Seth Boyes joined the Dickinson County News staff in March of 2017. In his first week at the DCN, he covered a train derailment near Graettinger. The tankers carrying ethanol burst into flames. Seth's photo of the event won first place for Best Breaking News photo at the 2018 Iowa Newspaper Association Convention and Trade Show. Since, Seth has won nearly a dozen awards for writing, photography and multimedia content. Seth graduated from Iowa State University in 2009 with a degree in Integrated Studio Arts. His original cartoons run regularly in the Spencer Daily Reporter and the DCN. Both he and his wife Janet hail from Clear Lake and have come to expect summers to be full of the hustle and bustle of tourists and visitors.

The Nuclear Option

Posted Thursday, January 4, 2018, at 9:21 AM

Today, you get a rare glimpse into the process behind the cartoons here at the DCN. You see, yesterday afternoon, I was inspired to craft a panel full of parody about our president and his recent comments about how big and powerful his nuclear button was. So, for a couple hours, I worked the panel from a blank white rectangle, into a sketch, inked over the lines, added shading and tone and even applied a black and white filter so you were sure to get the full experience in print. That yielded the frame you see below.

I was pretty satisfied with the overall, selfie-vibe it gave off. Originally, the button was going to read "PANIC." But that didn't seem to fit too well. So, toward the end of the process, I changed it to read "MELTDOWN," which came with a more emotional characteristic attached to it. The trouble was, my mind didn't stop there. It was filled with visions of a meltdown button literally attached to Trump (since his tweet doesn't actually specify his button is on his desk). Or perhaps I could draw a giant Kim Jong Un pushing a tiny Trump's buttons. Or perhaps I could draw a fictitious stuffed animal of a Trump with over-hyped packaging like "Nuclear button now bigger and more powerful! It really works! Just try him!" The trouble was I only had a couple hours left in the day and I wanted to get the cartoon down to our sister paper in Spencer, since the panel would be more relevant the sooner it got to print. That meant I ultimately didn't do a color version of my second idea (save for the bit of color left in the tweet-bubble itself, which I found gave it a little bit of a cheeky quality). So this version was the result. Both use the same words from the president, and yet they say different things in a way. It was difficult to choose between them. Luckily, there's plenty of room for both here.