Time in cartoons tends to be vague. Some strips are forever in place, some move glacially, others keep up a relatively realistic pace. Readers accept, for instance, that kids get out of school, have a summer vacation, and then return to the same classroom, same teacher, same curriculum. But they can also follow, on the […]
While GoComics has developed a habit of not including the black plate on a Sunday strip or two this year since their Great Reset, that oversight is usually corrected within hours or at least before the day is over. What continues to irritate me is their refusal to post the complete Sunday of a lot […]
The Serendipitous Timing Award today goes to Jeff Stahler, for a piece done in advance but that struck home anyway. I got Wordle in 4 today and I don’t play Connections, but, like her, I was completely flummoxed by Trump’s latest social media post: Yes, the leader of our nation has endorsed a theory that […]
I used to assemble color comics regularly. It is not particularly difficult.
A roundup of Peanuts items from its 75th anniversary year. For 75 years, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Woodstock, Lucy, Pigpen and the rest of the gang have been a part of nearly everyone’s life in all corners of the world. Consumer products have played a pivotal role in the evolution and awareness of the Peanuts brand […]
Featuring Shoe, Broom-Hilda, Bizarro The New Yorker, Creature Features, The Phantom, Arlo and Janis, Olive and Popeye and Thimble Theater. I began my comic strip reading with the Comics Kingdom feed today and Shoe was one of the first ones to make an impression. The psychiatrist was good, but the sofa and the Perfessor lounging […]
Guilford College’s Every Campus A Refuge (ECAR) program is receiving more national recognition. Only this time the attention is coming from an unexpected source: a comic strip. Josh Neufeld, a writer and artist whose work has appeared in The Washington Post and The New York Times, published a comic strip earlier this month in The Boston Globe that […]
ComicLab hosts Dave Kellett and Brad Guigar are preparing for an educational and entertaining live recording of the ComicLab podcast at the Boston NCS Conference and Reubens in August. Featuring a panel of cartoonists who are succeeding with self-publishing, self-promotion, and fan management on platforms like Patreon, Kickstarter, Substack, and more, you’ll discover what strategies […]
Caulfield ponders the change in seasons, and is accurate enough to say summer “kind of” starts with Memorial Day. To my mind, it’s perfectly logical that summer “kind of” ends with Labor Day, because that was when we’d head back to school. Several decades ago, when my boys were little, Colorado schools tried starting school […]
Hearst’s International Feature Service The history of newspaper syndication — and specifically the distribution of cartoons and comic strips — is a story yet to be told, and told well. Rick Marschall at Yesterday’s Papers shares a booklet with us about a Hearst/Koenigsberg side hustle. By 1917, Hearst’s lieutenant Moses Koenigsberg split up the syndicate […]
Notes on Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Shrimp & Grits, Flash Gordon, Crabgrass, Macanudo, Andy Capp, The Saga of Brann Bjornson, Home Free, Heaven Help Us, Crankshaft, Phoebe and Her Unicorn, The Far Side, Thimble Theater Starring Popeye, Wallace the Brave, and including a Ziggy Stardust cameo. With Ripley’s Believe It or Not characterization in […]
This morning’s Duplex reminded me of a news story I was sure I’d clipped, but can’t find. A business professor at the University of Denver wanted to make a point about ethics, so announced to his class that he was going to award a certain number of A, B, C and D grades and that […]
The premise of Macanudo is that two children living in Nuevo Aires, Henrietta and Martincito, possess imaginations so powerful that it gives them the special ability to see the invisible, magical world underlying the lives of children everywhere. This power is called “Macanudo,” giving the strip its name. In its native country, the strip is […]
Comics artist Tod Smith has passed away. Tod Garfield Smith October 4, 1952 – April 4, 2025 From the Providence Journal obituary: Tod Garfield Smith, 72, of Rocky Hill, CT, passed away on April 4, 2025, after a long illness. Throughout his childhood, Tod was a fan of comic books and comic book heroes and […]
With Barbara Shermund, Edward Gorey, Stan Mack, Dan Tyree, and courtroom sketch artists Art Lien, Cedric Hohnstadt, and Christine Cornell. The Trailblazing Cartoon Art of Barbara Shermund We began today watching Jane Pauley and CBS Sunday Morning and a segment about a cartoonist: Artist Barbara Shermund (1899- 1978) was one of the first women cartoonists […]