Leafing Through the News with Miss Cellany
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Courtroom Sketch Artist’s Drawings Of Rudy Giuliani Looking Unhinged Are An Instant Classic
“His decorum has certainly changed from when I sketched him 44 years ago as a prosecutor. He’s losing it. He was wild and I feel bad for anyone who represents him. He blurts out orders at his lawyers who are at the podium and, you know, he’s interrupting all the time.”
Comic Sands quotes Jane Rosenberg from a CNN interview.
Classic Comic Book Spinner Racks for the 21st Century!
David Campiti of Glass House Graphics is offering a new 40-pocket comic spinner rack that disassembles and can be transported to conventions in a wheeled carrying case. The new design, currently on Kickstarter, is approximately 70? high on a 12-inch footprint. It features wide pockets over seven inches wide [emphasis added], which can hold bagged-and-boarded comics and graphic novels up to Golden Age size.
Because the racks can be disassembled for shipping, delivery costs have been eliminated for U.S. backers, and are included in the $399 price ($379 for early bird orders). Additional options include the wheeled carrying case for an additional $40, variant toppers with “HEY, KIDS! COMICS” and “WORLD’S GREATEST COMICS” for $15, and customized topper for $25.
Looks good for those Phoebe and Her Unicorn, Big Nate, Calvin and Hobbes Compendium sized books, the bottom of the racks look deep enough to hold maybe two of those paperbacks.
Details at Glass House Graphics. More, including some backstory at their Kickstarter which has met the goal.
The Midnight World
And [my grandfather] liked to solve the daily Jumble that appeared in what he called the “funnies” and—fittingly, I see now—the cryptogram in Potomac, the Post’s Sunday magazine. He taught me how one cracked a cryptogram: start with any singletons, which had to be I or A, and then deploy a mnemonic for a run of twelve letters, pronounced “eh-tao-in sherd-loo” as though they spelled the first and last name of a man named ETAOIN SHRDLU (as though that could ever be anyone’s name!). And Etaoin Shrdlu, in his way, was a clue to the profoundest mystery of all.
That particular arrangement of letters, by descending order of their frequency in printed American English, reflected the first two columns of keys on a Linotype machine’s keyboard, configured thus to increase an operator’s speed. My grandfather was a printer, a “Fifty-Year Man” in the International Typographical Union.
The New York Review of Books presents Michael Chabon’s Foreword to Glenn Fleishman’s How Comics Were Made.
The 60th birthday of Mafalda, the girl who questions the world
Decidedly, this is the year of anniversaries for comic book characters. This year, Mafalda’s character is 60 years old.
Created in 1964 by Argentine Joaquin Salvador Lavado Tejon, better known as Quino, Mafalda is a young girl known for her outspokenness and pessimism, especially in politics. It is in the newspaper Primera Plana that the mature girl appears for the first time, alongside her parents, that she does not hesitate to criticize. “You don’t answer adults” is clearly not the girl’s mantra. For example, Mafalda told her father not to do the idiot and mother that she could have studied instead of marrying and starting a family.
The girl with a big hair shows an atypical behavior for her age, which makes her a complex and interesting character to follow. She can be very attentive at times to the political television news and international news, then play the doll or admire her world map, one of her loved ones. What she hates, however, is soup. She knows how to escape.
Rémi Barnault for Actua BD celebrates Quino‘s Mafalda on her 60th anniversary.
Coming in the Spring of 2025 – Mafalda in English.
Everlasting bond between friends honoured in Mark Knight cartoon
The tragic loss of Australian teenagers Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles this past week was felt around the nation, as captured in cartoonist Mark Knight’s poignant picture of youth and beauty
The emotion and outpouring of empathy* for the two girls and their families was huge and I felt I should say something in a cartoon that reflected the nation’s empathy for Holly and Bianca. Two young lives just starting out on their journey but cruelly and inexplicably* cut short was all I could think about.
How would I draw this?
For KidsNews Australian cartoonist Mark Knight talks of creating a deeply personal and tragic cartoon.
Hey Wait Just One Second: Sunday comics
Over Thanksgiving break, I observed the remnants of this weekly routine: Tomes and volumes of comic strips still litter my room, including the complete “Calvin and Hobbes,” “The Far Side” and “Garfield.” Moreover, the catalogue of “Peanuts” holiday specials continue to hold cultural sway over many Americans, including myself, bizarrely relishing the pathetic lamentations of Charlie Brown as he mopes through every festivity. As this print medium enjoys its tragic decline, among its brethren in physical artwork, where do the comics still lie in our consciousness? Is this goodbye, Charlie Brown?
However, the most influential and popular strips appear incongruous with these aims. If the goal is to captivate and animate the masses, then why are our favorite comic strips so somber?
Max Turnacioglu at The Tufts Daily wonders why the monetarily successful comic characters are disagreeable – pointing out the mega $ucce$$ of Garfield and Charlie Brown.
Original gag sketches for the Donald Duck comic strip
Tom Schaller is offering Bob Foster “original gag sketches” for sale. I thought it would be interesting to see Foster’s rough layout next to a published Donald Duck strip finished by Frank Smith.
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