Introverted Chair

“Even before I received cartoons from Mark Addison Kershaw, zipped up like a late, late Xmas present in my inbox last month, I might well have endowed a chair for him at Hubris: The Introverted Chair of Single-Panel Studies. The last six months have been unspeakably hard for Mark; hard for me. We’ve felt caught willy-nilly in a vast, evil game of Musical Chairs. Every time the music stops, one of our God-given rights is pulled out from under us, and we don’t even have time to react before the music starts up again. Trump’s America is an increasingly difficult place in which to be funny; in which to laugh.”—Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

Addison

By Mark Addison Kershaw

“If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”—Shirley Chisholm

“You can’t deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.”—Stephen King

ATLANTA Georgia—(Hubris)—June 2025—Editor’s Note: Even before I received cartoons from Mark Addison Kershaw, zipped up like a late, late Xmas present in my inbox last month, I might well have endowed a chair for him at Hubris: “The Introverted Chair of Single-Panel Studies.”

The last six months have been unspeakably hard for Mark; hard for me. We’ve felt caught willy-nilly in a vast, evil game of Musical Chairs. Every time the music stops, one of our God-given rights is pulled out from under us, and we don’t even have time to react before the music starts up again. Trump’s America is an increasingly difficult place in which to be funny; in which to laugh.

But here Mark is, with another offering, shining light around the edges of my, and your, darkness. So I am grateful, sooooo grateful. Pull up a chair next to me Mark, and stay a while. While the noisome darkness may well be falling outside—directly, Oh Best Beloved, I’ll turn on the porch light.