Other Pages in The Daily News
Skip to comments
Movie News
In August 1958 Charlie Brown first took pen to paper to write to a far away friend. That relationship lasted for forty years. Now, as they did with The Little Red-Haired Girl, the animated Peanuts is about to show us Charlie Brown’s mysterious pen pal.
From Mark Kennedy at The Independent:
The identity of Charlie Brown’s long-unseen pen pal, a mystery since the “Peanuts” comic strip debuted in 1950, is finally being revealed. Her name is Mia, a young girl from London of South Asian descent who uses a wheelchair. She will glide into the spotlight in the animated movie “Snoopy Unleashed,” coming to Apple TV in 2027, helping Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the gang explore the essence of friendship…
The Op-Ed Page (“With Apologies To”)
A couple homages this week as Matt Wuerker takes a Thomas Nast cartoon from 1871 to show who’s “Under the Thumb” these days, while Pat Bagley utilizes a Bil Keane The Family Circus concept for a “Felony Circus” (his Facebook title) cartoon.
The Business Section
From Maryann Pugh at MyChesCo:
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United States Mint will begin accepting purchases on Aug. 3 for a three-medal collectible set featuring Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, continuing a multi-year partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery aimed at expanding the Mint’s comic art-themed numismatic offerings.
The introductory collector’s set features the three DC Comics character who starred in their own self-titled comic strips.
The three-medal set contains designs honoring Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, three of the most recognizable characters in the DC Comics portfolio.
But wait the U.S. Mint isn’t just creating sets for hobbists, there are coins for investors.
Beyond the three-medal sets, the program also includes 24-karat gold proof coins and silver medals aimed at collectors and investors.
Book Review
Tim Riley for LA Review of Books reads Johua Kendall’s Trudeau & Doonesbury: A Biography
GARRY TRUDEAU ARRIVED in the daily funny pages in 1970 with rock and roll’s moral clarity in his ears: a refusal to accept the consoling lies of the establishment, a willingness to make older readers uncomfortable, and an instinctive grasp of form and content. Like Jimi Hendrix overturning the national anthem at Woodstock, Trudeau inverted the comic strip itself: a form designed to provide morning comfort became a delivery system for outrage, generational confrontation, and the fury of someone young enough to face the draft lottery but privileged enough to escape it. Joshua Kendall’s new authorized biography, Trudeau & Doonesbury, documents this achievement with thoroughness and affection, but it sidesteps the harder question Trudeau (and rock and roll) now faces: what happens when a revolutionary form gets absorbed into the machine it set out to demolish?
Tim Riley writes about Rock ‘n’ Roll and so this review contains many references to that art form. But he does review the book.
Kendall’s biography documents Trudeau’s achievement with admirable thoroughness, but the unspoken question lies in how much contextual immediacy matters to the Doonesbury experience… Doonesbury functioned as a real-time witness to real people’s choices. Yet much of the cartoon’s righteous anger, while historically justified, rings differently now—not because Trudeau got it wrong but because the political world has moved so far beyond the reach of satire. Trudeau shamed the powerful. But the powerful long ago learned that shame was optional…
That last reads more like a review of the Doonesbury daily reruns rather than the biography.
Society Page
Alex Garcia interviews Las Vegas Sun editorial cartoonist and Gearhead Gertie creator Mike Smith.
This week on Inside the Kingdom, we sit down with cartoonist Mike Smith, the longtime editorial cartoonist for the Las Vegas Sun and the creator of Gearhead Gertie on Comics Kingdom.
Mike has spent decades turning politics, culture, and daily absurdity into sharp, readable cartoons. But alongside his editorial work, he’s also built a very different kind of comic world through Gertie, a NASCAR-obsessed character whose love of racing is less of a hobby and more of a full-contact lifestyle.
In this episode, we talk about Mike’s path into cartooning, what makes a strong editorial cartoon work, how he shifts between political commentary and character-driven humor, and why sports fandom is such fertile ground for comedy. We’ll also get into Las Vegas as a sports town, the Golden Knights, NASCAR culture, reader reactions, and the strange joy of drawing people who are absolutely certain they are right.
People
Fallout continues from the Trump Administration’s retooling of Stars and Stripes.
Liam Scott and Scott Nover for The Washington Post report on the latest (or here).
Jacqueline Smith, the ombudsman for military newspaper Stars and Stripes who was fired in April by the Pentagon, sued the agency on Thursday, alleging that her dismissal was retaliatory and violated her First Amendment rights.
In a complaint filed Thursday in federal court in Washington, Smith said that she was fired 10 days after writing an April 8 opinion column criticizing Pentagon officials for canceling syndicated comics in the paper [emphasis added]. Her three-year term as ombudsman — a congressionally mandated role — was not set to expire until December 2026, the lawsuit said.
Comments