A small on-line contretemps last week reminded me of this classic 1930s Fred Pegram cartoon from Punch. Pegram was an illustrator in the first third of the 20th century who did some cartooning but apparently paid most of his bills with book illustrations and advertising work. His style was not breakthrough but it was excellent, […]
After yesterday’s strip touched off such a long rant, it’s kind of a relief that today’s Piranha Club simply dropped me to the floor in a giggling fit.I often cite the (classic, “real”) Bob Newhart Show for its ability to tease the audience with absolutely predictable jokes, often featuring Howard Borden, where half the fun […]
Bill Hinds takes Cleats away from youth sports for a moment to comment on the comics business, and, specifically, on the stupid “comics polls” that editors use to determine the fates of the strips on their pages.Comics polls are a major source of irritation and frustration for syndicated cartoonists, who hate having their fate determined […]
On the Fastrack, one of Bill Hobrook’s three daily strips (!), is office humor, which tends to be a little tedious, but Hobrook has mitigated that threat by centering on high tech humor and letting the Dagwood/Dithers cliches at least play out in a more focused arena. There are days it is incredibly geeky […]
Wednesday is usually a day for one-off gag strips, because all the story arcs are pretty well in motion and it’s hard to bring readers who haven’t been following them up to date, and they’re not delivering punchlines yet anyway, so there’s really no point in trying.However, Cul de Sac tends to operate on a […]
I can’t be the only person Gary Markstein speaks for.I really want to move back to Colorado, where the states are huge and the media only reaches one of them. Here at the confluence of the White and Connecticut rivers, I would have to expect, at the very least, ads for Vermont and New Hampshire […]
There was always speculation about how much of Cathy was autobiographical, but one thing that was clear was that, as Cathy Guisewhite grew and aged in real life, the cartoon character also went through some transformations.Which brings us to Nemi, who has certainly grown and changed since her heavy-metal self first emerged 13 years ago. […]
The New Adventures of Queen Victoria has a minimalist style, to say the least, and, as a webcomic, a rapid-response capability that print comics should envy.I really like today’s strip, but I suspect that there is a link between the progressives’ penchant for self-criticism and their inability to hold power. Conservative cartoonists never eat their […]
Saturday is often a throw-away day on the comics page. As the day with the lowest circulation, it’s the day where, in a week in which you produced five good gags, you put the sixth strip. However, today there were several good laffs out there, though somehow they all came from a handful of strips […]
For some reason, it seems like I’ve had fewer barrages of offers from cashiers lately for charge cards, affinity cards and to donate to their cause-of-the-month. I’m assuming it’s because they’re tired of being told ‘no,’ and that it isn’t the result of some head office suggestion that they quit badgering the clientele.Such a dim […]
Rhymes with Orange cracks me up on a regular basis, but today’s strip is just wrong.See, the Pillsbury Doughboy is more like a biscuit than a loaf of bread. You don’t slice him. You just take him gently in two hands and then jab your thumbs into his soft little belly, and …
Ben Sargent isn’t the only cartoonist making this point, but I always like his style and I like this particular cartoon. And I do think the issue is critical.I just want the elections to be over so we can go back to beer ads that insult my intelligence instead of political ads which ditto. At […]
Dog Eat Doug has been off on some fantasy excursions lately, which are fun enough to make the strip worth keeping up with, but it came back home today to its roots as a strip about a dog and a baby. And a very good home it is indeed, when simple, appealing art mixes with […]
I was kind of surprised that Columbus Day got so little play in the comics today. Normally, it is cause for a spate of drawings of sardonic Indians making witty New Yorkeresque observations about the new people in the neighborhood.Maybe it’s just as well.But, as today’s Frazz points out, it does put us one-up on […]
By happy circumstance, Mutts was perfectly positioned to take advantage of King Features Syndicate’s decision to mark Breast Cancer Awareness Month by having all their cartoons this Sunday be pink. I love Patrick McDonnell’s Herriman-like artwork, and the fact that he refuses to employ any new technologies, which he discussed in the profile I did […]