A bit eclectic today, but let’s start with a (web)comic strip.
The New 60 by Andy Landorf and John Colquhoun
Former admen Andy Landorf and John Colquhoun have created a new comic strip targeted to baby boomers called The New 60.
The comic strip takes a wry look at some the realities—and indignities—of life after 60. Being boomers themselves, the pair believes there’s a lack of humorous content targeted to the demographic.
Looks like Andy and John are aiming for the newspaper reading/subscribing demographic. Though they may have to ease up on the wordage if they get into the postage-sized print funny pages business.
Hat tip: Media Post
Gag Caption Contest
Cartoon caption contests seems to be popular – The New Yorker, editorial cartoonists, magazines. Don’t know when the genre started, it seems to take the Jimmy Hatlo idea of illustrating readers’ situations and turning it upside down and inside out.
Here’s John M. Hotchner of Linn’s Stamp News giving some background on their 30 year old contest.
License Plate and Frame
Nat Gertler, fan and publisher of Charles Schulz material, has a new license plate frame.
Teen Titans Go! – The Future of Animated Movies?
In a year when animated superhero films are making waves – Incredibles 2 set an animation record domestically and the upcoming Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse looks to be a stylistic gamechanger for the industry – Teen Titans Go! To the Movies could become an important film in its own right, showing that if the content is right, 2d animated films still have a place in major U.S. studio line-ups.
The belief among the majors that every animated feature needs to be a $60-200 million cg extravaganza is long overdue for reappraisal.
Amid Amidi at Cartoon Brew explains.
Upsetting Cartoon – Paper Apologizes, Cartoonist Explains
Cartoonist Tom Stiglich, upset about the lack of safety involving duck boats, editorialized:
Readers misunderstood and complained. The Missourian apologized, Tom explained.
The Dyersburg State Gazette seems to be wavering between apologizing and defending.
Simpsons Comics book to end, Bongo Comics to follow?
The Simpsons Comics book will end this year and publisher Bongo Comics‘ fate is uncertain.
Gail Simone writes an appreciation to the company that set up her career as a professional writer.
They were kind, and they were patient. They asked me to send a few springboards, they had to explain what that was. I sent 25. They liked nearly all of them.
I remember meeting Matt Groening. He was very kind, especially about my Sunday strips. It all seemed surreal, Simpsons wasn’t just the funniest thing on tv, it was the BEST thing, as well, and the world loved them. And I got to write them.
Bongo was always run by Bill Morrison and Terry Delegeane. Two of the most stand-up guys in comics. If they said something, you immediately knew it was true
above Sunday comic strip from lardlad.com – a book of the strips was planned but never published.
Abridged Classics: Brief Summaries of Books You Were Supposed to Read but Probably Didn’t
John Atkinson‘s Abridged Classics book was published by Harper Collins last month.
The Kitchissippi Times does a nice profile of the local cartoonist making good.
The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All The Trains
David Sadowski remembers an old comic panel for The Trolley Dodger.
Which put me in mind of this excellent book I got in my younger days:
To help clue the reader that the cartoon is meant to be a warning, sad, and not funny, use a lot of black.
Or St. Peter crying. Gotta give the reader plenty of hints that he/she isn’t reading Stephan Patsis.