Industry news for the professional cartoonist
Capsule Debate Review: Trump didn’t respond to the questions, Biden didn’t respond to Trump, Bash and Tapper just asked the next question on their list as if they weren’t listening either. It was hard not to feel like the young couple invited to spend an evening with George and Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia…
Mike Smith (KFS) begins things by expressing doubt that tonight’s debate will change any votes, and he may be right, not because it won’t be a chance to evaluate the candidates head-to-head but because the people who watch will likely be the people who have already been paying attention. Lisa Benson (Counterpoint) makes much the…
I like Zits (KFS) more when they focus on Jeremy and his friends rather than Jeremy and his parents. Jeremy is a slacker, but he seems to represent all kids in the parental strips while he’s more of a Maynard G. Krebs comic figure alongside his more together pals. This week features a teens-and-jobs story…
Peter Steiner sums it all up. Thank you for coming and don’t forget to tip your waitress. But, no, I’ve never been known to avoid elaboration, and there’s a lot more to be said, even if you shouldn’t say it in Louisiana. Or Texas or Arizona or in any of a number of other places…
It seems appropriate that Madam & Eve, which has of late dwelt entirely on South Africa’s corrupt and discouraging political scene, should offer this suggestion for relief, which applies to everyone in a corrupt and discouraging political scene, which these days feels like pretty much everybody. Besides, one of the 10 Commandments — available soon…
Yesterday, Tom Heintjes, known to comics historians for the magazine Hogan’s Alley, posted on Blue Sky that it was the anniversary of the first “Davy Crockett, Frontiersman” strip in 1955, which set me to pondering. First thing I pondered was that Jim McArdle’s version of Davy Crockett looked about as much like Fess Parker as…
I’m going to let Bill Bramhall’s tribute stand for all the Willie Mays cartoons, most of which took advantage of “The Catch” but too many of which cluttered it up, particularly with Pearly Gates cliches. Bramhall keeps it simple, though I have to chuckle over him giving Mays a blue hat rather than a black…
Too Much Coffeeman brings up the hostility some people have for banjos, which I confess I don’t understand, but which seems to be of a piece with their hostility towards bagpipes and accordions. I’ll confess to not being a big fan of full-sized accordions — forgive me, Myron Floren — but I enjoy a well-played…
Start with the good news, which is that I agree with Dave Granlund’s idea though not with the sense of crisis it suggests. That is, kids shouldn’t get drunk and drive around, but while you can’t stop all of them from doing it, it’s not the issue it was when I graduated (gasp) 57 years…
Stan and Jan Berenstain, the Philly natives who created [The Berenstain Bears], met as art students at the Philadelphia Museum and School of Industrial Arts — most recently known as the University of the Arts. It was during their time there in the 1940s that they honed their illustration skills. Stanley Melvin Berenstain and Janice Marian Grant were…
(Thank you, Clifford Berryman) Pearls Before Swine (AMS) makes an excellent point, though there’s more to it. If you go back half a century, the evening network news was half an hour, but so was the local news and there was another half hour before bedtime, for a total of 90 minutes. Drop back a…
This Carpe Diem (KFS) wouldn’t be funny if everybody lined up their cars properly in parking lots, and so the idea that aliens would visit and start things off by being annoying gets a laugh, though perhaps the nitwits who park across the lines won’t get it. And then there are the overthinkers like me,…
David Ostow is right, and so was my professor, all those years ago. We were reading Hamlet and he led off the day’s discussion by asking what purpose the gravediggers’ scene served. Being sophomores, we knew everything, so we chattered away about rising and falling action and the need for comic relief in a tense…
Jeffrey Lindenblatt’s Paper Trends returns with a survey of the comics page of the year 2000. The Rookies, Biggest Winners and Losers, and the Ranking. ********** While Jeffrey introduced us to the rookies of 2000, Comics Kingdom introduces us to their rookie line-up. We’re celebrating “Graduation Season” at Comics Kingdom and are proud to welcome…
I’m more than a little burned out on upside-downism in cartooning about Justice Alito’s political posturing, though the immediacy with which the examples cascaded makes it more of a coincidence than a matter of redundancy, an event cartoonists once described as a Yahtzee, though I haven’t heard the term in a while. However, I like…