Mariani falls in a hole

You shake my nerves and you rattle my brains

An homage to streets everywhere

Frank Mariani

Apr 30, 2026

Another local cartoon with ubiquitous relevance

It’s your lucky day! There’s no “How I made this cartoon” video to sit through, but I will share the crude rough I used to gain my managing editor’s approval.

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I wish I had made this a cartoon where the setup and payoff are embedded in a single-panel layout, but I was too close to the deadline to work it out.

Where did you look first?

For all the preaching I do about the virtues of a wordless editorial cartoon, one or more word balloons and their content can be effective markers to direct the eye and steer the reader as the cartoonist wishes.

In this instance, I did not want the reader to jump to the punchline (or punchgraphic if you will) in the lower right. To indicate a clear starting point, I made a prominent, wordy balloon at the top center.

The bumpy road metaphor

Local road crews have been aggressively identifying and patching the biggest offenders to a smooth ride, but it is an uphill climb, almost as steep as some of the craters I’ve climbed out of.

Sadly, road conditions are an apt material manifestation of the state of affairs in the world today. Patchwork solutions might help for the short term, but eventually, a well-traveled road needs repaving or a complete rebuild.

The question is, how low can we afford to go?