Saturday Briefing

Morten Morland, a frequent Mike Peterson choice, has been named The Press Awards’ Cartoonist of the Year.

Hat tip to Bado’s Blog for the notice and a Morland gallery.

Dark Horse and Yoe Books Present “Cartoonists Against Racism: The Secret Jewish War on Bigotry”

Cartoonists Against Racism tells the remarkable unknown story of how a Jewish organization enlisted some of America’s most beloved cartoonists to undertake a nationwide campaign against bigotry in the 1940s and 1950s.

… authored by Holocaust scholar Dr. Rafael Medoff and award-winning comics and cartooning historian Craig Yoe.

The book showcases impactful anti-racism artwork from the era’s preeminent cartoonists, including multiple Pulitzer Prize winners Bill Mauldin and Vaughn Shoemaker; New Yorker cartoonists Carl Rose, Mischa Richter, and Frank Hanley; famed antiwar cartoonist Robert Osborn; Dave Berg of Mad magazine; renowned sports cartoonist Willard Mullin; noted labor cartoonist Bernard Seaman; comics artist Mac Raboy (Flash Gordon, Captain Marvel Jr.); and Eric Godal, who escaped from Nazi Germany and became a leading cartoonist in the American press.

Remastered 1940s SUPERMAN Shorts Coming To Digital HD & Blu-Ray

Warner Bros. Discovery has painstakingly restored Max Fleischer’s beloved collection of 17 animated Superman shorts from the original 35mm source material. These animated shorts, known as Max Fleischer’s Superman 1941-1943, will be available for purchase digitally in HD and on Blu-ray beginning May 16th, 2023.

Warner Bros. Discovery utilized an advanced remastering process that began with a 4K, 16-bit scan of Fleischer’s original 35mm successive exposure negative. The highest quality raw image was then scanned while maintaining the original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.37-to-1. Utilizing special proprietary software, the successive exposure Technicolor negatives were merged into a single RGB color image, resulting in pristine animated shorts that have been restored to the animators’ originally intended production quality.

Jason Chatfield confesses: Larry David Hated My Caricature of Him

“Katie Couric wants you to draw a caricature of Larry David for the wall at Sardi’s. She would like to present it to him at the restaurant, live on her show.”

… 26 years on, the only thing I love more than drawing school gardeners is watching Larry David do literally anything. It was with immense anxiety, then, that I accepted the most intimidating commission of my life.

The job came through a fellow New York cartoonist, Ed Steckley. He passed the job on knowing full well my eyes would pop out of my head when I read the brief.

Perhaps Ed Steckley was busy with The 2023 Alfred E. Neuman Birthday Auction poster.

Tim Johnson supplies the full poster of caricatured “idiots” and the catalog of items for auction.

– The majority of the items in this auction come from the collections of some very important former staff members of MAD Magazine. They are: Annie Gaines Ashton, John Ficarra, Joe Raiola, the family of Nick Meglin, the family of Frank Jacobs, and two anonymous members of the Usual Gang of Idiots.

– I would also like to thank artist, Ed Steckley, on his exceptional talent for the cover art of the catalog.

– Lastly, a big “THANK YOU” to Doug Gilford, who continues to host my MAD Auction catalogs on his website.
Thank you, Doug!

Gannett shed nearly half its workforce since GateHouse merger

Axios reports:

A major leadership shakeup at Gannett, along with drastic cost-cutting and strategy shifts, underscores just how much pressure the country’s largest newspaper company is facing as it tries to appease stockholders and remain independent.

Why it matters: The debt accrued from its merger with GateHouse has forced Gannett to dramatically cut costs and bring its employee count nearly back to what it was prior to the 2019 deal.

By the numbers

Top