San Marcos Daily Record columnist Jerry Hall opens his Sunday column about Peanuts reminiscing: Let us depart from topics of nature and consider something that has given me a great deal of enjoyment — newspaper comic strips. Down through the years, I have perused lots of different strips, ranging from Major Hoople and the Katzenjammer […]
Bill Abbott is no longer creating new Spectickles panels for syndication. The last new panel was issued on December 16, 2023. Creators has been issuing reruns since then. Bill, replying to a Daily Cartoonist inquiry, says he continues writing but not drawing until things shake out. above: the last three new Spectickles Spectickles started … […]
Dr. MacLeod has consistently been a harsh opponent of US arming of Israel, and his response to the cutback of arms is no more or less critical than he has been in the past. His imagined Biden quotes are not so far off the beam as to be unfair, though you may quarrel with his […]
It seems The Bad Cartoonist has resurfaced. Who? You might ask. For those who weren’t around then, and for those of us who have forgotten him/her long ago, let’s recap. Back in 2008 there was, as Alan Gardner described at the time: … an anonymous editorial cartoonist has created a blog called Bad Cartoonist who […]
The second Saturday in May would be graduation on a lot of campuses, and it probably still is, since the ones without problems haven’t made the news. Jeff Stahler (AMS) leads off today because he states the basic issue plainly. But I need to start with a disclaimer: I skipped my graduation ceremony, because I […]
Jeff Smith, David Fitzsimmons, Raymond Briggs, Lalo Alcaraz, Alex Portal, Jake Tapper Jeff Smith has a Bone to pitch Jeff Smith, he of the 1360 page, four pound graphic novel doorstop (or the easier to handle multi-volume series) has returned from a health scare. On Aug. 13, Smith had a heart attack that triggered cardiac […]
Barbara Smaller’s cartoon is hardly breakthrough humor, subconsciously echoing as it does a Tom Toro piece that has become a classic: It is odd that they both ran in the New Yorker. As an editor, I certainly would have recognized the repetitive nature and declined to run the second iteration. OTOH, if I were editing […]
Saturday May 11, 2024 is Letter Carriers’ Stamp Out Hunger® Food Drive. Each year, letter carriers across the country head out on their routes on the second Saturday in May to collect donations of non-perishable food items to benefit local food pantries. Since launching in 1993, the National Association of Letter Carriers’ annual Stamp Out […]
Illustrators and caricaturists Robert Grossman and Steve Brodner are numbered among the 2024 inductees into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame. As is Gustave Doré. Of Robert Grossman the Society of Illustrators noted: Employing his signature airbrush style, [Robert Grossman] went on to illustrate over 500 magazine covers alone. National publications that featured Grossman’s […]
I’ve often quoted a frustrated exclamation that pops up in commedia dell’arte plays, “I cannot tell if he is a knave or a fool!” The laughs in the farce are based in large part on it not being clear whether the harlequin is lying or truly believes the nonsense he spouts. It hardly matters, because […]
Major League Baseball notes: On June 1, 1925, Lou Gehrig played in the first of what would be 2,130 consecutive games, a mark that stood as the longest consecutive games played streak in MLB history until Cal Ripken Jr. played in his 2,131st on Sept. 6, 1995, to break it. Two years ago we noted […]
Garfield, FurBabies, Calvin and Hobbes, Bliss/Not Bliss/Bob Mankoff Presents, The K Chronicles, Flash Gordon, The Phantom, Popeye, caption contests, and Mike Peterson captioned. The LIFE Story of Garfield Ever since Garfield swaggered onto the pages of 41 American newspapers on June 19, 1978, the rotund feline famous for his love of lasagna, naps, and sarcastic […]
By the time George Cruickshank (1792 – 1878) penned this cartoon, “teaching your grandmother to suck eggs” was an established expression for explaining something to someone who knows more about it than you do. I suppose you could call it “kidsplaining” except that kids aren’t the only ones prone to doing it. The expression has […]
Kearney grew up in a radical FDR New Deal household in New Sharon, Maine, a town of 1,400 people. He still speaks a distinct Maine dialect and spins a good yarn. “(My family) were radical, supporters of socialists, FDR, and New Deal, and I grew up in that milieu of labor democratic politics and we […]
Ten days after The Chattanooga Times Free Press celebrated their cartoonist Clay Bennett winning the National Headliner Award they are again proudly lauding Clay’s grabbing a finalist spot in this year’s Pulitzer Prize competition in the Illustrated Reporting and Commentary competition. From The Times Free Press: This is the eighth time Bennett has been a […]