The Cleveland Plain Dealer replaced the defunct Funky Winkerbean comic strip with Beetle Bailey which led to some complaints. We went with Beetle Bailey, and nary a day has gone by since without someone writing me to question that decision. They say Beetle Bailey is a sexist, violent cartoon that was rightly removed from our […]
Stephen Collins reflects on the death of water cooler TV, a combination of too many things to watch, too many ways to watch and too many choices of when to watch. (Larger version here) It comes hard on the heels of a whole lot of Festivus references, which reminds us of the days when we […]
There was a duet of sorts in today’s comics between Over the Hedge and Macanudo. Excerpt above is Over the Hedge © by Michael Fry and T. Lewis Excerpt below is Macanudo © by Liniers
It is a rare thing to stumble across a syndicated comic strip that isn’t in Allan Holtz’s book, but that’s what I did the other day. Mrs. Contrary by Marion Farley ran for about 14 months from 1922 to 1923. And Marion Farley is as rare as her comic strip in the history books, not […]
Joe Heller is only one of many cartoonists raising the issue of egg prices, along with an army of meme-creators posting variations on a guy giving his GF a carton of eggs instead of a diamond. So no particular criticism of Heller, but a more generalized: “So what?” Ask Google “Why are egg prices so […]
So John McPherson just bops us in the face with it in today’s Close to Home. “It” being the fourth wall. But others were more subtle today. Francesco Marciuliano and Jim Keefe, in today’s Sally Forth, has Hilary recognize a certain rhyme and reason to her cartoonish life. Even deeper in the trenches is Joey […]
Mike Rhode at Comics DC has posted his list of 2022 Deaths in Comic Arts. This list is much more comprehensive than The Daily Cartoonist’s roll call of U. S. newspaper and magazine cartoonists who passed last year. It is international in scope and covers the full range of comic arts – animation, comic books, […]
We’ll start today with a Free Range (Creators) that doesn’t inspire any Great Thoughts beyond my memories of setting up trade show exhibits. There was a (thankfully brief) time when trade show booths were stretchy nylon over aluminum frames that, with practice, broke down into components that fit into custom-made rollaway trash bins. After you’d […]
Its Whatnot Wednesday starring Bob Eckstein, a comic strip book sale, Barbara Brandon-Croft, Maine cartoonists, Liza Donnelly, and the health benefits of comics. Bob Eckstein is “an award-winning writer, illustrator, New Yorker cartoonist and world’s leading snowman expert” and a compiler of cartoon books. And now you can read his monthly The Bob newsletter on […]
I’ve had enough cartoons about the speakership voting, but I did get a laugh out of RJ Matson’s commentary because he plays around with a kerfuffle over McCarthy having moved into the Speaker’s office before he held the position, and adds a bit of theatrical flair when the sign went up. Matson’s depiction of the […]
Rina Piccolo reminds us that scammers hitting on cartoonists and illustrators still abound. Fellow artists, SCAM ALert…if you get something that looks like this, don’t respond.They go by different names/email addresses. This one is jamesgreb2324@gmail.com Tell your artist friends. If you receive an unsolicited offer that you think may be a scam check into it […]
You may have to watch sports to know this, but Progressive Insurance is running a series of commercials in which people in normal disagreements get to throw a red challenge flag and see a replay to determine what really happened. The appeal, of course, is how much we wish we could, despite the fact that […]
Or should it be running “amok?” Writing Explained pulls a Garner’s Modern English Usage (GMEU) estimate “that amok is used three times for every use of amuck, which is corroborated by the graph below.” Writing Expalined continued: “amuck was preferred up until the 1940s, but since that time, amok has overtaken it as the standard […]
Sunday’s Bizarro (KFS) provoked both a laugh and a sigh. My dad, who died 30 years ago last week, did indeed get a label maker at one point — the old school plastic-strip type — which became a brief but intense obsession. The “brief” part is likely what kept our mother from clonking him in […]
Cartoonist Jack Bender has passed away. John Henry (Jack) Bender March 28, 1931 – January 5, 2023 Jack’s career as a cartoonist began in high school when he began contributing sports cartoons to The Waterloo (Iowa) Courier. He continued that, and added sports reporting, through his college years. From the obituary: After a long life […]