Industry news for the professional cartoonist
Last week it was revealed that Bret Blevins is the guest artist spelling Mike Manley on The Phantom comic strip while Mike fights his own battle with an undisclosed illness. The Phantom writer Tony DePaul confirmed that Bret is the artist today on his blog: © King Features Syndicate The news is out that my…
A few book related items have surfaced recently. So… Our friends at Stoopid! take the comic part of comic book seriously and they have just released a new issue of the funny book. Order the new issue here and catch up on back issues you may have missed. At the dawn of the Silver…
Agnes (Creators) and Trout debate the reality of what’s right in front of their faces, which certainly fits in with all sorts of current events that I plan to save for another day, though I’ll add the possibility that Trout is just jerking her chain. Point being that it’s hard to know, these days, who…
I think we could use a few laughs at the moment, though they needn’t be completely frivolous. Man Overboard, as so often is the case, makes a point about our responsibilities and our debts that gets both a chuckle and a sigh. I’d add, too, that we often see things online about how gentle and…
It was all a con. Matt Wuerker (Politico) extracts the most damning revelation from yesterday’s Jan 6 Committee Hearing: Trump knew he’d lost, he knew there was no chance of an effective appeal, but he pulled the old pigeon drop on his True Believers, conning them with the promise that he’d use their money to…
I’m writing this a few hours before the second of the Jan 6 Committee public hearings goes on the air, but there’s already plenty to be said, and Pearls Before Swine (AMS) sets things up nicely. The Watergate Hearings happened during the day but managed to gain a wide viewership in large part because, back…
The past week starts with today’s future Zippy where Griffy refuses to modernize. © Bill Griffith Check earlier in the week for more comic characters mentioned. As long as we have comics featuring cartoonists, Thursday’s Ripley’s Believe It or Not, where Kieran continues to delight with the fun he is having drawing (and…
So ol’ acquaintance Marc Lutz pops up on my radar again, this time on an island in South Alaska. To be sure we have never met and Marc doesn’t know me from Adam, but I’ve followed his career for a few decades now. Journalist Marc Lutz gets a job with a newspaper and then convinces…
Pat Byrnes sets the scene for tonight’s broadcast of the Jan 6 Committee hearing, and it does indeed promise to be a delightful, infuriating production, at least for those who (A) tune in and (B) tune in expecting to see what happened and hear why. Today’s headline comes from a fellow who worked at an…
Publishers Weekly reports the death of Blanche Cirker. Blanche Cirker, co-founder of Dover Publications, died last week at the age of 104. Cirker and her husband, Hayward, who died in March 2000, founded Dover in 1941. Dover Publications was famous to comic strip fans as the publisher of “treasury-size” editions of Little Nemo…
John Miller Baer, cartoonist turned politician turned cartoonist John Miller Baer, the first Representative elected to Congress under the endorsement of the Nonpartisan League, began his first full term on this date in 1917. Baer had been first elected to serve a partial term in 1915, filling the vacancy left by Representative Henry Helgesen. Despite…
In my defense, unlike Wallace the Brave (AMS), I’m retired and don’t have to know what day it is. The post office is closed from noon Saturday until Monday, which is when the Chinese restaurants and barber shops are closed. That’s about it. Now that I’m retired, I don’t get a haircut very often and,…
On Saturday, August 20, the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame will celebrate the third “Saddle of Honor” to be awarded to Montana Cowboy Cartoonist, Wally Badgett. Badgett’s pen name, M.C. Tin Star became the backbone for his popular syndicated cowboy cartoon, Earl. Badgett was inducted into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame in April of…
This Man Overboard is as close to political as I plan to get today, but I’m willing to stand by it. I like the idea that the bigot doesn’t think he’s a bigot, because we’re seeing a lot of that as people nail down their opinions and solidify whatever confirms what they thought before anything…
JD Crowe cuts to the chase and sets up our second day of Uvalde reactions. On his Facebook page, he cites a 2015 tweet as the inspiration: “In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.” — Dan Hodges (@DPJHodges on…