Industry news for the professional cartoonist
Being a collection of various items from a variety cartooning categories (kinda like the Reuben Awards). The splash page from a 1962 comic book story by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee appeared on Facebook courtesy Michael Gilbert and Jim Keefe riffed on it for his own purposes. From Mike Lynch comes a selection of Barnabas…
This Reality Check (AMS) raises an interesting question: Do you have to be a guitar player to get the joke? My feeling is that you only need a very basic understanding of music to get a chuckle, because the G-Clef tells you it’s about music and you should know there are majors and minors that…
I don’t often put rerun comic strips in my roundups, but this appreciation of Billy DeBeck by Richard Thompson is just too good to pass. As that link makes clear the piece originally appeared as a forward to the 2010 book Barney Google: Gambling, Horse Races & High-Toned Women, a collection of 1922 Barney Google…
Can’t deny Scott Stantis’s observation that the Democratic Convention isn’t sticking to a tight schedule, though all reports are that people not only stuck around for Biden’s speech but delayed his speech for four or five minutes more with an ovation. In fact, it may be that part of the scheduling issue is that they…
Mannequin on the Moon (AMS) suggests a line that some major newspapers could adopt for the benefit of readers. I find it annoying when they list a headline on their opinion page that promises a challenging, interesting opinion, but doesn’t include the byline, so that you click on it and discover that, indeed, it’s from…
Tom Batiuk, creator of the tremendously popular Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean comic strips, has created a compelling storyline that illuminates the challenges librarians and store owners currently face around book banning. The series will begin August 26 and continue through October [2024]. As a former teacher and writer of the strips for many years, books…
Roy Carlson has a column at Sports Collectors Daily specializing in Topps Baseball cards. Like many, I grew up watching cartoons on TV for hours on end every Saturday morning. When programming eventually shifted to adult content, I marched from living room to bedroom and submersed myself into yet another batch of cartoons – the…
Guy Parsons is being somewhat cynical here, but that’s not to say he’s wrong. There was a time, O Best Beloved, when people who loved the Earth recoiled from milk in plastic jugs, preferring to pick up the glass bottles that had to be brought back to the store. In fact, we were going to…
Pat Byrnes criticizes the press with an imaginary Page One, accusing them of seeking to find faults with the Harris/Walz ticket while giving Trump a free ride. It’s a troubling accusation, because he seems to run afoul of Hanlon’s Razor, which states “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” That, in…
A documentary on the career and influence of South African cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro, AKA Zapiro, debuted at the Durban International Film Festival in South Africa. The film focuses on Zapiro’s controversial cartoons during Jacob Zuma’s presidential term, challenging the boundaries of freedom of expression. The documentary description: The Showerhead examines the work of cartoonist Zapiro,…
Harold and the Purple Crayon, 1960s Popeye cartoons, 1972 Sergio Aragonés poster, Little Orphan Annie and Harold Gray, 2024 San Diego Comic-Con book. Crockett Johnson and Harold and The Purple Crayon Harold is the sole visible creator in his universe. The pages he inhabits are plain white expanses until he fills them: with simple objects…
Pat Moriarty, Hugh Kilpatrick III, Charlie Hall, Quino and Malfalda, Anton van Dalen (obit), and Mary Wings (obit). Cartoonist Pat Moriarty Goes Nuclear with Billboard You might have seen the disconcerting, colorful billboard while driving down 6th Avenue in Tacoma. The cartoon illustration shows what looks like a scared kid with an ice-cream cone standing…
Drew Friedman, Gary Varvel, KC Green, Karl Christian Krumpholz, Harvey J. Kaye and Matt Strackbein The Faces of Caricature Humans love to “make faces.” As children we learn that sad faces produce sympathy, angry faces produce fear, kind faces produce trust, and funny faces produce laughs. This quality is central to Friedman’s brand of representation,…
David Cohen comments on Louisiana’s “police buffer law,” which went into effect this month and prohibits reporters or others at the scene of an incident being within 25 feet of an officer who has ordered them back. This seems like a solution in search of a problem, unless the problem you’re attempting to solve is…
Peanuts and Halloween have become inextricably linked by way of The Great Pumpkin. Now… Visitors to corn mazes across the country are finding a familiar and joyous figure in the winding labyrinth of tall stalks. Snoopy. More than 80 farms in the U.S. and Canada have teamed up with Peanuts Worldwide to create “Peanuts”-themed mazes…