Cartoonists On Parade
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Drew Litton gets more play time, Walden passes the baton to Steve Bissette, that G. B. Trudeau biography, and the question burning in me goes unasked in a Man Martin interview.
Drew Litton Steps Up His Game
Sports cartoonist Drew Litton started a non-sports three-times-a-week comic strip last December for The Vail Daily. This week he informed us via his Facebook page that he has increased the frequency to five days a week. Slippery Slopes is now (beginning May 18, 2026 I think) a Monday through Friday comic strip appearing exclusively in The Vail Daily (click on the e-edition link below the index banner). From Drew:
My Slippery Slopes Comic strip featured in the Vail Daily is now 5 days a week, Monday through Friday.
A Tyrannosaurus Rex in Walden’s Pond
Sarah Andrews tells the story at Waterbury Roundup of outgoing Vermont Cartoon Laureate Tillie Walden passing the title to incoming Vermont Cartoon Laureate Steve Bissette.
The article profiles Steve Bissette and details his intentions as the new Cartoon Laureate.
What do eerie swamp monsters, evil aliens, and larger-than-life dinosaurs have in common? They all come from the mind of Stephen R. Bissette, Vermont’s new Cartoonist Laureate.
The honor was bestowed upon Bissette in April in a ceremony at the Vermont State House, where a formal resolution, co-sponsored by Reps. John Bartholomew, D-Hartland, and Elizabeth Burrows, D-West Windsor, was read.
Passing the torch to Bissette was Tillie Walden of Norwich.
The Unauthorized G.B. Trudeau
Yesterday saw the release Joshua Kendall’s biography of Doonesbury cartoonist Garry B. Trudeau.
Following is a few reviews of the eagerly anticipated book.
Carl Rollyson at The New York Sun (or here):
Joshua Kendall’s beautifully produced book is strewn with many of Mr. Trudeau’s strips, making it much easier on a biographer who does not have to spend pages describing what readers can see. Instead, he writes about the motive forces behind the strip, relying on interviews with Mr. Trudeau and a hundred or so others, friends and critics alike.‘Doonesbury: The Original Yale Cartoons’ published in 1971. The result is a stunning achievement, nearly as delightful and unpretentious as Mr. Trudeau himself. I especially enjoyed Mr. Kendall’s ability to draw his subject out with some nicely wry commentary on himself, even though in the past Mr. Trudeau has been very wary about becoming self-conscious by cooperating with journalists, let alone a biographer.
From The Chicago Tribune’s Rick Kogan via The Porterville Recorder:
“Trudeau & Doonesbury: A Biography: The Cartoonist Who Turned the News Into Art” is due for formal publication on May 26, the first major biography of the man. Written by respected journalist Joshua Kendall, it has 352 pages that have gathered some impressive prepublication praise, such as this from our own Pulitzer Prize-winning Jon Eig of “King: A Life,” “No joke: This is a first-rate work, every bit as smart as it is entertaining.”
It will fill in the many details of a productive and prolific life, and perhaps satisfy some curious minds, even though Kendall writes that Trudeau’s “personal life remains shrouded in mystery. (He) has been called the nation’s ‘most famous unknown person’ and the ‘JD Salinger of comics.’
From David Smith at The Guardian:
“If you want to understand Victorian England, reading a handful of Dickens novels can get you there,” said Joshua Kendall, author of the first major biography of Trudeau. “In the same way about the late 20th and early 21st century, Trudeau has got all these different characters and they’re growing and changing. If you want to see how America evolved from 1970 to 2026 you could do worse than just go through a few Doonesbury collections.”
[Trudeau] started responding [to Kendall] by email and I would ask him about something and he would clarify and his emails were often incredibly witty and terrific. Then he did agree to sit down for some interviews.”
Yet the book remains strictly unauthorised, a condition that Kendall prefers as it allowed him to follow the evidence without requiring the subject’s approval. When they finally met, Kendall found that the man mirrored his creation: “He is like a Doonesbury strip. He is witty and a quick thinker.”
Man Martin Interviewed But The Question Wasn’t Asked
This is a Book of Sentence Diagrams is a book that was released a couple weeks ago. It’s author, cartoonist Man Martin, sat down with Anne Schindler at First Coast Connect to talk about the unconventional book (the Martin interview runs from the 34:30 mark to the 43:30 mark).
Examples of Sentence Diagrams in the book are shown and discussed during the interview – from Donald Rumsfeld’s Unknowns and Knowns quote to Samuel L. Jackson’s Snakes On A Plane.
Not asked or discussed was his Heaven Help Us comic strip and why it ended.
Yes, The Daily Cartoonist has reached out to Mr. Martin with that question without success.
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