Featuring Rod Whigham; Dee Fish; Dave Kellett and Brad Guigar; Beatriz Lockwood and Maya Scarpa; Henry Payne; Juanjo Gaurnido; Rachel Smythe; Shen; Jeff Weigel and Thomas Yeates; Bill Morrison and Dave Warren; and Mason Mastroianni. With Wayno, Dana Simpson, and Jamar Nicholas; Maria Scrivan, Hector Cantu, Dana Simpson, Danesh Mohiuddin, Hilary B. Price, and Tauhid Bondia; and Tom Richmond. (whew)
After 16+ years Rod Whigham finally gets to sign his name to Gil Thorp, and in a panel rather than having his name consigned to the gutters.
I guess I should say: in addition to being consigned to the gutter. This is Rod’s last Gil Thorp comic strip, Monday will have Rachel Merrill take on art duties for the daily only comic.
Dee Fish enjoyed meeting cartoonists at The Reuben Awards (she was nominated for a Silver Reuben)…
she drew some highlights with Wayno, Dana Simpson, and Jamar Nicholas (full size at that “highlights” link). Hat tip to Wayno:
A recent installment of Dee Fish’s autobiographical comic Finding Dee (a Silver Reuben nominee) featured fellow cartoonists Dana Simpson, Jamar Nicholas, and yours truly. Dee is a terrific cartoonist, and her inking skills are spectacular. I particularly like the way she incorporated each person’s comics into their panel. Very nice job on the Secret Symbols, Dee!
Also at The Reuben Awards were Dave Kellett and Brad Guigar and their Comics Lab.
The cartoonist hosts were joined on stage by Maria Scrivan, Hector Cantu, Dana Simpson, Danesh Mohiuddin, Hilary B. Price, and Tauhid Bondia.
Shifts (An illustrated history of the future of work) by Beatrix Lockwood and Maya Scarpa has ended its twice weekly, limited run in The Washington Post with its eighth installment (August 26 – September 18, 2024).
I’m wavering on whether to include it as part of The Daily Cartoonist’s end of year Debuts, Departures, and The Dearly Departed list. It is what The Pulitzer Prize board calls Illustrated Reporting but it appeared in a newspaper and it is sequential art. I think I must include it in the comics section.
Payne Change
With the hullabaloo over that Henry Payne cartoon a week and a half ago The Detroit News, where Henry works as an automotive writer, asked editorial cartoonist Payne to stop putting his News email in his cartoons (The News had been wrongly accused by those who found offense with publishing the cartoon).
Henry has complied and as of September 23, 2024 a new email address is appearing in his cartoons. He also seems to have eased up on his output. His usual four or five ‘toons a week are (temporarily?) down to two of late.
Our International Correspondent is off on another assignment so we’ll use this space to report that Spanish cartoonist Juanjo Guarnido was awarded the Sergio Aragonés International Award for Excellence in Comic Art at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival last night.
John Freeman at downthetubes reports on the honor – and as mentioned earlier when you see “National Cartoonists Society President Tom Richmond” read that as “National Cartoonists Society Foundation President Tom Richmond.” It’s been nine years since Tom was the NCS president (scroll way down).
Elsewhere the mostly comic book Ringo Awards have a couple webcomic categories.
The Beat reports the winners which include Lore Olympus, by Rachel Smythe and Blue Chair, by Shen.
The Phantom starts a new Sunday adventure tomorrow and with it comes a new Jeff Weigel title panel.
Prince Valiant also changes its title panel by Thomas Yeates with a new story, more or less.
Much less these days, that sea and cliff title panel has been running for over 15 months – since April 16, 2023.
Let’s Get Political
Bill Morrison and Dave Warren administrators of Cartoonists For Kamala! have been unavoidably delayed in setting up their Ebay auction of cartoon artwork to benefit their preferred candidate for President of the U.S.
There are rules and regulations they didn’t foresee:
When we started this effort we never dreamed how difficult it would be to give away a lot of money!
Here’s what’s going on. We had planned to begin the auctions on eBay tomorrow, but we have to put that off for a few days. Here’s why: After realizing that we were poised to raise way more money than we can legally donate directly to the Harris/Walz campaign, we decided to designate a pro-Harris PAC as the beneficiary of the eBay auctions and have the funds we raise go directly to them. We spoke to a representative at eBay about setting that up, and after being told it was possible and given instructions by one eBay rep, we came to find out that this information was incorrect. eBay does have a non-profit donation program, but it’s only for 501(c)3 charities, not for PACs. So that means we have to have the funds go into either my or Dave’s Paypal account and then transferred to one of our bank accounts. That’s not ideal for a lot of reasons, and neither Dave nor I are comfortable with having the money we raise co-mingled with our personal funds. We want to be transparent and above board in everything we do, and that would just make things too messy. Therefore, we need to set up a new bank account that is exclusively used for this fundraiser, and link it to Paypal. That’s going to take a few days, so please bear with us as we rush to accomplish this…
“B.C.” Artist Mason Mastroianni Talks About the Comics and Life
[Mason Mastroianni] has been drawing the B.C. characters since shortly after his grandfather – Johnny Hart, the strip’s creator – died in 2007. He also has been drawing the Wizard of Id feature, collaborating with his brother Mick Mastroianni, who is the comic strip’s writer.
Discussing his work on B.C. on WNBF Radio’s Binghamton Now program Thursday, Mastroianni said he “can’t believe” he’s been drawing the strip for that long.
Mastroianni said while he never gets bored, he sometimes has days where “it becomes a little bit of a drag trying to figure out how to keep up with gags, trying to figure out how to keep things relevant.”
But he said being able to entertain people through the comic strips is “an incredible blessing.” He said “it’s definitely the greatest job I’ve ever had.”
Mason sits for a twenty minute interview with WNBF News Radio.