Cartoonists Ridicule Candidate Online

Brad Sherman is a member of the state Board of Equalization and a Democratic candidate for Congress in the West San Fernando Valley--a visible man but hardly a national figure.

Why then are some of the nation’s most famous cartoonists taking aim at him with their pens?

Sherman seems an unlikely villain. After all, he supported a recent change in the tax law that exempted cartoonists from a state levy on artwork.

But to hear the cartoonists tell it, Sherman and the board majority didn’t go far enough. Their new rules, the cartoonists say, would still penalize many in their ranks by taxing certain illustrations.

So they have lashed back with the best weapon they have--their cartoons. The artists--including those who draw “Cathy,” “Beetle Bailey” and “Hagar the Horrible”--have set up a World Wide Web site expressly designed to lampoon the bespectacled Sherman.

“Sherman is an easy target,” said Daryl Cagle, a Woodland Hills artist and a member of the National Cartoonists Society, the sponsor of the Internet site. “He’s running for Congress in a district which probably has more cartoonists than any other in the country.”

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The 24th District race pits Sherman against Republican businessman Richard Sybert. But the online campaign is intended only to pick on Sherman, Cagle said, not help his opponent.

So far, nearly three dozen artists have contributed to the Sherman Gallery, and the list continues to grow.

The candidate is portrayed as “Sher-Man,” a Pac-Man-like figure gobbling up tax money, by freelance cartoonist Don Lee. Steve Benson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Arizona Republic, has drawn him as a pointy-headed, pencil-necked bureaucrat.

“An artist’s best weapon is ridicule,” Benson said. “In our arsenal, the weapon with the most megatonnage is a brush loaded with 15 cents worth of ink.”

A Sherman spokesman said the Harvard law graduate is taking the lampooning in stride as the price of a public life.

“He’s well aware that cartoonists are humorists and critics and that’s what we expect from them,” said John Thiella, Sherman’s chief counsel.

Though Sherman would not comment on the cartoon campaign, he has not been averse to poking fun at himself. The balding Sherman Oaks resident hands out hair combs with his name on them at campaign appearances.

But the cartoonists’ jabs at Sherman are out of line, said Peter Michaels, a San Francisco attorney familiar with the taxation of artwork.

“Illustrations have been taxed by the state Board of Equalization since 1939,” Michaels said. “It’s hardly fair to the current board or any of its members to suggest that they’ve done anything objectionable.”

Under state law, transfers of literary manuscripts are not subject to a sales tax. And in January, Sherman was among a 3-2 majority voting to reinterpret the tax code to exempt cartoons and comics.

Even so, transfers of certain types of illustrations--such as in a children’s book--still face a levy.

The National Cartoonists Society art tax Web site at https://www.unitedmedia.com/ncs/tax.html has been up on the Internet for about a month and will continue through at least November, Cagle said.