For the non-Francophile among you, that’s “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” The sameness to which I refer is an old chestnut that we are bedeviled by wanton greed and its consequences, of persons who rule our existences, the power-hungry, narcissistic peddlers of ugly, who never vanish and always reappear (did I mention bad taste? E.g., read this in last week’s New Yorker about a certain president’s architectural machinations).

This never-ending status quo is the thesis behind Robert Osborn’s 1960 pre-“graphic-novel”-age satire comprised of a cacophony of bemusing pictures and angry words focused “on the decline of greatness and rise of mediocrity in America.” It could have easily have been penned and brushed today. Like Mark Twain, if Twain added drawing to his resume, Osborn (1904–1994), a native of Oshkosh, WI, who I assert is one of America’s most accomplished expressive cartoon satirists of the late 20th century, was a master of modern illuminated acerbic and cautionary yet corrective comedy.

I’ve written about his work various times—from his early “Dilbert” series of Navy Dept. highly functional but daringly comic safety manuals for airmen and sailors during World War II, to his opus pacifist paean, War is No Damn Good (produced while still serving as a U.S. Navy officer at the end of 1945). Osborn was a neighbor, friend and, most important, inspiration for me. Being all three entitled me to receive his entire oeuvre of satiric books, one of which I excerpt below for the purpose of reminding those who have forgotten about it—and those who should be introduced.

To quote ChatGPT quoting me: “Osborn was an ‘artist of conscience’ whose raw, nervous, expressive lines and strokes targeted political hypocrisies, including McCarthyism and militarism.” But I’ve also explored his “lighter yet fiercely clever commercial and book illustrations, such as his work on S.J. Perelman’s Acres and Pains, recognizing Osborn’s range from sharp social critique to brilliant comedic timing.”

The Vulgarians, below, is but one of his well-lobbed salvos against “the present corruption of our greatness,” he writes in the introduction. “This exploratory operation will be undocumented yet in its process we will see what over-weaning desire for money and comfort is doing to America … and understand, perhaps, why beats the heart so slowly and whence comes the silver slick cancer on the soul.”