Tony Wolf x Lad
Times Like These Anthology, 2026
When Tony Wolf started assembling Times Like These in early 2026, some of us had already marched and protested to raise awareness, but then another war began. The book came from that — forty-three artists working fast, in eighty pages, to put something on paper before the moment moved.
Cover by Bill Sienkiewicz. Contributions from Emil Ferris, Peter Kuper, Liza Donnelly, Steve Brodner, Stan Mack, Dean Haspiel, Koren Shadmi, and many others. Edited by Tony Wolf with Eli Schwab. Published by Cosmic Lion. All proceeds, after printing, to the ACLU.
I was honored to be invited to contribute.
Cover by Bill Sienkiewicz
My page in "Times Like These", Lad Decker ©️2026
The Silence is the Warning
Silently Everyone Watched in Times Like These
Published on Substack, May 10, 2026
Sometimes a painting I finished months ago turns out to be exactly the painting the present moment needed. It’s a canary in the coal mine, quiet, but the silence is the warning.
Tony Wolf saw one of those paintings, Silently Everyone Watched The Ship Burn, and asked if he could include it in Times Like These. He didn’t ask me for a contribution in general. He asked for that one. I don’t work from briefs. I’m responding to the world, slowly. It’s a long absorption, followed by a long response. Sometimes the painting precedes the moment, and even I don’t realize what’s in the paint yet.
Times Like These came together fast — six weeks, forty-three artists, eighty pages, a cover by Bill Sienkiewicz. Tony initiated and edited it. Eli Schwab was associate editor. Cosmic Lion published. All proceeds, after printing, go to the ACLU. It’s the kind of book that exists because the moment asked for it and Tony started contacting his community.
I grew up reading comics, like a lot of American kids. I grew up around people who loved them and drew them. In 1996, my first real job out of art school was at Universal Press Syndicate, on the New Media team that brought Calvin and Hobbes, Doonesbury, and Pat Oliphant online when the Internet was an unproven experiment. Editorial cartooning has been part of how I connect to the world since I was a teenager and could barely understand the subtext, and more than ever right now. I follow the work of cartoonists like Steve Brodner, Jack Ohman, Ann Telnaes, and James Ferguson — people who tell difficult truths in a moment when difficult truths are getting harder to publish. Closer to home, I support Short Run, Seattle’s independent comix and small-press organization. Times Like These is the first time my painting has appeared alongside editorial cartoonists directly.
Editorial cartoons answer the news. Journalism documents the news. Painting takes weeks to make and asks longer than a glance to read, and it answers something the other two can’t quite reach — the world underneath the news, the part that doesn’t change daily. That’s the part I’m trying to paint. There’s some resonance you can’t catch in a punchline.
It still surprises me to be in this book. Bill Sienkiewicz on the cover. Steve Brodner, Liza Donnelly, Emil Ferris, Peter Kuper, Stan Mack, and Dean Haspiel inside. These are the people whose work I read when I want to understand what an image can do under political pressure. Silently Everyone Watched The Ship Burn is in there too, somewhere in the middle. It’s quieter than the rest. But quiet is the message.
All proceeds, after printing, go to the ACLU. You can buy a copy from Cosmic Lion. Be sure to check out what Eli Schwab is doing at Cosmic Lion while you’re there.
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