Industry news for the professional cartoonist
That’s my Grandpa, at the head of the one-room classroom in Ironwood, Michigan, sometime in the first decade of the last century. I spent more than a quarter of a century working with schools myself, reporting on them, lecturing, doing teacher workshops and writing curricula, but I take my hat off to the people who…
If you follow any cartoonists on social media, you’ve probably already seen Ann Telnaes’ interactive analysis of the January 6 insurrection, because her colleagues have been praising and forwarding it since she unveiled it yesterday. That’s unusual, not because of professional competition but simply because cartoonists tend to sit back and watch the market rather…
Might as well start the day in puzzled mode, since I don’t have a particular hobby horse to ride. Specifically, I’m puzzled by “The trouble with instant coffee,” in today’s Pardon My Planet (KFS) because it suggests that there’s something that isn’t troubling about instant coffee. Which is to say that, while I agree the…
F-Minus (AMS) hit me solidly this morning because I’d just been through my morning check-in on social media, which included a whole lot of people declaring their defiant intent to something-something-something in the New Year, mostly involving not takin’ nothin’ from nobody. I’d rather they pledged to lose weight, which isn’t going to happen either,…
I was surprised at how many cartoons were about Christmas this morning. I’d expected some Boxing Day gags and Returning Things gags, but not so many actual Christmas gags. Maybe I compartmentalize too much, or maybe I’m dreading the dead space between now and New Years, when everyone takes off and there’s nothing to comment…
Wally Wood was a giant in the comics business, as explained at length, with an abundance of examples, in this Lambeik Comiclopedia profile, better than which I cannot begin to do. And much of which I dare not reproduce here, though I’ll confess that, like nearly everyone I knew in Boulder, and since my mother…
Clay Jones takes a poke at cartoonists who have drawn Joe Manchin as the Grinch, and I’m happy to pass it on because I didn’t really want to do an entire posting of Grinch/Manchin cartoons. Several Grinch cartoons had appeared before the current flood of Manchin cartoons, and it’s not surprising, given how the Grinch…
Comic Book Resources offers up Star Wars: 10 Things You Never Knew About The 1979-1984 Newspaper Strips. The countdown starts with the little known fact that: Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson first proposed the idea for a newspaper strip. With Goodwin as the writer and Williamson on art, the two had worked on the newspaper…
I don’t know how far ahead Jef Mallett works on Frazz (AMS), but he hit this one squarely: Michigan, where he lives, looks to be hovering around freezing for the next week but in no particular danger of snow before Christmas. Here in New Hampshire, we got just under a foot yesterday and it seems…
Let’s start the day by checking our own values. This portrait of Roger Stone isn’t the first time Ann Telnaes has dipped into the slime bucket to depict one of Dear Leader’s dubious allies, nor is it surprising that he found a slipper that fit perfectly. As soon as Stone took the Fifth in front…
Frazz (AMS) brings back one of the more delightful memories of college this time of year: The first wisps of snow that brought out the freshmen from Florida and California decked in every stitch of winter parkas, hats and mittens they had brought to Indiana. At which those of us who had, perhaps, put on…
As we pull within two weeks of Christmas, Ben (MWAM) threatens his wife, and us, with a series of excruciating puns to fill the days, and I hope he follows through. The funny pages are so flooded with bad takeoffs on Christmas carols each year that it’s a relief when one of them confesses to…
A laugh from Mr. Boffo to start the day. Joe Martin’s sense of humor is based on the loveable loser, and a formula in which a sensible opening tumbles into bathos, and it certainly works for me, particularly since, before going through the day’s cartoons, I begin with a stroll through social media to catch…
The L. A. Times gets letters about 9 Chickweed Lane © Brooke McEldowney The Los Angeles Times received hundreds of letters from fans of their comics page about dropping the 9 Chickweed Lane strip, and printed a few of them. They prefaced the letters with further explanation for the drop. To our readers: We gave…
Juxtaposition of the Date (Andy Marlette – Creators) (Walt Handelsman) I remember taking angry phone calls in the newsroom on a December 7 in the early ’90s because we hadn’t acknowledged the date on Page One. It wasn’t my decision: I only got the calls because, as the business writer, I was there before…