Industry news for the professional cartoonist
I don’t know how much lead time Jimmy Craig takes for They Can Talk. I guess it’s up to him, since he’s self-syndicated, but I’ve also heard he’s working on a book, so who knows? However, the migrators have been returning to New England over the past 10 days or so. The ducks and geese…
It’s always nice, though not always possible, to begin with an overview of what is about to come. Jen Sorensen provides a solid abstract of today’s topic. Certainly, the continuing deaths in Gaza are a major crisis, for the Gazans obviously, but also for the Israelis. The BBC reports tens of thousands of Israelis in…
Mad Cave has signed a deal with King Features to publish new comic book stories starring Flash Gordon. The partnership also permits Mad Cave to publish collections of Flash Gordon comic strips and the first volume has been announced. Flash Gordon: Classic Collection Volume One is due in July 2024. This is all fine and…
Ivan Ehlers captures my mood as I watch the nation’s dialogue degenerate into what seems like a contest to see who can screw things up more: Protesters who increasingly seem like rebels without a plan or politicians determined to turn molehills into active volcanos. I feel like a spectator, unable to either reason with the…
Joy of Tech comments on the decline of the Internet, and they’re not alone, though this detailed takedown of Facebook’s flurry of AI spam requires free registration. But the gist of it is that much of what you see on Facebook is spam being commented on by bots, and that click farms have essentially taken…
Harley Schwadron speaks for me, because there is a flood of topics being cartooned about at the moment and my desperation is in trying to cover the ones that won’t keep, combined with the prospects of a drought if I cover them all today and nothing surfaces for tomorrow. My desperation, though, is never quiet….
Not feeling all that political today, but I got a laff out of Tommy Siegel‘s piece because it coincides with a sudden deluge of similarly dismissive editorial cartoons explaining that, despite all evidence to the contrary, those darned college kids are all anti-Semites, including the Jewish demonstrators. I don’t mind it coming from the usual…
I’m tempted to say “So here we are,” between Swift and Moynihan, but we sure seem willing to slip even lower at any moment. Moynihan suggested a chance for things to improve, while Swift seemed resigned to the belief that they wouldn’t. In fact, Swift, who was advising a younger clergyman, extended the thought: Reasoning will…
Peter Schrank notes the almost-too-late move by the Americans to resupply Ukraine, and it’s good to get an outside view, because our internal reasons for the delay don’t much matter to people facing conquest. That more pragmatic point of view makes “Better late than never” a dubious expression, which Schrank emphasizes by showing Ukraine on…
Fiona Katauskas sets a familiar scene divided between old and young, which may be a stereotype, but putting the old fellow in a suit rather than Archie Bunker mode suggests another division, that between those who have and those who are still setting their goals. The parallels between the Student Strike of 1970 and the…
In case you hadn’t noticed, when I feature a syndicated cartoon here, I add the name of the syndicate with it. For instance, I would label this one Barney & Clyde (Counterpoint). A few months ago, I’d have said “Barney & Clyde (WPWG)” but the Washington Post Writers Group has recently ended its syndication of…
A couple Sundays ago we noted Bob Weber, Jr.’s use of Lucky Bucks and crediting Paul Fung. We also linked to Mark Johnson’s thoughts on the origins of such comic ephemera: If I recall it right, it was Jimmy Murphy who started the extras like comic stamps, play money and cut-out dolls in Toots &…
If you haven’t been reading Crabgrass (AMS), you should start now, and begin here because today’s would be too much of a spoiler to start with, plus you need to catch up if you’re going to enjoy it. Yes, this is from two months ago, but Tauhid Bondia likes long story arcs and this one…
Frazz (AMS) starts us with a reminder that some things can’t be purchased, except of course that they can. As it happens, the strip ran just after the Boston Marathon, as likely planned, but also after a local news story here mentioned that they used to put the medallions indicating that you finished on a…
Pickles (AMS) offers a lovely example of tightrope walking, with a gag that its audience will get, even if they aren’t all that computer literate, but with a wink as well to any cyberly-literate types. “According to my research” is a key phrase for identifying crap thrown together by Artificial Intelligence, the confirming step being…