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1976 was a chaotic mess.
Separate earthquakes killed over 20,000, 200,000, and 4,000 in Honduras and Guatemala, China, and Turkey. 5,000 people died when a tidal wave hit the Philippines. The world saw the first outbreak of the Ebola virus in Zaire and over 150 people passed away. The notorious serial killer "Son of Sam" terrified New York City with his .44 caliber Bulldog revolver. China’s Chairman Mao Zedong, Communist savior or perhaps brutal dictator, breathed his last.
In the same year, the first supersonic passenger airplane took its maiden flight, the first publicly available supercomputer was released by Cray, and Apple Computer was founded. Viking 2 landed on Mars and took high quality close up pictures for the first time. The meme was introduced in The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.
American aerospace company Lockheed spent $22 million dollars bribing foreign governments. Lockheed paid off the Prime Minister of Japan, the head of All Nippon Airways, and yakuza scumbag and behind the scenes political mover Yoshio Kodama to get Japan to buy their F-104 instead of the DC-10 from rival McDonnell Douglas. And then a Soviet fighter pilot even landed his Mig-25 on Hokkaido and asked for asylum!
Even the sports page wasn't full of good news. Muhammad Ali fought Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki in one of the first mixed martial arts battles. It was also a grueling slog that neither athlete won. Both were badly injured, and Ali never again quite floated like a butterfly.
So what do you in in your art when even the sports world looks super grim? When the real world is in flames, what do you make cartoons about? Sports, robots, and sports-robots!
And sometimes orphans.
