Industry news for the professional cartoonist
Magazine cartoonist and humor writer Bruce Cochran has passed away. Edward Bruce Cochran October 9, 1935 – August 22, 2022 From the obituary: Bruce spent most of his remarkable 63-year career as an independent professional cartoonist, illustrator, humorist and writer based in Kansas City, getting his start as a writer and illustrator for Hallmark…
Timing is everything in comedy, and today’s Barney & Clyde (WPWG) was excellently timed, coming after the first wave of political ads hit yesterday’s NFL coverage. New Hampshire has shown a relatively steady preference for Democrats, but rarely one-sided, and we’ve not only seen a number of nail-biters in past elections, but have a Republican…
(Benjamin Slyngstad) (Pat Bagley) Here are two closely related commentaries on the negative response to diversity and inclusion in fantasy productions, but, while closely related, they differ in some interesting ways. Slyngstad rightfully draws his character as a bigot, but the fellow has half a point: Elves, trolls and orcs are all derived from…
The relentless corgi stampede continues, and Dr. MacLeod comments on the lack of imagination and creativity that it represents. I know cartoonists who say they never look at each other’s work because they don’t want to be influenced, which, on the one hand, is like Andy Warhol saying he never looked at Hopper or Dali…
Mr. Boffo reminds me of when I got a subscription to the New Yorker for donating to my NPR station. I enjoyed leafing through and looking at the cartoons, but, while the articles were well-written and interesting, I couldn’t plow through them before another issue arrived. It was like some literary form of the Sorceror’s…
I was surprised to hear yesterday’s news about the dip in NAEP reading and math scores over the past year, not because of the dip itself but because it was being discussed as if there were something surprising about it. Anyone who thought you could achieve the same results with 30 kids on Zoom that…
Adam Zyglis makes a joke out of Trump’s call for a Special Master to review the documents the FBI took out of the cartons he didn’t have. Attorneys online and in the media seem to agree that he should have asked for a Special Master immediately following the search, not after DOJ had unpacked and…
Before we get into all the issues in this country, an appreciation for Jordanian cartoonist Osama Hajjaj (Cartoon Movement)‘s take on the flooding in Pakistan. I’m dubious about those cooling towers, since nuclear is a potential alternative to energy sources that contribute to climate change (UPDATE: See comments), but I like the cause-and-effect framing of…
September Mourn above: “Morning Music” by Sempé © Condé Nast The New Yorker’s new issue (dated September 5, 2022) features a J. J. Sempé cover (the 114th) in tribute to the artist who passed away earlier this month. The cover story feature: The French artist’s widow describes Sempé’s decades-long relationship with the magazine and his…
Earlier this year The Canton Repository, like all Gannett newspapers, cut off any reliance on syndicated material (excepting from The USA Today bureau) and has gone with local content. Part of that process was hiring native son Jerry King as their weekly editorial cartoonist. Jerry King considers himself a cartoonist who does it all. He…
There has been a dark side to newspaper comics from the very beginning. Death and dismemberment from Hogan’s Alley to Terry and The Pirates to Doonesbury. © Tribune Content Agency Tom Batiuk’s Funky Winkerbean seems to have become the default fall strip for the present embodiment of tragedy in the “funny” papers. To celebrate the…
As we jump all over the place let’s start with – The Are You Calvin or Are You Hobbes Quiz. Alison Doherty: I didn’t have the best introduction to Calvin and Hobbes, the comic strip by Bill Watterson that ran between 1985 and 1995 … I thought it was about an annoying, naughty boy with…
Kevin Siers puts our current crisis in plain terms: We’ve somehow become involved in an argument in which the concept of justice has been placed in the dock, forced to prove itself innocent rather than, as in both English Common Law and our own traditional system, being assumed innocent until proven guilty. And it’s…
There’s an interesting collision going on between routine Back to School comic strips and political cartoons marking the current teacher shortage crisis, in the midst of which Baby Blues (AMS) offers a funny/not funny piece. I’ve seen this scenario play out both ways, one in which the elder sib was hell on wheels and younger…
A bit of rational exuberance from David Rowe as the FBI executes a search warrant on the Trump residence at Mar A Lago. I’m impressed by the number of cartoonists who leapt into the saddle last evening after Trump announced that the feds were picking on him, but Rowe gets the award for not simply…