The second in the series, this one depicts our illustrious elected officials making the “two party system” work. Except, what’s this? They’re really having a good ole time together – lighting cigars with $100 bills. With those big Cheshire-cat smiles, no less.

This started out as a simple deal with Donkey and Elephant on vacation with opposing “I’m With Stupid” t-shirts, but once we started digging into the idea it really came to life. The trick was getting the expressions right – the eyes and the faces. Donkey is a kind of “deranged Bill Gates” and Elephant is your standard brutish life-time politician.

This is the first design in a new series we’re calling “Fear and Loathing in America”. It is a collaboration between myself and a really gifted cartoon artist I met on deviantArt who goes by the handle “sketchoo“. I saw his work and saw that awesome Steadman-esque quality. So I approached him about working together and the results will be cross-posted here. I come up with the concepts, titles, and typography – he does the actual cartooning and visualization – and then we composite it all together.

This design illustrates how “justice” in the U.S. is tilted towards those with money. And anyone and anything else is basically jettisoned off the scales from the magnitude of the imbalance. There’s also a bit of a play on words with the title if you look close.