There aren’t many days when Cul de Sac couldn’t be in this spot. It’s one of the strips I have to consciously hold back from including too often. But today’s strip, set in the audience of the school’s winter concert, put me on the floor.Notice that, when they have their heads thrown back in laughter, […]
For some reason, today’s “Free Range” took me a minute. I think Tonto’s delighted expression and the word balloon drew my attention so well that I hadn’t even noticed what Kemosabe was up to.I like the ones that sneak up on me.Incidentally, this cartoon also has some resonance with the recent posting on cultural […]
I normally cringe at “absent father” motifs in comic strips because, much as the media loves the villainy of the deadbeat dad, bad parenting is an equal opportunity character flaw. But today’s “Watch Your Head” does more than feature a nice twist consistent with the character of Omar, whose sardonic outlook on life goes beyond […]
Zapiro (Jonathan Shapiro) is one of the giants of political cartooning, though his firm anchor in South Africa makes much of his work a bit inaccessible to outsiders. Having a firm anchor, however, is a key to solid commentary, and, just are there are several African nations in a state of continual flux, so, […]
In this week’s Tom the Dancing Bug, Ruben Bolling brings the Wikileaks case into focus: Although the Nixon White House attempted to keep the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, the Supreme Court ruled against them. And, as he notes, there is a long established tradition that the free press is permitted to […]
The United Nations Correspondents Association has announced the winners of the Ranan Lurie Award for 2010. This brilliant caricature of North Korea’s Kim Jong-il is by Dutch cartoonist Tjeerd Royaards and is only one of 13 cartoons cited for excellence (First, Second, Third place and 10 citations). I chose to highlight it because (A) he […]
Today’s “Frazz” dovetails nicely with yesterday’s rant on popular culture.I’ve got little to add except that I’ve bought card stock and printer ink but am somewhat at a loss for what to put on a card, since, between email, Facebook and blogging, I’m as much in touch with nearly everyone I know as if we […]
In today’s “Sally Forth,” Ces touches upon one of my favorite topics. No, not Christmas, or stockings, or lonely children in need of family structure and certainly not “Roseanne,” but that of cultural references in cartoons.Sally is quite right: A child who was eight years old the last year “Roseanne” was on the air would […]
The Wikileaks cartoons are beginning to hit the comics page. Lots of Wikileaks cartoons. Santa’s list seems to be the most common tie-in.This one by Ward Sutton was pretty good, since the more you know about (A) Wikileaks and (B) Suess’s body of works, the funnier it becomes. Riffing on either is tough to do […]
Today’s “Pardon My Planet” explores the world of silly, ignorant people who don’t understand that some things really are set in stone.There are many things about the controversy over gay couples, gay adoption, gay marriage that I don’t understand, but I’m thinking that the problem is not complexity but simplicity. Once you pass most of […]
Today’s Stone Soup stands up well enough on its own, but to absorb the full effect of the bathos, you have to have been following the saga of “Holly’s boyfriend” since it began nearly a full month ago. We’ve not only gone through the sturm und drang alluded to here of Holly’s mom insisting on […]
I’d just arrived home from the airport last night with a brand-new, nine-week-old puppy, and we were bonding by watching Thursday Night Football on the NFL Network together.This little fellow, innocent as he was the day he was born (October 2), arrived at the Burlington airport late Thursday afternoon, fresh out of Orlando, which means […]
Darrin Bell treads some interesting lines with his strip, “Candorville.” From what little I know of his personal life from Facebook and suchlike, it does, in some ways, reflect what he’s going through, but not in a journalistic sense. Rather than recounting real-life events in the strip, he seems to use them to inform the […]
Derf manages to pack a lot of content into four outsized panels, and it’s tough to comment beyond saying, “Yeah, no kidding.”Yeah. No kidding.And maybe toss in a quick quote.”Though thou shouldest grind a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.” — Proverbs, 27:22
When the glurge and dreck of the season become too much, you can always count on Retail to keep it real. Never mind jokes involving elves — these are the people who really have to deal with the demands of the holidays.The nice thing about Retail is that you don’t have to have put in […]