Mr. Spurgeon attributed that response to a generational divide between American cartoonists who came of age in the anything-goes, do-it-because-you-can underground comics scene of the 1960s and ’70s, and younger cartoonists who are alert to what they consider the position of white male privilege that such work often issues from.
In an essay from the website The Hooded Utilitarian that circulated widely on social media, Jacob Canfield, a 24-year-old cartoonist in Ann Arbor, Mich., argued that Charlie Hebdo’s “white editorial staff” members were not simply free-speech martyrs but frequent, deliberate peddlers of “a certain, virulently racist brand of French xenophobia.”
“In the face of a really horrible attack on free speech, it’s important that we don’t blindly disseminate super-racist material,” he said in an interview, referring to some colleagues’ decisions to repost some of Charlie Hebdo’s particularly extreme cartoons.
(The New York Times has chosen not to reprint examples of the magazine’s most controversial work.)
The disagreements over the offensiveness of the cartoons, Mr. Canfield said, agreeing with Mr. Spurgeon, stemmed in part from differences between older cartoonists who remembered the censorship battles that gave rise to the underground comics movement, and younger ones more attuned to the sensitivities of identity politics.
“In the comics world, one of the worst things you can do is accuse someone of censorship,” he said. “But the idea that putting the grossest, most offensive things you can on paper is itself a brave, patriotic act isn’t enough anymore.”
Ethan Heitner, 31, a cartoonist and former editor of the political comics journal World War 3 Illustrated, said it was a question of temperamental more than generational differences, but agreed that the cartooning world was still marked by an underdog spirit.
“In the ’70s and ’80s, cartoonists felt very marginalized, so punching anybody felt like punching up,” he said.
Joe Sacco, a veteran author of long-form journalistic comics like “Footnotes in Gaza” and “Safe Area Gorazde,” said he preferred to take aim at people in power, rather than attacking ethnic or racial groups or religious beliefs, particularly those of people who might feel themselves marginalized or persecuted.
“I’m really disgusted by what happened, which is really contemptible,” said Mr. Sacco, whose most recent book, “Bumf,” a surreal satire of American foreign policy, depicts Barack Obama waking up in the White House in the body of Richard Nixon, and later visiting a planet populated by naked people in Abu Ghraib-style hoods. “But I also come from a position of trying to understand why people are affected by images, and not just say ‘Why can’t you take a joke?’ An image of Muhammad in some compromising position isn’t meant to be just a joke.”
