelf. Link is known to be left-handed.
There’s a phrenology head sculpture on a lower shelf.
The back of the newspaper says “IKE IN LEFTY SCANDAL!”
PANEL 2 – The newspaper is called “Right-Washed Tribune,” with the tag line “Right News Writing For Rightly Right-Thinking Righties.” The main story is “Leftism Epidemic! President Calls for Widespread Panic.” Another story is “Has Leftism Gone Too Far? Six Normal-Handed Writers Opine.” Another story: “Study: Left Handed Scissors More Stabby.” And finally, in the smallest print: “Cartoonist blames text too tiny to read on left handed typesetters.”
PANEL 3 – There’s a pattern of left hands holding pencils in the background.
PANEL 4 – A Scottish Fold (which Naomi informs me is a breed of cat) is lying on the table, reading a copy of “Cat Fancy,” with the story “My human was a left hander! Fuzzle Winkles explains her secret pain.”
A picture on the wall is the “Flamel” symbol from Full Metal Alchemist.
Another picture is Ned Flanders from The Simpsons (famously left handed). His left hand is mysteriously moving in front of the picture frame.
A self-portrait of Naomi as a jack ‘o lantern is peering in the window.
The newspaper the husband is reading now says “Readers go blind straining to read tiny upside down text. Might it be a lefty plot?”
