Since the name of Thomas Nast came up the other day, let’s make note that it was 160 Christmases ago that he drew his first Santa Claus leading the way to form the modern image of the saintly symbol.Thomas Nast’s first Santa appeared as the cover of Harper’s Weekly dated January 3, 1863.Before Nast envisioning […]
Cartoonist Mike Peters is taking his Mother Goose & Grimm comic strip and his editorial cartoons from King Features Syndicate (KFS) to Andrews McMeel Syndication (AMS) at the beginning of 2023. Andrews McMeel announced the move yesterday: Kansas City, MO (December 20, 2022) – Andrews McMeel Syndication (AMS) will assume sales and distribution of the Mother […]
Hogan’s Alley and Tom Heintjes remind us that it was on this day, in a 1959 Peanuts Sunday comic strip, Linus first recited a passage from The Gospel of Luke.Six years later Linus’ expanded recital of Luke 2:8-14 would become a memorable part of A Charlie Brown Christmas. It almost didn’t happen but for Charles […]
The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists President Kevin Necessary has issued an open letter to the Overseas Press Club of America with an excellent proposal. I write to you today to advocate for a change to the cartoon category. The current OCPA award is now virtually the only category not to be named after a […]
What started as the humorous misadventures of the teens from Westview High School eventually morphed into a serialized drama tackling issues such as cancer awareness and teen pregnancy. After 50 years Tom Batiuk will end his Funky Winkerbean comic strip at the end of this month. I like to describe it as starting out as […]
Each year the Cartoonist Studio Prize will be awarded to work that exemplifies excellence in cartooning. The creators of two exceptional comics for this year will be awarded $1,000 each. The winners will be selected by The Beat and The Schulz Library staff at The Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS). The two award categories for […]
The New York Times created a social media storm when their Sunday crossword puzzle layout for December 18, 2022 (the first day of Hanukkah) formed, without too much imagination, a swastika. From The Jerusalem Post: The New York Times on released its daily crossword puzzle in the shape of swastika on Sunday, Democratic Strategist Keith Edwards […]
Slylock Fox daily is ringing out 2022 the way Slylock Fox Sunday rang in 2022.Very early in 2022 a new signature appeared on the Slylock Fox Sunday page, now that same WEBER/scottu signature has shown up on the Slylock Fox daily.The December 19, 2022 Monday Slylock Fox has Scott Diggs Underwood co-signing Slylock in what […]
The Daily Cartoonist (TDC) is in the midst of a disruption of sorts(that brief outage the other day was actually a sign of progress).The subscription service TDC used was dropped by Google earlier this year and we are in the process of getting it back up. The Google feed was a free service and, The […]
Oregonian Editor Therese Bottomly received a complaint from a reader: The other weekend, I received an email from an unhappy reader whose morning routine had been disrupted. “Neither on Saturday nor today (Sunday) have the comics I cherish appeared online,” he said. “What happened?” Therese explained these days more information is needed to pin down […]
One hundred years ago there was one woman drawing and directing animated films.From animation historian Jerry Beck: In the earliest days of the animation industry, one woman animated and directed alongside the men who later became titans of the artform, yet her name and work have been lost – until now. The discovery of this […]
The artist who designed NFT digital cards with “amazing ART of [Donald Trump’s] Life & Career” is Clark Mitchell.Above: Representation of Trump’s heartfelt speech welcoming the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. The call for countries to send the wretched refuse, the homeless, and the tempest-tost to him. Only one of many famous moments in […]
The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists has posted their 2023 list of major national journalism awards given to cartoonists. The AAEC notes: For various and sundry reasons, we are sending this list now for your future reference, before most of the contests have announced their 2023 deadlines or changes in their rules. As […]
Famed British illustrator Sir Quentin Blake has many honors –as detailed in his entry at the Lambiek Comiclopedia: Throughout his career, Blake has been covered in prizes. His illustrations for Russell Hoban’s ‘How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen’ won the Whitbread Award (1974), while his work in Michael Rosen’s ‘Sad Book’ was […]
Harry Bliss is ready to retire. At least, he might be. Maybe. Sitting across from a crackling woodstove in the cluttered but cozy wood-paneled living room of his Cornish, N.H., cottage, the 58-year-old New Yorker cartoonist and part-time Vermonter turned reflective as a reporter peppered him with questions about his life and career. Behind a […]