[1][2] He worked as a sports editor and cartoonist at the Danville High School newspaper, where he won first place in a cartoon contest held by the paper.
[6][7][8] In the cartoon, a white family is seen inside their dining room at a dinner table with an unhappy father holding a baked turkey saying "Thanks to the President's immigration order, we'll be having extra guests this Thanksgiving," while darker skinned people can be seen climbing through their window.
[7][8][9][10] In the apology, Taylor wrote, "Gary did not intend to be racially insensitive in his attempt to express his strong views about President Barack Obama's decision to temporarily prevent the deportation of millions of immigrants living and working illegally in the United States.
[11] In 2018, another cartoon spurred an apology by the Indianapolis Star after some readers viewed Varvel's message as demeaning to women and sexual assault victims.
[4] On January 9, 2021, in response to the permanent suspension of Donald Trump's Twitter account and the removal of the social media app Parler from the Google Play Store, Varvel published an editorial cartoon of a man with a worried expression removing the "December 2020" page from a calendar on the wall and noticing the next page reading "January 1984" (a reference to the George Orwell book Nineteen Eighty-Four).
The cartoon received widespread criticism for its depiction of the actions of non-government entities being likened to state-mandated censorship, and gained internet meme status through various edits starting as early as January 19.