The new deck by Ed Templeton, the founder of Toy Machine, stages a fierce and truly unequivocal cartoon: a member of the Ku Klux Klan crucified, engulfed in flames, atop the base of a broken swastika. An image that requires no interpretation—an openly anti-racist message rooted in skateboarding’s graphic tradition.
A Californian skater and photographer, Templeton drew the subject himself and published it on Instagram, on Toy Machine’s profile. The idea came from a neighborhood detail: a huge crucifix set up in a neighbor’s yard during the Christmas season. “Because of its size I couldn’t help but think of the historical photos of Ku Klux Klan cross burnings,” he wrote on Instagram. “I asked myself: why build a life-size crucifix-style cross on your lawn? Then I imagined a klansman crucified on a burning cross and thought it would have a powerful impact. So I drew it.”
It’s not just provocation. “Especially in an era of increasing racism,” Templeton continues, “this image seems anything but controversial to me. Who would defend the KKK? We’ll find out soon.” The deck thus enters the long genealogy of graphics that have used iconography as a political short circuit, bringing skateboarding back to its vocation as a direct, pop, and militant language.
Templeton also acknowledges the references: a tribute to Jim Thiebaud, who in 1990 designed a deck depicting a hanged klansman, and to the legendary Todd Francis, a master at turning abrasive symbols into social commentary. It’s a lineage that treats illustration as a weapon, where the drawn gesture becomes both statement and commodity, in the shared courtyard between street culture and contemporary art.
In the new Toy Machine deck the cartoon doesn’t soften anything; if anything, it makes the image more piercing, ready to circulate in parks and feeds. Three marks are enough to take a stand. And to remember that skateboarding is not only sport or style, but also—when needed—an act of bearing witness.
