“Watch Your Head” is one of the most character-driven strips out there, with a cast of a half-dozen students at fictional Oliver Otis University, a thinly disguised stand-in for artist Cory Thomas’s alma mater, Howard.It’s not clear what year everyone is, since they are in Comic Strip Time and, like comic strip students everywhere, begin […]
Cul de Sac is on my short list of strips to avoid using every day, to the point where I probably don’t use it some times when it deserves to be here for fear that I’ll start using it way too often, and also for fear that the next day’s offering will be even more […]
Doonesbury continues to explore the gap between the privileged kids who head off to private, four-year colleges after high school, and the working class stiffs who end up in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and trailer parks.Alex should be embarrassed over her lack of empathy for Leo when it comes to goals, but I wouldn’t be […]
The Charlie Sheen phenomenon has gone from curious to overdone in a very short time. There have been a couple of genuinely inventive applications of his disjointed comments — notably the sequence of cat photos at Medium Large and the Peanuts parody by Jimmy Kimmel’s crew — but it is, at heart, a freak show […]
Oliver Schopf, cartoonist for the Standard of Vienna, entitles this beautiful strip “Fata Morgana,” and the reflections just before the Promised Land do indeed suggest a mirage.Which does a very nice job of setting us up with a promise and then dashing our hopes, bringing about a truly brilliant level of empathy with those […]
Tom Toles has won the Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning, which is particularly sweet given that he took over Herb Block’s spot at the Washington Post after that legendary cartoonist’s death.The Post is also home to one of the better comics columns and Michael Cavna’s write-up on this is the definitive report, and, best of […]
*Phew!*After a rant like yesterday’s, it’s good to just relax with something really, really stupid, like today’s Pros & Cons.Best part is that Stan doesn’t even pause in what he’s doing, much less look over. You can see in the second panel that he did hear what was said, but he’s apparently been there before.Kieran […]
Candorville this week is chronicling (heh heh) the death spiral of the newspaper industry.There haven’t been a lot of points over the past eight or 10 years where this story arc wouldn’t be somewhat timely, but it’s particularly so this week, given that the NY Daily News just slashed its comics by 33 percent and […]
Comics Reporter spotlighted this timely blog entry on the recent earthquake in New Zealand. This is only the first of several multi-panel pieces that comprise the blog entry, so go have a look at the rest.The blogger/cartoonist/writer/graphic designer, Sarah E. Laing, lives in Auckland and her blog is a reflection on whatever crosses her path, […]
I’ve been waiting for a “Sinfest” to come along that (first criterion) was worthy of being named CSOTD and (second criterion) would be comprehensible to newcomers and (finally) wouldn’t offend people who had not before come across this Manichean delight.There have been many, many that satisfied the first criterion. This is a brilliantly conceived and […]
Ed Stein may be waxing nostalgic this week, as his new strip, “Freshly Squeezed,” shifts focus from the home to the office, where everyone except ownership is preparing to do more with less.”Freshly Squeezed” is a spinoff from “Denver Square,” a strip Ed did for The Rocky Mountain News for about a decade. Launched September […]
Journalist and cartoonist Joe Sacco gave a talk at Dartmouth last night, as part of a visit for the Center for Cartoon Studies across the state line in White River Junction. It was worth going to, and worth breaking with our usual format to report on. In his books, Sacco provides stark but human […]
Speaking of comic strips that could be featured here just about every day, Frazz is one of the most consistently intelligent, funny and thought-provoking cartoons out there. Jef Mallett, who not only competes in triathlons but has written (and, of course, illustrated) a book about them, does sometimes hit on physical fitness more often than […]
I have, in the back of my mind, a small list of strips which I need to be aware of not featuring too often. In part, it’s because part of what I like to do is to introduce new strips to readers, and in part it’s because I don’t want the blog to become too […]
One of those rare two-fers, in part because I don’t think this general topic is going away soon but I don’t want to turn into a one-issue blog, and in part because, while I like both cartoons, they feature different but critical takes on the issue.At the top, Clay Jones goes after the alleged […]