Looking back over a year of my COVID-19 cartoons, I'm struck by how they reflect a slow-motion realization of the horror of what was unfolding.
What started as a "science" story became an everything story about a pandemic that to date has killed over 525,000 people in the United States alone.
In a sign of my early pandemic stupidity, I drew this – my first cartoon about coronavirus – while sitting in a crowded food court (unmasked, of course) while on a trip to New York City on Jan. 31, 2020.
Remember the introduction of the elbow-bump? At first it seemed almost quaint and funny, until most of us here in the Bay Area became more like the character in the last frame.
This cartoon coincided with the rise of the pandemic pup, although in hindsight, I'm screaming at the human characters in this cartoon to put on face masks.
When community transmission finally came to California, COVID-19 was no longer only a problem for other countries.
The isolation of working from home is nothing new for cartoonists, but not everyone has been able to minimize the risk of contracting COVID-19 by having a career that lends itself to remote work.
When April Fools' Day came along early in the pandemic, pranks weren't high on most people's list.
Social distancing took on a very different meaning depending on where you were in California and across the country.
And even though it has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year, there have definitely been some silver linings.
I created this cartoon nearly a year ago and it still applies for reopening guidelines and now, for the vaccine rollout.
We figured out how to fight racial injustice amid a pandemic as marches and uprisings happened across the country that were sparked by the police killing of George Floyd.
Meanwhile, coronavirus outbreaks happened in prisons across the state, with San Quentin State Prison being among the hardest hit.
It has been a year of tracking COVID-19 cases and deaths with graphs and charts, and who says you can't use them in a cartoon to make a point?
For a time in the Bay Area and across California and the west, wildfires and smoke cast an additional pall over an already bleak forecast.
After months of downplaying the danger of coronavirus and dodging any blame for how his administration handled the pandemic, President Trump finally caught the virus and was hospitalized for a short time.
And throughout the past year of pandemic, parents and children have juggled online schooling, career and staying at home, as many schools only recently move toward in-person learning.
One silver lining of this damn pandemic has been a wealth of new visual images and metaphors for my cartoons. If we can't laugh a little, we'll only cry.
Thankfully, my coronavirus cartoons have now largely turned to focus on vaccines, their rollout and anti-vaxxers.
Which brings us to that light at the end of the tunnel we've all been waiting for ...