Industry news for the professional cartoonist
As Constant Readers know, I do politics on some days and humor on others, but I’m often conflicted by in which category I should put Tom the Dancing Bug (AMS). Ruben Bolling’s talent for satire may not make me laugh aloud but it often prompts a grim smile. This one prompts a grim smile in…
Know, O children, that there was a time when coffee tables across the nation were covered with magazines – Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Companion, True, Look, Reader’s Digest. Field & Stream, and so many others – and those magazines carried a dozen or so gag cartoons in each and every issue. It was an…
The issue of Steve Bell‘s spiked cartoon of Netanyahu continues to roil social media, at least in editorial cartooning circles, and the topic was recently amplified when the Aspen Times apologized for running a Dave Granlund cartoon that some readers misinterpreted. The problem isn’t new, and this Sean Delonas cartoon went famously off the rails…
Ann Telnaes sent me scrambling for the Googles with this one, because she’d apparently picked up on a NYTimes story I hadn’t: Clarence wants to overturn NYTimes v Sullivan so he can sue people who say mean things about him. That he wants to do it isn’t news; he’s brought that up earlier, along with…
As you are reading this, I am en route to the AAEC Convention in San Francisco, which I will report on in the coming days. While you wait, and while I fly, here is what you’d have read in a California paper had you picked one up a century ago today. 1923 was a pretty…
There was a substantial mix of cartoons this morning about the removal of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, some of them clearly drawn before the vote, others done with apparent haste after the matter had been decided in the late afternoon. Clay Bennett (CTFP) does well with a depiction of the monster shorn…
Clay Jones marks National Newspaper Week (Oct 1-7) with this reminder of a major factor in the decline of newspapers: The odd belief that, while a cup of coffee costs money, information “wants to be free.” Maybe information wants to be free, but the people who compile it want to pay their rent and buy…
The last minute continuing resolution renders a lot of this past week’s political cartoons obsolete, but Paul Noth’s panel is not only worthy of inclusion anyway but can serve as a reminder that, while the immediate crisis may have (mostly) passed, the overall problem remains. As others have observed, the Constitution was written with the…
Yesterday we highlighted Patrick McDonnell’s promoting his new book in Mutts, so it’s only fair we do the same with Stephen Pastis now. Tomorrow’s Pearls Before Swine will have a gag about Stephan’s “world” tour, which begins next month. Not on the tour calendar is Pastis starting out closer to home, but The Santa Rosa…
There’s really nothing new about the “latest” poll Cynthia cites in this Barney & Clyde (Counterpoint), and it’s good to have this particular episode set in school because, for years, people have said that (A) their own schools are good but (B) education is in terrible shape. While people are aware of their own situation,…
I’m going to assume — given lead time for comic strips — that this Taylor Swift reference in Brewster Rockit (Tribune) is coincidental, but it fits well with the sudden explosion of geezers discovering the existence of someone who has been a major phenomenon for a decade and a half. And it fits particularly well…
No, no, no politics today, despite Pearls Before Swine (AMS) sneaking a good one in. DD Degg’s news of another chain abandoning its local readers is depressing enough without delving deeper into the mire. UPDATE: Gannett has disputed the report, though it’s not clear how big a difference it makes. Stay tuned: DD Degg is…
It used to be nearly impossible to win one of the giant teddy bears depicted in this Rhymes With Orange (KFS) strip, given the various tricks and outright cons employed by the carnies who run the midway games at the county fair. But, yes, you would see some parent or two dutifully schlepping one of…
If I were doing politics today, I’d want to swap out the parents with Uncle Sam and the Statue of Liberty in this Wallace the Brave (AMS), because about the best you can say about current politics is that a 50% decency rate isn’t as bad as it could be. I’m not much into awards,…
Poor Edison Lee (KFS) finds himself in what seems likely to be a disaster: He misunderstood the teacher’s previous announcement and thought the upcoming test was on Chapter One, and a 30-minute test is hardly a pop quiz, so this matters. We’ll see how this turns out. There are kids who study themselves into a…