CALGARY — Veteran editorial cartoonist Doug Ferncroft announced this week that he has, after thirty-one years of distinguished service, run out of ways to make Alberta politics look more ridiculous than it already is, describing his profession as "a man bringing a labelled top hat to a knife fight."

Ferncroft, whose Monday-morning cartoon collections have long offered readers a gentle satirical pick-me-up, said the central problem is that exaggeration—the cartoonist's only tool—now produces images indistinguishable from the front page. "The whole trick is you take a thing and you make it a little bigger, a little dumber," he explained. "But there's no headroom left. The thing is already at maximum thing."

He pointed to a recent attempt to lampoon the province's relationship with Ottawa, in which he depicted the Premier theatrically tearing up a federal cheque while standing in a field she had personally set on fire. The cartoon was mistaken by two newspapers for a wire photo and ran without a caption.

Industry observers say the crisis is widespread. The Alberta Society of Editorial Illustrators has reportedly issued new guidelines instructing members to draw politicians doing the opposite of what they are actually doing, on the theory that only sincerity now registers as parody.

"I drew her selling Alberta's water to a man in a top hat labelled 'OIL,' and three readers emailed to ask which water utility they could invest in," said Ferncroft, staring at a blank Bristol board. "One of them was a sitting MLA. He wanted in."

At press time, Ferncroft had submitted a cartoon depicting a cartoonist weeping over a desk, which his editor rejected for being "not satirical enough" and "basically just a documentary."