Miss Cellany Clocks In As Others Check Out
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Allison Garwood & Petunia & Drew, Sarah Anderson & Sarah’s Scribbles, Terry Beatty & Rex Morgan M.D., San Francisco Chronicle Sunday Funnies, Colleen Doran & Dr. Martin’s Dyes, Michael Maslin & The New Yorker, The Saturday Evening Post, Paula Pugh’s Best of 2024, and the Animated 2025.
Allison (Big Al the Gal) Garwood is taking a leave of absence from her Petunia and Dre comic strip at GoComics for an excellent reason – to concentrate on getting a Master of Fine Arts degree. Best of luck Al!
Also Sarah Anderson has given notice that she will be taking a sabbatical from Sarah Scribbles to devote her time to a few other projects: From her Bluesky feed:
An announcement–I’ll be on hiatus from “Sarah’s Scribbles” for a bit. I’m working on a bunch of new stories and series that I’m super excited about, and I need to dedicate my time to them so that they’ll be the very best they can be.
In the world of newspapers, where the daily publishing of a news journal is becoming a rarity:
Yeah, continuity strips like Rex Morgan, M.D. are taking the hits more so than others.
Staying with Terry Beatty and Rex Morgan…
You don’t have to know that Terry was a comic book fan back in the day to know Terry was a comic book fan back in the day. Those floating heads make it an open secret.
hat tip to A Dispensable List of Comic Book Lists for the comic book covers.
As for The Sunday Funnies:
Jonathan Lemon shows the progress made over the past 25 years in presentation of Sunday comics.
A bit off our beaten path.
Above, you’re looking at the gorgeous art of Kevin Nowlan. At the left, the way the art looked in the 1980’s. At the right, the original art for sale at the Heritage Auction website.
You can see considerable fading in the original. Toward the lower right, some of the color has almost completely disappeared.
This comes from using dyes instead of pigmented paints.
You know those Copic markers I keep warning you about?
Those are dyes. This Dr Strange piece was painted using the old Dr Martin’s Concentrated Watercolors. They were not watercolors, they were dyes…
Cartoonist/artist Collen Doran enlightens us on the use of dyes: When Dyes Die. Hey, it’s your art’s funeral.
As we near the weekend, it comes as no surprise to me how anxious I am for the weekly New Yorker art department submission process to begin anew (the department’s been closed for the holidays. Two weeks have gone by without submitting work). The “process” has been the common thread throughout my life since I was a teenager, when I first set my sights on getting into the magazine…
A disruption of the routine drive some people nuts and cartoonists are some kind of people. When The New Yorker occasionally closes down for a week Michael Maslin gets fidgety.
Which brings a reminder that next month will bring The New Yorker’s centennial. The Society of Illustrators won’t be the only ones marking the occasion.
Y’know, once upon a time magazines and magazine cartoons were ubiquitous. Now, not so much. Anyway, one of those magazines famous for cartoons was the Saturday Evening Post which still posts classic on their website. Here are their readers’ favorite cartoon sets of 2024.
“With only a handful of local weekly newspapers publishing locally focused cartoons in California, the Ojai Valley News is incredibly fortunate to have found the remarkably talented Ojaian Paula Pugh.”
More Best of 2024 (pt 7) comes from Paula Pugh, the editorial cartoonist for The Ojai Valley News.
Looking forward to an animated 2025.
As 2024 fades into the distance, we can safely say that animated features have proven to be one of the strongest motivators in getting audiences back into theaters. In fact, three of the top five grossing films in the U.S. last year were animated films.
While the major studio’s continued emphasis on sequels and franchises remains a bit disheartening for adventurous viewers who like to be challenged by new material, it’s hard to argue with the strategy since mainstream audiences continue to express a desire for familiar characters and universes. But along with all the usual sequels, 2025 promises plenty of original expressions, including a new stop-motion film from Laika (Wildwood), an original from Pixar (Elio), and the much-anticipated return of director Sylvain Chomet (The Magnificent Life of Marcel Pagnol).
Tara Bennett at Cartoon Brew gives us synopses and a schedule for 2025 animated releases.
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