Colorado Springs cartoonist satirizes city politics

He’s got an opinion and he’s not afraid to show it.

A Colorado Springs man is sharing his political views through comics he creates on an app called Bitstrips. The app lets him create characters and scenes and build comic strips one photo at a time.

Most of Ed Billings’ comics deal with happenings at Colorado Springs City Hall and many target Mayor Steve Bach.

“He’s only focused on one place in Colorado Springs and that’s downtown,” Billings said of the mayor. “He doesn’t look at what’s going on in other neighborhoods.”

Billings’ current point of contention is the proposed City for Champions project. The $250 million project includes a downtown Olympic museum, a downtown sports and events center, a sports medicine and performance center at UCCS and a renovated Air Force Academy visitors center. The state’s Economic Development Commission approved $120.5 million in state incentives over the next 30 years for the project. Project supporters must come up with the rest.

“We’re spending money on a speculative project and yet we’re letting our infrastructure be neglected,” Billings said.

Billings told KRDO NewsChannel 13 that while Bach is his favorite person to depict, no one is off limits.

“You can rest assured, if there were liberals in City Hall, I’d be picking on them too,” Billings said.

Billings said he’s always been active in city politics, but it wasn’t until he started the comics and shared them on social media that he saw a wider response.

“If this were the 1980s, how would I be able to articulate what regular people are seeing in Colorado Springs to my friends in Maryland? You just couldn’t do that,” he said.

He hopes his comics will inspire others to share their thoughts and get involved in city politics, no matter what their opinion may be.