Getting Down by Rounding Up
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A hodgepodge of recent comic related items featuring Jules Feiffer, David Potter, the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, Ed Steckley, Joel Priddy, William Hennessy, Allan (Sols) Salisbury.
HarperCollins Publishers has announced the forthcoming publication of Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and writer Jules Feiffer’s first graphic novel created for young readers. Amazing Grapes is scheduled for publication on September 24 under the Michael di Capua Books imprint. The middle grade graphic novel adventure follows a family in search of their mother and charged with the mission of saving another dimension.
Publishers Weekly breaks the news; HarperCollins publishes the book.
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David Potter, the comics editor and cartoonist for SUNY-Geneseo’s student paper The Lamron, is profiled.
David notes:
Looking into the future, Potter has some ambitious plans. To him, the dream is to become a proper successful comic artist, though he shockingly notes that, “…more people play in the NBA than write comics professionally.”
The Lamron’s archive of David Potter comics.
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Earlier this month the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest returned to Purdue University.
Sam Corbin for The New York Times reported on the event:
This month, young engineers from around the country gathered at Purdue University in Indiana for the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest and demonstrated contraptions that could put toothpaste on a toothbrush; notable efforts featured evil wizards, volcanoes, miniature Jeeps and a clever “Rubenheimer” assembly, inspired by last year’s “Barbenheimer” phenomenon. In Norway, a performance artist was busy crafting another Rubelike contraption to break dry pasta over his head for his TikTok following. And every few years, the inventor’s influence shines through in a board game, or a music video. Rube has, in effect, become a rubric.
The Rube Goldberg Institute for Innovation and Creativity has the competition and lists the 2024 winners.
Popular Science has the transcript of their 1923 article quoted by The New York Times.
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On a related note Ed Steckley, illustrator of Young Rube Goldberg books and much more, has a Substack.
Ed has been added to The Daily Cartoonist’s Support Your Local (or Distant) Cartoonist list.
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Penn State announces and profiles:
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Joel Priddy, associate professor of graphic design, has been named the head of the Stuckeman School’s Department of Graphic Design in the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture, effective July 1. A member of the graphic design faculty since 2012, Priddy served as interim head of the department from July 2023 to December 2023 before going on sabbatical this spring.
Priddy is known as a celebrated illustrator and cartoonist, having won the Lighthouse Award for Debut Book and an Ignatz Award for Outstanding Debut for his work “Pulpatoon Pilgrammage” in 2002. He was featured in “The Best American Comics 2006” for his work “The Amazing Life of Onion Jack,” which also earned an Ignatz Award nomination for Outstanding Story in 2005.
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As a follow-up to yesterday’s “hush money” courtroom sketch artists, let’s not ignore William J. Hennessy, Jr. who is doing outstanding work for the SCOTUS Blog illustrating Supreme Court arguments.
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Yesterday I was setting up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Allan (Sols) Salisbury’s Snake Tales, an Australian comic strip that appeared here in the U.S. during the 1980s. Unfortunately, as that dead link to the website shows, it seems the strip ending with the Great Outback Cutback of 2023.
Visual Humor and Sean Kleefeld have some history of the strip and cartoonist.
feature image earworm courtesy of Over the Hedge © M. Fry & T. Lewis
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