Industry news for the professional cartoonist
Candorville (WPWG) reminds me of how much I miss the Olden Days. Not the medieval olden days evoked here, but the Olden Days when most on-line conversation happened on Usenet and most people recognized both the futility of responding to trolls and the wisdom of ignoring them. There was, in that bygone era, something called…
Of the many challenges cartoonists face — rejection, money, drink, or lack of — one of the trickiest is the growing pressure to depict diversity. Nowadays readers often write to publications complaining about the dearth of ethnic minorities in our drawings and demand for cartoons to be more inclusive. Attempts to make cartoon characters more…
Zits (KFS) reminds me that I’m old enough to remember when Frosted Flakes, Sugar Smacks and Sugar Corn Pops seemed to be about the extent of morning junk food. The first fruit-flavored cereal, Trix, appeared in 1954, the year I started kindergarten. But let’s not pretend to be pure: We poured plenty of sugar onto…
If you’ve never seen the 1944 classic “Gaslight,” it’s worth the $3.99 at Amazon Prime, if only for the cast. But watching it will also help you understand why people keep throwing the term around in political terms today. In the movie, Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer) marries Paula Alquest (Ingrid Bergman) and then attempts to…
© The Vancouver Sun Graham Harrop looks as whimsical as you might expect from a cartoonist known for aiming at the funny bone. He seems to have a perpetual wry smile, like he’s hard-wired to see the absurdity of life. On his head, white hair tumbles over his forehead and ears. That he has so…
Scrolling through the Intertubes has, as Joy of Tech points out, become a most unpleasant activity, and yet one to which we seem to have become addicted. One of the elements of that addiction is denial, the “I can quit any time I want to” common to addicts and those alcoholics who have only a…
Joel Pett reflects a mood set by others. Today’s headline puns on a mystic 14th century text in which the writer contends that we can’t know God through intellectual striving and so must approach faith through a more contemplative route. It wasn’t new then and, of course, it isn’t new now, though it is kind…
Editorial cartoonist Barry McWilliams has passed away. Barry Wayne McWilliamsFebruary 2, 1942 – August 14, 2021 From the obituary: America’s ‘best known, least famous’ cartoonist Barry Wayne McWilliams passed away on August 14, 2021, at his home outside Whitehall, Montana. He was 79 years old. Barry began drawing his weekly editorial cartoon, J.P. Doodles,…
Jimmy Margulies (KFS) is as much on the money as possible with this commentary. It’s a bit unclear how he feels about the situation, but that’s also on target, because Biden is behind the eight-ball and the question is why? This isn’t simply my question — It is being asked by a lot of knowledgeable…
Andy Marlette (Creators) offers a challenge that, IMHO, proves something though perhaps not what he intended. I’d be willing to bet that, indeed, most Americans couldn’t find Afghanistan on a map, which you could take as an indication of how little attention we paid to that war. I’d take it further and suggest that it’s…
Pat Byrnes (Cagle) joins the masses, though only to mock their haste to be included. Constant Readers know I’ve been holding back a few days, waiting for things to settle in, which surely can’t mean for the whole thing to be over, just for it to take some kind of form. The Washington Post has…
While we await further development on things that aren’t funny, here’s a look at something that really is. Or will be when it releases in October, but you’ll have forgotten by then, so pre-order it now, from the publisher or at your local bookstore. Joe Dator is a frequent New Yorker contributor, but even…
I’m feeling old and grumpy, but, thanks to Paul Berge, I feel less alone. I was tempted to do an entire blog entry of Saigon Evacuation cartoons, but he posted this on his page and it satisfies the urge, even if it doesn’t quell the frustration. Some of the more recent variations at least acknowledge that…
David Fitzsimmons riffs on the 1893 bronze by German sculptor Hugo Rheinhold, in which an ape contemplates a human skull, while sitting on a stack of books, one of which is by Darwin, the other identifiable text being Genesis 3.5, “Ye shall be as God.” I particularly like it because of the cobwebs on this…
Marc Murphy salutes the new Census data, which shows an actual decrease in the number of non-Hispanic white folks in the US, with a reminder that both apples and their pie are immigrants. Yes, I fact-checked an attorney: Apples originated in what is now Kazakhstan and the pie in England. I’m a non-Hispanic white person,…