Scott Stantis seems to be catching up on some hostility for ex-Mayor Lori Lightfoot, in a cartoon that ran shortly after Chicago’s recent elections but well after she was primaried out in February. However, he’s commenting on a long-term problem and I’m catching up on some slightly wilting political events, so we’ll call it even. […]
The relentless corgi stampede continues, and Dr. MacLeod comments on the lack of imagination and creativity that it represents. I know cartoonists who say they never look at each other’s work because they don’t want to be influenced, which, on the one hand, is like Andy Warhol saying he never looked at Hopper or Dali […]
Joel Pett lays out the litany of hate Americans are exposed to on a regular basis and ends by portraying one of the innocent victims of this toxic bile. I can’t be the only person who has so curated his social media and learned to avoid hatemongering broadcasters that I’m not bombarded with this garbage, […]
Stuart Carlson (AMS) picks up on a twisted saying that I’ve just noticed entering the conversation, and which we need to nip in the bud. It’s different than my oft-raged-upon misuse of “rats leaving a sinking ship,” of which I spotted two examples today, both by cartoonists I greatly admire. As noted before, there is […]
Having railed against inaccurate history the other day, let’s relax a bit and note humor that relies on either not knowing much about the topic or not caring about it. If you’re going to read comics at all, you have to have a well-developed willingness to suspend disbelief, not only to accept talking animals but […]
Ed Hall offers a commentary on an item from Dear Leader’s budget, which eliminates funding for Stars and Stripes, the newspaper that has kept the military informed since the Civil War, operating out of the Department of Defense but with full First Amendment rights and a separate congressional ombudsman to protect them. It is, of […]
Sousa and Machado set the scene today, as I try to reconcile history remembered with history in the making. History itself is a slippery thing, and Stephen Dedalus never quite explained his aphorism about history being a nightmare from which he was trying to awake, but, then again, he lived in Ireland, of which Chesterson […]
I heard someone on NPR yesterday say, in the context of the upcoming televised hearings, that a major difference between this scandal and Watergate is that, in the case of Watergate, people watched because they wanted to see the evidence. In this case, people have decided who’s right and who’s wrong and will only be […]
The Sharpie explosion has largely proven that the first gag that comes to you is likely going to be drawn by several other people as well. That makes it an irresistible prompt but a daunting challenge. The first cartoon I saw of using the Sharpie to raise approval rates or otherwise monkey with charts […]
(Rip Kirby) (Big Ben Bolt) Call this the “Juxtaposition of Nagging.” Over in the Vintage section at Comics Kingdom, Rip Kirby is just starting a new adventure, while Ben Bolt is at the climax of another. Offering these classic strips to those who pony up $20 a year to subscribe is better than a tote […]
As my colleague DD Degg noted recently, Stephan Pastis has been getting more philosophical at Pearls Before Swine lately, with his tribute to his dog getting a great deal of attention. This shift means that the strip doesn’t always produce the belly laughs it did when it was new, but it probably wouldn’t anyway. We’re […]
We’re dealing with sub-zero weather moreso than snow, though we got a load of that the other day. Enough to make me laff at this Zits, because I’ve had a VW van and, when your source of heat is the gentle breeze blowing over the engine eight feet behind you, the distinction between wipers that […]
Perhaps the view from a distance is clearer. British cartoonist Brian Adcock manages to freshen the familiar panhandler concept by propping her up against the wall — excuse me, the barrier or, shall we say, steel slats — with her MAGA hat as the receptacle for the charity she needs. Though part of the […]
Jimmy Margulies produces the most concise picture of what we’re facing: Trump’s wall has very little to do with border security and everything to do with his ego. If the topic were border security, he could have come to an agreement with Congress months, perhaps years ago: Both parties take the matter seriously, though only […]
Good Timing Award I got a major Update message the other day from Lenovo, so I don’t know if it was their upgrade or Microsoft’s, but after it was installed, my laptop began freezing up. The next day, I saw an “Update and Shut Down” prompt as I logged off, which made me think they’d […]