There's no justice.

Speaking truth to power is no fun unless there's some risk in it.

You may recall a couple of weeks ago I posted a sad jester sitting in the King’s throne lamenting just how exhausting speaking truth to power can be. More recently, I happened to catch one of Jason Chatfield and Scott Dooley’s podcasts (Is There Something in This, #56: Vincent Price in a Tarago) and was surprised to hear them turning over a court jester idea. “Is there something in comedians speaking out against cancel culture?” Jason asked. “How about a court jester at the guillotine?” (At 10:58 if you’re curious.), “And the caption is the jester saying grumpily, ‘It’s my job to be defiant.’”

The gag kinda fell flat and they went on to other things, but the coincidence with my own jester gag piqued my curiosity and I guess it was gestating subconsciously because a few days ago, while in the hospital emergency ward waiting forever to get some bloodwork done (never mind, I’m fine), the caption above popped into my pea brain - a laugh out loud moment.

Here’s another sketch of the scene. Positioning characters is tricky too.

The Process

To be honest, I’m feeling a little discouraged about my efforts here on Substack. I haven’t had enough time lately to be drawing and I’m in far from a funny mood generally. Most of my energy has been spent in The Mona Project on Instagram (@sketch_finish), which I developed about the same time as this year’s 100 Day Project was due to start. I started early and finished #100 of 100 sadMona faces today. Whew!

I love the sad Mona concept and the artworks that came out of it, many of which are quite funny I think, but the point of the project was, after all, sadness, and it started to get to me over time. (We can talk about melancholy and the artist’s temperment, and the sad clown meme in psychiatry another time.)

Anyway, sadMona’s done more or less for now so I’m promising as of today to put on a happy face and get back to actual gags. Or something.