THE POPE HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

Unless I'm mistaken today's the day that Pope Benedict XVI tells Almighty God and 2 billion Catholics to take this job and shove it. He will wear his funny hat for the last time, and while I am not a Catholic, I find this sad for a personal reason: I find him very easy to draw.

The thing is, I suck at doing caricatures. If the need arises I can generally get the job done, but it's a struggle. But Pope Ben was a Godsend! (See what I did there?) Let's face it, we're not talking about a particularly attractive man, and when it comes to drawing caricatures, for me, the uglier the better.

Which brings me to today's cartoon. In the reign of Pope John Paul II I did a cartoon which still remains one of my personal favourites. Here it is:

 

I still think this is one of my best cartoons, but it has one glaring flaw - my caricature of Pope John Paul. If he wasn't being identified as the Pope in the word balloon you'd probably think he was just a friendly asian man!

 

Anyway, when Pope Ben came on the scene I decided to update the cartoon, and this is the result:

 

 

 

Now, maybe that's not the best caricature anyone's done of this guy, but I'm pretty pleased with it, and it's a big improvement over my John Paul drawing. Plus it took no time at all to get it right!

 

And so I bid a fond farewell to Pope Benedict and his funny face - I wish him all the best as he returns to life as plain old Joe Ratzinger. Here's hoping your replacement has a face only the virgin mother can love.

 

Later, people.