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A roundup of news items with comic strips and single panel cartoons, award winning cartoonists interviewed, and book bulletins.
The Legend of Groomer
A brief history of the Groomer comic strip by Ricardo Martínez and Nacho Moreno is recounted by El Mundo America as the comic strip found its way from Spain to North America via Comics Kingdom and being recognized in winning the 2026 Best Online Short Form Comic Strip Silver Reuben this past weekend.
In April 1988, a character representing the average Spaniard, short, half bald, and pot-bellied, landed in a remote place in the galaxy and decided to settle there. That was Goomer, created by Ricardo Martínez and Nacho Moreno, which would live on until the end of 2013. First in El Pequeño País and later in the Magazine of EL MUNDO. But there were fans who, after its end, continued to demand the character’s comic strips.
New Cartoonists at The New Yorker
Michael Maslin reports editor Emma Allen getting two new cartoonists into The New Yorker this week.
Seventeen cartoons, eighteen cartoonists (Ed Steed has the cover). No duos, that we know of. Two newbies: Olivia Pecini, and Steph Lawson. They are the 8th and 9th additions to the cartoonist colosseum this year and the 188th and 189th additions since Emma Allen took the cartoon editor reins in 2017.
This week’s [New Yorker] cartoons (in a slide show)
The Daily Cartoonist usually doesn’t take note of anniversaries that aren’t multiple of ten (or at least five) but since we are already at The Ink Spill TDC thanks Maslin’s efforts keeping the world apprised of New Yorker news for 19 years!
Ink Spill is celebrating its last year as a teenager. It was nineteen years ago this month that I decided to launch the Spill, a place dedicated to The New Yorker, its cartoonists, and their cartoons, past and present…
Stanley Profiled
Staying with The New Yorker cartoonists for one more item: Navied Mahdavian told the world about his dog Stanley as the “guest contributor” to the most recent Op-comic from The Los Angeles Times.
Can’t See The Lost Forest, Trees Are Gone to Books
Still a couple days before TDC’s “Hey Kids! Comics!” monthly installment but here’s some book stuff.
Fred M. Grandinetti, whose knowledge of Popeye may surpass that of Randy Milholland and Scott McCullar, was interviewed Danny Rivers at Classic Gold about his new book Popeye the Sailor: The 1960s TV Cartoons.
In this exclusive interview, Fred shares how his lifelong passion for Popeye began, why the sailor continues to inspire audiences nearly 100 years after his debut, what made the Fleischer cartoons so groundbreaking, surprising discoveries from his research, and why Popeye’s timeless values of courage, honesty, and helping others remain just as relevant today as they were during the Great Depression.
Nat Gertler has his spine realigned.
As some of you know, the color collection of Schulz’s late-1950s newspaper feature It’s Only a Game [link added]that I published in 2013 is a bit weird — namely, the book’s spine is not on the left, as with a normal English book. No, the spine is on the top, and you have to turn pages by flipping them up from the bottom, like a calendar.
Well, I’ve finally managed to publish a less-weird edition of this material… it’s the same comics, the same commentary by Schulz’s assistant on the series Jim Sasseville, but the spine is at the left, like nature intended…
A Field Guide to Ed Dodd‘s Enduring Mark Trail Newspaper Comic Strip
Bernard A. Drew has written a book featuring everything you wanted to know about Mark Trail!
This book is a quintuple biography of the creator and four other artists. It looks at radio programs, magazine appearances, promotional contests, even affectionate parodies.
One more book news item. The above books are available now, this next one is still a couple months away.
Avery Kaplan at The Beat has collected a series of social media posts by Gail Simone, who contributed gags and scripts to The Simpsons comic strip during its 2002 to 2003 run, about working on the comic and with Bongo Comics.
In a series of social media posts made to Bluesky on the morning of Sunday, August 9th, 2026, legendary comics writer Gail Simone shared some of her thoughts on The Simpsons Sunday funnies strip, which was syndicated in newspapers from 1998 through 2004. Simone, who wrote many of the strips, revealed that every Simpsons strip had to feature at least a cameo appearance from one of the members of the Simpsons family… with two exceptions. Can you guess who the two exceptions were?
That cameo appearance rule was apparently in effect during the second run not the first.
Simone also revealed that one of the strips she wrote, which featured Groundskeeper Willie, was Simpsons creator Matt Groening’s favorite.
Ending where we began – with news of a Silver Reuben winner
Last year Tribune Contents Agency took on distributing the former Counterpoint features. Now, a year later they have bragging rights to one of their own as “National Cartoonists Society honors Pedro Molina with Reuben Divisional Award.”
Tribune Content Agency is proud to announce that editorial cartoonist Pedro X. Molina has won the 2025 Reuben Divisional Award for Editorial Cartoons, presented by the National Cartoonists Society.
The Reuben Awards are among the highest honors in the cartooning profession, recognizing outstanding work across categories including comic strips, graphic novels and editorial cartoons.
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