According to E&P, Doonesbury.com has totaled more than 152,000 votes in a poll asking readers where “Doonesbury character” Alex should go to college….  The options are .Rensselaer, Cornell or MIT.As posted earlier here, some of the Universities in question are taking this fictional character quite seriously.

According to Universal Press, “Baldo” creators Hector Cantu and Carlos Castellanos have invited Lela Lee who does a weekly feature called “Angry Little Girls” to do three of six Baldo daily strips beginning May 22…. “Angry Little Girls” features an asian character, Kim.From the news release: During the six-day series, Baldo character Gracie Bermudez (who Cantu and Castellanos describe as a ?little sister with a cause?) and Lee?s cast of Angry Little Girls will join forces to show Baldo readers what real girls are all about.

Over on Arnold Wagner’s blog, he has an interesting clip out of a Gallup poll from 1936.

Subjects include the obligatory questions about how Mark got into cartooning; what Mark did for a living before cartooning became successful enough to support him financially; what make’s Lio different from other strips. When he decided he wanted to try his hand at a second strip, he wanted something significantly different from Heart of the City.”The thing I really wanted to do was something that is new,” he said.

As seen on E&P and Mike Lynch’s blog, veteran cartoonist Bob Laughlin passed way Sunday. His services will be held this coming Friday in Southbury, CT.

Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist Matt Davies has joined the blogosphere according to Editor and Publisher…. From E&P:”My aim,” Davies wrote in his initial post, “is to pry the lid off the process and hardships that a newspaper editorial cartoonist encounters on deadline every day, and share it with whomever cares.”He added: “The best cartoonists should make it look easy.

While some Muslims do not make or show images of Mohammed because of the biblical laws against graven images, there is a long history of portraits of Muhammad in Islamic art. …… Perhaps because not talking about it gives them a convenient rationalization — religious tolerance — for not showing the offending Danish cartoons.

As posted on the AAEC web site, Tim Menees, who was let go from his 30 years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette job as editorial cartoonist, was awarded first place in the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania’s Golden Quill Journalism awards.

The PMC is a great non-profit organization that goes into third world countries and fights overpopulation problems along with sexually transmitted diseases, AIDS and the oppression of women, by educating the local populations and encouraging them to stop their risky behavior through soap operas on the local media.  PMC’s innovative approach has been very successful as the third world audiences remember and respond well to the educational dramas they hear on their local radio.The PMC also works to raise the consciousness of population relation issues in the first world, and one of their initiatives was a cartoon contest.

Chris Lamb’s book “Drawn to Extremes: The Use and Abuse of Editorial Cartoons” will be released in paperback form next month according to Editor and Publisher.You can learn more about the book at Amazon.com.

Chris Browne, cartoonist for “Hagar the Horrible” and creator of “Raising Duncan”, has called Sarasota Florida his home for the last 25 years but is moving because of the over development in the city.Sarasota used to be quaint, Browne said….  He could cruise over the bridge to Longboat Key, and the only thing he’d see was “The Purple Cow” — otherwise known as the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall.”Now,” he said, “it’s dwarfed by this skyline that looks like Atlanta or Tampa.”It breaks his heart.Chris and his wife will be moving to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Another notable change in the comics page line up this week – this time in the Houston Chronicle….  Mark Tatulli’s feature was officially launched yesterday to over 100 newspapers – the Chronicles now being one of them.

The Winston-Salem Journal has dropped three features: Mark Anderson’s “Spot the Frog,” “Peanuts,” and “Beakman & Jax” – a Sunday only educational strip.On the plus side: Michael Fry and T.  Lewis’ “Over the Hedge” and Mark Tatulli’s “Lio” have taken up home on their comic page.

Michael Fry, “Over the Hedge” co-creator, along with film writer and producer Jim Cox have created an internet start-up called RingTales which focus on making animation shorts for mobile devises.  The animations will be based on current comic strips.

A while back I mentioned that Doonesbury character Alex Doonesbury was selecting a college and that Rochester Institute of Technology and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute were colleges that were being considered.  Cornell was also considered and the university actually courted Garry Trudeau in efforts to sway the decision – going as far as mailing admissions material and brochures about the dining halls.