Bang Cartoon

bang cartoon logo

Bang Cartoon is a website which features satirical cartoons based almost exclusively on the NFL. It is owned and operated by American John Tayman. Tayman is a life long fan of NFL and follows the Washington Redskins. The cartoons grew out of the fact that Tayman loves the NFL. It has attracted both praise and scorn, and has also become popular among a number of the players that they generally lampoon. Links can be found on many player websites, most notably Clinton Portis and Santana Moss.

History

It began in early 2003 when Tayman produced two cartoons, about Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder stealing players and broadcaster John Madden getting his head stuck in a bucket. The site's popularity exploded in 2003 with the debut of "Michael Vick Takes A Crap", a cartoon poking fun at the seemingly endless of fawning of Vick during a Sunday Night Game on ESPN against the Carolina Panthers by Mike Patrick, Paul Maguire, and Joe Theismann.

In April 2004 Bang Cartoon first achieved notoreity with the release of "Going Poston", a cartoon about sports agents Carl and Kevin Poston, and their client, then NFL rookie Kellen Winslow, Jr. The cartoon was a satirical look at the upcoming contract negotiations between the Postons and the Cleveland Browns.

The cartoon was an overnight hit, and recorded over a half million downloads in its first week of release. The following Sunday, ESPN used the cartoon on their program Outside the Lines in a segment about the Postons the following weekend. In the segment they showed the cartoon to one of the Postons, who laughed at it, and called it "unfortunate".

Later in the program, sports agent and former NBA star Len Elmore said the cartoon was "disgusting" and carried "racial overtones", due to the accents and attitudes of the characters.

From there a small storm began in which the accusations of racism surfaced. It culminated when Tayman appeared on sports radio in Cleveland to answer growing questions as to the motives behind the characterization.

Tayman explained, "The characters are not in any way to depict race, they are to appear to be beligerent and ridiculous in their demands during the cartoon. They are fast talkers and intimidators who negotiate from the position of being insulted from the opening greeting. They are not meant to depict the actual men themselves. The actual Postons are soft spoken educated men, hardly conducive to comedy. They are exaggerations in the same way as all of my characters."

The popula|rity of the cartoons quickly led to the small site exceeding it's bandwidth alotment and looking for a larger server. It found one in a partnership with the unofficial Redskins fan site and forum ExtremeSkins. This relationship was forced to end however when ExtremeSkins became the official forum of the Redskins and they did not want to be affiliated with Bang Cartoon.

Since then Ohio has become the number one source of traffic for the website, and Bang Cartoons counts more actual fans from Ohio than any other state in the Union.

In September 2005 a podcast series was introduced on the site. A new website and forum were introduced in early 2006. Currently the site operates on its own domain name.

Controversy

Other cartoons have had huge success, and others cartoons have caused controversy, although not in the same way. A cartoon with Benjamin Franklin showing a young Eagles fan called Tommy ask why all sports teams from Philadelphia lose, raised a lot of hackles in that city. Hate mail from Philadelphia fans poured in, complete with physical threats and all, and the traffic for the cartoon went through the roof. After a while it settled down, and when Tayman released "Child's Play" another cartoon about the Philadelphia Eagles and their problems with Terrell Owens, they set records for traffic and within a day had closed down another server and had to scramble for more bandwidth. Eagle fans loved the cartoon, and the letters this time were decidedly positive and now Philadelphia and New Jersey are top traffic providing area.

In early 2006 "Greetings from Detroit" made people in Detroit angry with the depictions of their city being a crime ridden dump, so much so that they had Tayman on the 6 O:Clock News to explain why he did it.

Tayman said "They had me on for a 10 minute phone interview, during which the reporter asked about 4 questions, and spent the rest of the time telling me how Detroit wasn't at all like I had said. I wasn't sure if he was a journalist or he worked for the Chamber of Commerce."

During the interview, Tayman said sarcastically that "if anyone up there had such thin skin that my little 3 minute cartoon offended them so much, well then I guess I'm sorry."

Later that night on the 11:00 news, all but "I'm sorry" was edited out. Now, true to form, each cartoon sees a healthy bit of traffic from Detroit Lions based websites.

When asked what people think of his website Tayman said "Sometimes they love to hate me, but in the end they tend to love me"

References

• "Drawing Attention" By Ryan Basen Baltimore Sun, December 3, 2005 [3]
• "McNabb- Blue Christmas" Eagles Notes Philadelphia Inquirer, December 30, 2004 Bang! Cartoons characterizations in relation to race is discussed on the Greg-O Show on WBZX [4]

External links

• Bang Cartoon