Starting out with this morning’s Cornered (AMS), though at first I had nothing to say about it except that it cracked me up. However, Fair Use demands I make some sort of critique, so I probed deeper. First of all, it’s a great spin on the real stories of Dad running over Junior’s bike which […]
I’ll have a couple of dissents in a moment, so we’ll start with a compliment: Check out the final panel in today’s Crabgrass (AMS). The gag is okay, nothing to cut out and frame, but a decent gag, possibly the start of a new story arc. But note that Kevin’s mom is amused, rather than […]
I like cartoons that make demands on their audience, and Andertoons did a lovely job here of requiring readers to recognize a very unusual name and a key indicator of her voice. If you don’t get it, it’s completely explained in the comments, with a few people taking umbrage at not having been spoonfed but […]
Let’s start with our latest and, one hopes, last Cruella update. As I was going through cartoons yesterday at about 4 am here and 9 am in London, I came across this Morten Morland panel with Home Secretary Suella Braverman hanging like the Sword of Damocles over the head of PM Rishi Sunak. I appreciated […]
Caulfield asks a relevant question in today’s Frazz (AMS), and he’s got the excuse of being just a little feller who hasn’t been through this often enough to recognize that the pattern pretty much works the same both ways. Once he’s done a little jet travel, pulled some all-nighters in college or simply lived through […]
If I’m going to use a New England-based Halloween pun in the headline, I should start with a New England-based comic, so here’s Wallace the Brave (AMS)‘s landscape of Snug Harbor, RI, to which I would add that social media has been full of wet blanket discussions of what candy is no good, but the […]
I noted this Edison Lee (KFS) story arc earlier, but Orville the Novelist has been particularly amusing in light of my having written two not-very-good novels myself. There is the obvious barrier of needing to keep the seat of the pants firmly in the seat of the chair, but there is also the barrier of […]
Dark Side of the Horse (AMS) takes a second look at a silly expression and I’m glad I’m not the only person who thinks that dying young doing something pointless is not a good idea. I gather the expression is supposed to balance the values of a short, thrilling life and a long, boring life, […]
We’ll start today with a Free Range (Creators) that doesn’t inspire any Great Thoughts beyond my memories of setting up trade show exhibits. There was a (thankfully brief) time when trade show booths were stretchy nylon over aluminum frames that, with practice, broke down into components that fit into custom-made rollaway trash bins. After you’d […]
Between the death of Queen Elizabeth and the Anniversary of 9/11, things are tedious over on the editorial pages, so we’ll stick to the funnies today. I was surprised to see this Pardon My Planet (KFS) this morning, since sensitivity might have called for pulling it, but, then again, it would have already been sitting […]
Today’s Zits (KFS) illustrates the problem I have with podcasts. It’s not that they’re a collection of belches and farts, exactly, but they tend to be just about that rigorous in the way they’re set up and planned out. There’s already a certain amount of ego involved in thinking people want to know what’s on […]
I was hoping for a day of frivolity, but this Vintage Radio Patrol (KFS) brought me up short, my first reaction being that Lennie Briscoe would do the same damn thing and torpedo the State’s case against her. Next reaction being to examine that middle panel, which reveals that the strip ran in 1940, which […]
I was surprised at how many cartoons were about Christmas this morning. I’d expected some Boxing Day gags and Returning Things gags, but not so many actual Christmas gags. Maybe I compartmentalize too much, or maybe I’m dreading the dead space between now and New Years, when everyone takes off and there’s nothing to comment […]
The past week has been one synchronicity after another. This Joy of Tech cartoon would be valid anytime, but we’re at the very start of autumn and, while the leaves have only just started turning, I am thinking about a run up the Champlain Valley and through the Adirondacks in about three weeks when the […]
Dark Side of the Horse (AMS) on the dumb side of praise. There are a couple ways of looking at this simple cartoon, the first being that paying to be told you’re smart is contradictory, and you can bet that vending machine never shows anything but 160, which is genius level, 100 being average. According […]