Big Nate began the new year by spending an enjoyable (for readers) week with his grandparents at an old folks home (aka: an assisted living facility). I particularly liked Friday’s (Jan. 5) joke – not a new joke but well staged.
Speaking of well set up and carried out … yesterday’s Brewster Rockit.
Y’all are probably tired of my praising Dan Schkade‘s new Flash Gordon by now, but it continues to impress.
Flash Gordon spent the week leading into the 90th anniversary of his first appearance (tomorrow!) going through “shifting realities” with Dan paying tribute to various past Flash iterations, starting with Alex Raymond and ending with Jim Keefe. A nice and different celebration.
Also kinda in sync with Comics Kingdom’s Vintage Flash Gordon dailies that have Flash and company time shifting.
And while I haven’t paid close attention to the Doonesbury daily reruns there also is some past and present synchronizing going on there, as the 2001 daily strips being run this past week had BD talking to Walden President King about the football program as will tomorrrow’s all new Sunday Doonesbury.
Still going on about impressive and anniversaries…
It is a little early but, yeah, come October 1, 2024 it will be forty years for Mother Goose and Grimm.
And I’m willing to give Terry Beatty some applause for the drawing of that audience in Rex Morgan, M.D. Wednesday. (Was Terry or Reed Brennan that did the coloring? Another round of applause for that.)
A couple quick questions…
Is it wrong for me to love Phoebe and Her Unicorn‘s Marigold for the same reason I disdain some politicians?
Is that a Jim Borgman tribute to Rube Goldberg or David Macaulay in today’s Zits? More impressiveness!
A quick note – Wayno‘s first blog post of the new year is up and while it is not as funny as his Bizarro daily panels, it is just as entertaining. It should be a regular stop on your Saturday travels around the internets.
And now the news.
The Bradford Era has lost The Lockhorns, but they have their finest investigative journalists on the case:
LOCKHORNS: You may have noticed the marital battles of Leroy and Loretta Lockhorn were missing from The Era’s pages of late.
The service from which The Era gets the comic no longer offers it. We’re working diligently to track it down to bring it back, and hope to have it resolved soon.
Just how hard is it to find a syndicated comic?
Elsewhere GoComics welcomes The Lockhorns to the Andrews McMeel family.
What better way to kick off the New Year than with a new feature on GoComics?
“The Lockhorns” is centered around married couple Loretta and Leroy Lockhorn…
Meanwhile, the Comics Kingdom comics list retains its numbers by adding Beetle Moses to their roster.
More about Harris Fishman‘s three panel vertical strip can be found at his website and his X/Twitter page.
Know Your Meme has a bit more about the cartoonist and there is a Close-Up Culture interview from 2022.
Lynn Johnston Returns!
Lightly editing For Better or For Worse reruns and books wasn’t enough for Lynn Johnston.
A message from Lynn:
I tried to retire. I really did. But after a year or so of bumbling about, I realized I had to do something creative with my time! I love robots! Robot characters are fun to draw and stories about them are fun to create. Once I had set my sights on robots, my thoughts turned to books. I decided to try my hand at writing stories for kids. I have written in rhyme because, somehow, that’s just how the muse manifested itself. I gave myself a year to come up with a number of illustrated books, and I have finished the first three! I hope you enjoy my new books. Let me know what you think of ALOTTABOTZ! ~ Lynn
Check out the Alottabotz here on their brand new website.
Shop for the books here.
“Cartoons and illustrations are an essential feature of modern journalism”
The title of this Daily Cartoonist entry is cribbed from a 1902 Nashville Banner appreciation of cartoonists:
Before we leave let’s applaud Ray Billingsley and his wonderful 2023/4 Kwanza fable in Curtis. It began here.
Robb Armstrong? I think you mean Ray Billingsley.
Of course. Corrected. Apologies to Ray and Robb.
Re the Borgman cartoon: there’s also Heath Robinson to consider…!
I love Ray Billingsley’s stylistic designs when he does the Kwanza strips, so cool.
Yes, I am somewhat tired of the continuing praise for recreating an adventure strip under a retreaded name, especially when the whole process makes it painfully clear that nobody would have bothered to read the strip (or give it a syndication contract) if it had been an original creation with a new name.