Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax

Quick Hits in a scattershot manner.

Leigh Rubin honored as Rochester Institute of Technology Cartoonist-in-Residence

Rochester Institute of Technology is getting its first cartoonist-in-residence. Leigh Rubin, creator of Rubes, will spend a week on campus in November talking with students at RIT’s College of Art and Design, School of Individualized Studies and College of Liberal Arts about what it takes to be a successful cartoonist — from branding to working with publishers and syndicators.

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle carries the story.

 

 

Funny Ladies: The Changing Landscape of Cartooning

The Society of Illustrators features a panel discussion on October 11.

Since the panelists are all women, we’ll talk about drawing cartoons about feminism and what -if anything- being a woman has to do with any of it. We will argue, whine and dream about how to make a living as a cartoonist in the current landscape… without selling your soul.

Featuring panelists Emily Flake, Amy Hwang, Amy Kurzweil, Sara Lautman, and moderated by Liza Donnelly.

 

 

2019 Best Animated Short Film Oscar: A List of Qualified Films

It’s that time of year again when the Oscar pundits enter the limelight and start making their predictions for the frontrunners in various Academy Award races.

One category you won’t hear anyone “punditing” about though is the Best Animated Short Film category. That’s because we don’t have any pundits in the animation business, and even if we did, none of them would know what’s in contention. Cartoon Brew is committed to solving at least half of that problem.

Amid Amidi and Cartoon Research have been compiling a list all year long of the films that have qualified for the Academy’s Animated Short Film category. Here’s the list of 65 shorts.

 

 

Revisiting The Boondocks in the Trump Era

Michael Taube at Troy Media asks the question –

Could The Boondocks have succeeded in the Trump era?

The Boondocks wasn’t a coming of age strip. It was more like a ‘coming of anger.’

I remember newspaper editors signing up the strip for its “cutting edge” and then being upset because it delivered what it promised.

 

 

“Never screw up the crossword puzzle”

As with the funny pages, the puzzle page has its share of fanatics.

There was one thing he said you could never mess up. He cautiously warned it was an easy thing to screw up because it was a part of the newspaper that seemingly shows up automagically each day, probably done by crafty little Keebler elves with ink-stained hands when no one in the newsroom was looking.

“Never screw up the crossword puzzle,” he told me. “You might get a few calls if you misspell the mayor’s name, but the gates of hell will open if you screw up the answers to the crossword puzzle.”

It made me giggle, but I also suspected he was more right than wrong.

Spokane Spokesman-Review editor Rob Curley wasn’t giggling when, due to illness, he had to change the crossword puzzle:

The next day, I quickly learned our newsroom’s voicemail system can hold 80 messages at a time. And all 80 of the messages on my desk phone were about one thing, with most callers using varying degrees of colorful language.

 

 

Jumble-aya

Speaking of puzzles…

I don’t know how it compares to Peanuts or Garfield or Calvin and Hobbes, but Jumble, That Scrambled Word Game, seems to be holding its own. It has a digest magazine that is published nine times a year and paperback books that are issued at the rate of about four a year.

With 64 years of puzzles to pull from there is no danger of running short of puzzles.

Currently the puzzle is produced by David L. Hoyt and Jeff Knurek.

 

 

Interview with Larry Lieber about The Amazing Spider-Man Comic Strip

Larry Lieber has recently retired from drawing the daily Spider-Man comic strip. Here is an audio interview with Larry reflecting on his decades drawing the strip – confirming Roy Thomas is the current writer, professing his admiration for Stan Drake, and more.

 

 

 

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