Cartoon and Comic Strip News Briefs
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Sorry about the tight deadline (April 20, 2022) but here’s a fun project for the cartoonist in your family. RubeGoldberg.com hosts the famous annual Rube Goldberg Machine contest where building a physical Rube Goldberg contraption is the object. Now they have added a cartoon contest!
Details and rules at RubeGoldberg.com
New at GoComics
While Andrews McMeel Syndication is gathering new comics, their sister GoComics is not just sitting around. This week GoComics added a new webcomic strip to their lineup.
Today we excitedly welcome a new feature, Globetrotter, to GoComics! Created by Ainsley Ashby, this daily comic strip features Chloe, a wanderlusty woman who shrugs off her 9-to-5 publishing gig (and by extension her overbearing boss) to travel the world and write about it. A good idea? Depends on who you ask. (Read: don’t ask her mom.)
The GoComics announcement with an Ainsley interview.
More Ange!
What If?
EC and MAD chronicler Grant Geissman asked Torres to create a series of “what if” covers, meaning what if the anti-comics crusade which took down EC and countless competitors had been able to survive the McCarthy Era censorship assault, and EC had asked Torres to illustrate its covers? In his nearly 600-page, 13+ pound 2020 Taschen book, The History of EC Comics, Geissman displays the answer with five beautiful new covers created by Torres. These and other artwork completed thereafter also appear in this exhibition.
What More?
Exhibited for the first time are iconic examples of original artwork by Torres from EC, Warren, MAD and more, and a sampling of original artwork from his long-time friends and colleagues – Al Williamson, Frank Frazetta, Gray Morrow, Wallace Wood, Jack Davis, Reed Crandall, Will Elder and more. A preview of new art by Angelo Torres & Stefan Koidl for the upcoming Fantagraphics Otto Binder graphic novel, The Unwanted is also on display. Explanatory commentary provides context for each work.
Curated by Robert L. Reiner with special thanks to Clint Morgan
The Society of Illustrators hosts an Angelo Torres Exhibition and Event.
Comic Strip Parodies Remain a Thing in Comic Books
The final story in the issue before the last ad is a splash from writer/artist Ty Templeton, itself a parody of the comics section in a newspaper but featuring Marvel heroes in place of classic comic strip characters, among them a Calvin and Hobbes parody with Daredevil and Stick.
Titled “Matty and Stick,” the comic sees a young Matt Murdock (modeled after Calvin) being attacked by his mentor (modeled after stuffed tiger, Hobbes) with some “sudden attack training.” For those that have read Daredevil AND Bill Watterson’s classic strip, it’s a gag that plays in both of them.
Also included in this section of the comic is a “Hägar the Horrible” parody titled “Dagger the Hireable,” featuring Elektra and the Punisher mid-mercenary mission. The page also includes a parody of the “Spidey Super Stories” that appeared on The Electric Company in the 1970s.
ComicBook.com reviews Elektra #100
More about Comic Strips and Comic Books
Most of my time in high school was spent doodling obvious riffs on Calvin & Hobbes, Foxtrot, Wizard of Id, Mutts, Hagar The Horrible, Peanuts, etc. The challenge of a comic strip is in efficiently expressing yourself. You need to find the fundamental essence of what you want to say and show, do it, then get out. The writer part of me loves that. The editor part of me loves it even more.
Nate Cosby‘s career gravitated to comic books, but he never stopped loving comic strips.
Jake Goldwasser, on the other hand, wants to be a New Yorker Cartoonist
When I graduated college, in 2014, The New Yorker was still letting aspiring cartoonists come into the office to pitch their artwork. For a 21-year-old, the chance to sell cartoons alongside regular contributors was like a chance for a little leaguer to pinch-hit for the Yankees. I was exhilarated.
Every Tuesday morning, I sat in the Cartoon Lounge, a small conference room conducive to neither cartooning nor lounging, and awaited my turn with the editor, a brusque, wire-haired man who had been professionally passing judgment on gags for as long as I had been alive.
Jake, at Literary Hub, writes about his continuing journey to be a contract player.
Your Comic at Sea, Can’t Get to Port
Publishers Weekly reports on comic books kept from the public.
The entire 10,000-copy print run of cartoonist Jordan Crane’s new graphic novel, Keeping Two, is on board the Ever Forward, a 1,000-foot ship carrying nearly 5,000 containers, that has been mired near shore in the Chesapeake Bay for more than three weeks…the ship carrying the print-run of Crane’s Keeping Two ran aground just north of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
A source knowledgeable about the situation, confirmed to PW that other publishers have books on the stranded ship, although it is unclear which publishers or how many.
Rubin Returns
Leigh Rubin, the syndicated “Rubes” cartoonist and RIT’s “cartoonist-in-residence” returns to the campus in person after a two-year virtual residency due to the pandemic.
He’ll be speaking with students and offering an evening presentation and Q and A session, open to the public: “Imagination through the eyes of RIT Cartoonist-in-Residence Leigh Rubin” from 7-9 p.m. on April 19 in the Wegmans Theatre in MAGIC Spell Studios.
And from The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle:
Syndicated “Rubes” cartoonist Leigh Rubin’s office is in his home on California’s Central Coast, so the coronavirus pandemic didn’t upend his work life.
Which is not to say he was unaffected by the public health crisis.
He also was unable to visit Rochester Institute of Technology during 2020 and 2021, which was the plan when he was named the school’s first cartoonist-in-residence in late 2018.
That will change next week, when he’ll return to campus, including for a talk on the power of imagination at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 19, in the Wegmans Theatre in MAGIC Spell Studios.
Disapproval of Lynn Johnston‘s story in For Better or For Worse
A letter to the editor of The Bowling Green Daily News:
… I expect the characters to avoid political and religious areas. Lynn Johnson has crossed this line in the last month with her strip “For Better or Worse.” She has created a new character called Lawrence, who is homosexual.
If the recent scripts reflect her views on homosexuality, then I believe they are not compatible with what the Bible teaches about this. If you read Genesis 19, you will learn that God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because of this specific sin…
If Johnson chooses to use her strip to promote homosexuality, then perhaps “For Better or Worse” should be removed from the comics section…
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