Industry news for the professional cartoonist
A few updates to some items posted this past week about cartoonists Dan Martin, Mike Marland, and Barbara Brandon-Croft. Two days ago we reported on Dan Martin retiring from The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. That same day Dan wrote a farewell column to his readers at that paper. In 1980, I knew the journalism business was…
This fun doesn’t come until Wednesday. Wednesday is a very important day! It’s the day Animation Resources is launching its Member Appreciation Month. This year’s event is extra important, because this year marks our 10th anniversary and our 50th Reference Pack! In honor of all this, Animation Resources has pulled out all the stops to…
John Auchter frames our ongoing debate, a conversation that could have ended long ago: Why do we need Black History Month? This NPR article does a good job of tracing the commemoration itself, including answering the question of why it is in February: The founder of the concept chose the month that contains the birthdays…
Brent Dyer, Douglas Coffin, Tom Batiuk, Keith Knight, Leigh Rubin, Ron Campbell, Norman Thelwell – Cartoonists on display. Brent Dyer (aka E.A. Williams) will be showcasing some of his cartoons tomorrow. Local cartoonist Brent Dyer will bring a collection of his works to the Aroostook Agency on Aging in February for a month-long exhibit. He…
In today’s Frazz (AMS), Caulfield asks an important question: Why do we celebrate Groundhog Day? More to the point, do we celebrate Groundhog Day? Obviously, the folks in Punxsutawney do, because they’ve managed to turn it into a thing, even though the Bill Murray movie pretty well had it nailed as a pointless story for…
I wonder how he did it. How did Brian Crane, creator of the comic strip “Pickles,” sneak into our house and set up listening devices to capture the conversations between my husband and me so he could chronicle our lives in his strip? Stefanie Pettit, for The Spokesman-Review, is wowed by the realism displayed by…
I wasn’t looking for anything too brain-involved today, and so the predictable foolishness of Sherman’s Lagoon (AMS) seemed just right. But even the funny stuff involves thought. Example: “Predictable foolishness” is different than repetitive or monotonous foolishness. There are all sorts of strips which simply repackage the same few gags in different settings. “Predictable foolishness,”…
Kevin Siers plays upon all the cartoons over the past week or so about the coming of the Year of the Rabbit by pointing out that, whatever traditions may prevail in other countries, of rabbits or tigers or whathaveyou, we have an unchanging tradition here: We kill each other. The image of the Wild West…
This Batch Rejection (AMS) is decidedly relevant, given the amount of theft and piracy in our virtual world. I differentiate between the two because piracy is purposeful while theft is still theft but somehow can maintain a level of petty innocence. Which is to say that, while everyone knows pocketing an apple from the display…
Rod Emmerson comments on Prince Harry’s book, and I appreciate that he is commenting on the impact of the book and on its massive sales rather than on its content. Now that the book has been out for several days, it is malpractice — a fancy word for “incredibly irresponsible and stupid” — to talk…
(Frazz — AMS) (Marc Murphy) Like most American holidays, today will be marked by schools, banks and the post office being closed and everyone else going about their business as usual. We don’t have as many holidays as other countries, and we barely keep the ones we have. Caulfield is young enough to be puzzled…
I was dismayed to read the absurd piece by a Cleveland editor in which he said that, while readers like comics, he doesn’t, and so he doesn’t care that they do. Though, granted, I appreciated his proving my long-time dismissal of editors as cloth-eared lumpkins who don’t understand the art form. His ignorant rant, however,…
Sunday’s Bizarro (KFS) provoked both a laugh and a sigh. My dad, who died 30 years ago last week, did indeed get a label maker at one point — the old school plastic-strip type — which became a brief but intense obsession. The “brief” part is likely what kept our mother from clonking him in…
(Here is the CSotD from January 7, 2021, the morning after the coup attempt. I’ve resisted the temptation to add notes and updates, since it should stand as a record of how cartoonists rallied within 24 hours of the event.) CSotD: Slouching Towards Bedlam I was almost tempted to simply post Marco De Angelis (Cartoon…
Lisa Benson (Counterpoint) not only points out the bizarre self-inflicted punishment the GOP is laying upon itself, but her stack of round cards demonstrates the challenge of keeping up with a story that seemingly has no ending. As of this morning, we’re up to 11 rounds of pointless posturing, and even if they resolve things…