Some things noted of recent comic strips. From the last few days of Dan Schkade’s Flash Gordon … comes a sequence that reminded me of another scene: While as 9 Chickweed Lane kicked off a week of definitions I’m reminded that Brooke McEldowney cut off comments on his strip because he could brook no opposing […]
Pope Leo XIV has gained the approval of cartoonist Patrick J. Marrin who, having ended his Francis comic strip with the recent death of Pope Francis, will begin a comic with the new Pope titled The Leo Chronicles. Pat Marrin posted a new, still titled Francis, strip today continuing The Adventures at The Vatican. Pat […]
The real Pope Francis will be the focus of many official and scholarly examinations, but Francis and the other characters in the comic strip will also have a place among other beloved cartoon characters that live forever. A comic strip pope needed Francis, the real pope, human, humble, open to real people, wearing the face […]
With the death of Pope Francis so also comes the end (apparently) of Patrick J. Marrin’s Francis comic, though nothing official has been announce as far as I know. The Lambiek Comiclopedia entry for Pat Marrin has a detailed history of the Francis comic strip: On 13 March 2013, the Argentinean Bishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio […]
Not sure either event is particularly “inspiring” except to the wrong people, but Brewster Rockit (Tribune) does a good job of choosing the finalists and summing up the year, and I think he made the right choice. The election was like finding out your lover has been cheating on you. On the one hand, you’re […]
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 […]
The second Saturday in May would be graduation on a lot of campuses, and it probably still is, since the ones without problems haven’t made the news. Jeff Stahler (AMS) leads off today because he states the basic issue plainly. But I need to start with a disclaimer: I skipped my graduation ceremony, because I […]
Brewster Rockit (Tribune) gets to lead off for a second day in a row, having shifted from the informational back to the absurd. As noted, I stayed home rather than driving the four hours to my old digs in the Adirondacks, and I missed both totality and a good party, but we had a nice […]
Wilbur gets as political today as I want to, given that I’m recovering from that lost hour of sleep and also am bracing myself for a flood of Katie Britt panels that are sure to hit over the next 24 hours. In the meantime, I appreciate someone who can combine a cartooning cliche with a […]
I’m trying to be more productive than the fellow in Matt’s cartoon, but there does seem to be a lot of letdown in the actual week we’re going through. I’m going to assume things will pick up along about the Eighth Day of Christmas. Which is Maids A-Milking and let’s hope we do better than […]
It’s always nice to get the family together for the holidays, and here they are before they went Hollywood. As for the current holiday, Greg Kearney noted the downpour in Maine, which was worse than we had it next door, but we also had some power failures and erasure of snow-making on the ski hills […]
Francis (AMS) combines the dread news of the new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with the beginning of Ramadan to make a point about the sudden urge to Do Something as compared to having an ongoing tradition of Doing Something. Ramadan began this week, but, of course, an observant Muslim like Gabby […]
Frazz (AMS) brings back one of the more delightful memories of college this time of year: The first wisps of snow that brought out the freshmen from Florida and California decked in every stitch of winter parkas, hats and mittens they had brought to Indiana. At which those of us who had, perhaps, put on […]
Tank McNamara (AMS) sets the stage with a straightforward explanation of how we allow ourselves to be exploited. In 1980, Jimmy Carter pulled the United States out of the Moscow Olympics to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, and the US was joined by 64 other countries. It was a major embarrassment for the […]
Patrick Chappatte’s cartoon provides a warm-up exercise today. The latest Bond film is on the verge of release in theaters only, which may avoid some issues but why avoid controversy when, as Chappatte puts it, the mission is to resuscitate the audience? So, having previously gotten everyone riled up about Bond becoming Black, the latest […]