Newspaper Comics, Magazine Cartoons, Editorial Strips
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Seems Insanity Streak had a contest I knew nothing about until it was over.
My heartfelt thanks to all those who entered the 2024 Caption Contest. It was a lot of fun reading your delightful captions. This year’s contest involving cows in an art gallery contemplating a painting of a steak elicited many varied captions, and as with previous contests, the response was brilliant. There were almost 500 entries from 12 countries.
Tony Lopes has the details and “honourable mentions.” The “this year’s” makes me think it is an annual event.
The new issue of MAD Magazine dropped this week.
It has about 15 pages of new material with the rest being reprints.
What makes this issue notable is that the back cover of this A.I. issue pays homage to MAD magazine’s most notorious front cover, the April 1974 issue that the publisher found being returned by retailers.
From an idea by Matt Cohen comes an altered version of the Norman Mingo original cover.
More A.I.
From the Boulder Weekly (scroll down to second letter):
Thank you so much for having the comic strip Tom Tomorrow! I got home 15 minutes ago to my wife in tears due to a technological issue with trying to order something online. I think we have all been there at one time or another.
After we solved the problem, she took off for her afternoon walk. I sat down with the Boulder Weekly, one of my great pleasures, and opened it to the strip with the AI doctor (Dec. 5 issue). It reminded me so clearly of the hours I spent on the phone during the last year straightening things out with accounts, credit cards and bill payees after my identity was stolen. Most of the time, no person could be found and my situation was unique enough to not offer an easy solution.
I immediately cut the cartoon out to share with my wife and anyone else who walks into the house.
What makes this stand out is that in between that This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow being published and the letter praising it seeing print was the National Press Foundation agreeing with the letter writer and honoring the editorial comic strip and its creator with the 2024 Clifford K. and James T. Berryman Award.
More about reruns.
I don’t pay attention to many rerun comic strips, so it took me five months to notice that Creators Syndicate had started running Archie strips signed by Fernando Ruiz back in July 2024.
As Fernando explained he had been ghosting the strip for some years before signing it:
… Eventually, Henry felt well enough to resume his duties on the strip. I think by this time, he wasn’t inking much of anything and strictly worked solely on the strips. I believe when he drew them he also inked himself, but I’m not one hundred percent sure of that. Sometime around 2005, Henry again became ill and unable to work. I was again asked to fill in for him. This time, I would draw both the six dailies and the Sunday strip. As I said before, this would be the best living I’d ever earn at Archie Comics. On top of the strip, I was still drawing two digest stories a week and occasionally writing them. I’d also do occasional covers as well. The strips, including the Sunday, now took me about a day and a half to complete…
… Henry would recover somewhat but never enough to resume his work on the strip. His name was still kept on the strip in case he ever did feel up to returning. Archie always wanted to leave that door open to him. Sadly, he never did and eventually he passed away. It was then that I finally got my name on the strip right under Craig Boldman’s…
The Powers That Be decided to “end” the strip about a year later, and it has been in rerun status ever since.* So I guess in seven of eight months we’ll see where Archie Comics and Creators decide to go with the restart – Bob Montana’s strips wouldn’t fit the current comic strip dimensions, but maybe Dan DeCarlo or Stan Goldberg?
*Archie the comic strip returned for one last new Sunday page for the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
Shuntaro Tanikawa – RIP
Shuntaro Tanikawa, Japan’s most popular poet for more than half a century, whose stark and whimsical poems, blending humor with melancholy, made him a kind of Everyman philosopher ideally suited to translating the “Peanuts” comic strip and Mother Goose rhymes into Japanese, died on Nov. 13 in Tokyo. He was 92.
The New York Times obituary for the man who worked on Peanuts longer than Charles Schulz.
On a happier note:
As the cold wind howled in Southern California (okay — lukewarm wind), I was in my studio, all bundled up in my Old Navy t-shirt and jeans years ago in December. I was about to embark on a yearly tradition as common as eggnog — just not quite as delicious. I grabbed a pen and my cheap notebook and started jotting ideas. Yes, it was that time again for me to come up with seasonal cartoons for my syndicated comic, Break of Day.
Cartoonist Nate Fakes describes an annual routine and then picks 10 holiday break of day comics.
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