Industry news for the professional cartoonist
Last month Kirk Walters and The Toledo Blade celebrated 30 years of Maumee Dearest, the local weekly comic strip. This weekend the paper and the cartoonist looked back. In 1988, a young cartoonist at The Blade named Kirk Walters submitted a multi-panel strip he’d drawn in the hope the paper would consider running it on…
Hilary Price sends out a “charming yet infrequent” newsletter with an assortment of things related to her comic Rhymes With Orange. Her last one is packed with really cool tidbits, so I hope you click through and give it a full read. Here’s a summary of her post. She, and other artists in her studio,…
Here’s a Kickstarter to consider: The Folks Behind the Funnies. Documentary includes interviews with: Scott Adams, Dilbert Chris Browne, Hagar the Horrible Darby Conley, Get Fuzzy Ron Ferdinand, Dennis the Menace Cathy Guisewite, Cathy Marcus Hamilton, Dennis the Menace Bunny Hoest, The Lockhorns, Laugh Parade, Howard Huge Lynn Johnston, For Better or for Worse Bil…
King Feature Syndicate’s Comic portal Comics Kingdom launched last December with several new features and some planned features set to debut at a later date. This week, some of those are now available. Comic fans can search the comics by keywords and phrases and find comics using that word. They also display keywords under each…
Just a reminder that next Wednesday is the premiere of the long awaited debut of documentary Stripped in Hollywood, CA (see details below). If you are attending that night, your ticket also serves as a raffle ticket with a chance to win one of ten exclusive Bill Watterson posters. You can still buy tickets. The…
I’ve known of the hidden symbols in Dan Piraro’s Bizarro strip for years, but didn’t know each one had a specific meaning. The The News-Democrat explains it all: About 10 years after he started the strip, Piraro began adding “secret symbols” to his panels. “I started on a whim in 1995 — just to entertain…
Starting next Monday, the JUMBLE puzzle will feature Guest Jumblers: Bizarro (Dan Piraro), FoxTrot (Bill Amend), Family Circus (Jeff Keane), Garfield (Jim Davis), , Rhymes with Orange (Hilary Price), and Speedbump (Dave Coverly). When Jumble artist Jeff Knurek invited some of his cartoon heroes to the Jumble space, Davis was happy to oblige. “Incorporating Garfield…
An organized campaign by over 900 mayors across the US to support gun control efforts in Washington has launched a video featuring 23 cartoonists who are supporting the effort. The video is called Cartoonists Demand Action to End Gun Violence. Participating cartoonists include: Lalo Alcaraz, Bill Amend, Ruben Bolling, Jim Borgman, Steve Brodner, Roz Chast,…
Cul de Sac creator Richard Thompson has won a Harvey Award in the Best Syndicated Strip category. It was a pretty solid category with Dan Piraro (Bizarro), Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury), Patrick McDonnell (Mutts), and Stephen Pastis (Pearls Before Swine) as the other nominees. In the category for best Online Comic work, Kate Beaton took the…
The Harvey Awards, named after the late Harvey Kurtzman, recognize outstanding work in comics and sequential art. The winners will be announced on September 8 during the Baltimore Comic-Con. This year’s nominees are: BEST LETTERER Chris Eliopoulos, FEAR ITSELF, Marvel Comics Laura Lee Gulledge, PAGE BY PAIGE, Amulet Books Todd Klein, S.H.I.E.L.D.: ARCHITECTS OF FOREVER,…
Dan Piraro just celebrated 27 years of his comic panel Bizarro and has now drawn over 10,000 cartoons. He sums up his thoughts on his blog: So happy anniversary to me and to Bizarro. Here is a brief list of highlights from my career: 1985–got syndicated 1990–still syndicated 2000–syndicated some more 2010–can’t afford to quit…
When the Cartoonists Remember 9/11 was announced last week, I had favorable feelings for it. It’s being spearheaded by King Features who has done similar group thematic work for National Breast Cancer Awareness and Earth day and a couple other good causes. I’m not sure I understand their motivation to do these collective work projects….
Just noticed Dan Piraro’s blog has moved to its own domain bizarrocomics.com. He used to host it on Blogger. Welcome to my first post on my new blog site. There are lots of posts before this, but they were imported from my previous blog site by a genius Interwebs guru. Now that I’m trying to…
The tri-annual Festival of Cartoon Art hosted by the Ohio State University’s Cartoon Library and Museum is sold out according to this year’s organizer Jenny Robb. The festival begins this Thursday and runs through Sunday. Featured speakers this year include: Steve Breen, Brendan Burford, Roz Chast, Tony Cochran, Jan Eliot, Tom Gammill, Matt Groening, Bill…
In support of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, several King Features comics will participate in a “Cartoonists Care” initiative this Sunday. More than 50 of the King Features strips “turn pink” and a special Dan Piraro Bizarro signature art piece will be auctioned off. Each comic strip will feature the internationally recognized pink ribbon for…