Mike Peterson

Maybe today’s “Off the Mark” hit me right because there’s a work day tomorrow at the dog park. Hey, I like topical humor!

Vic Lee’s “Pardon My Planet” is a social-commentary panel that mixes observational humor with straight-up gags. Think of a New Yorker cartoon with a little more grit and a little less sense of entitlement. There is a permanent cast, but they’re more of a rep company than established characters — each has a personality but […]

This blog has been around long enough that Faithful Readers may have picked up a pattern, specifically that I put a premium on timing and silliness. For instance, the (real) Bob Newhart Show often had Bob say, “I just want a quiet evening with no interruptions, Emily,” and you knew beyond any possibility of surprise […]

This would probably be a good week to check in at Sherman’s Lagoon.I went to a Renaissance Festival ™ in the early 80s when my kids were young enough to have a good time there. And it was educational for all of us. We learned that medieval people were kind of annoying. In an amusing, […]

Newspaper folks have always been known for their dark humor. There’s more than enough of that to do around these days, and Darrin Bell taps into some for “Candorville.”Any attempt on my part to comment would result in a tirade. Never mind. Darrin’s got it.

This is a profile I did of “Cleats” creator Bill Hinds that ran January 20, 2003, in the Post-Star, Glens Falls, NY Bill Hinds was a hit with your kids before he even began writing and drawing “Cleats.”Surprised?Though known among grown-ups as the artist half of the “Tank McNamara” sports-oriented comic strip, Hinds is also […]

Doonesbury wraps up a week in which Zonker attended a Tea Party rally and found kindred spirits. For those of us who remember the old days, this was a funny sequence because of a basic journalistic truth: The camera loves the craziest people present. And so does Zonker.And it’s so nice to see Zonker and […]

The farther apartheid fades into the past, the harder it can be to follow the sharp social satire of “Madame & Eve,” a groundbreaking cartoon from South Africa. Born in 1992 along with the “new” South Africa, this story of a middleclass white woman and her black maid (or, in this particular strip, the little […]

Kieran Meehan serves up another gem in Pros and Cons. What I particularly like about this strip is the combination of convicts who are utterly convinced of the logic of their arguments with the utterly deadpan response of the lawyer. Any sign of dismay would kill this joke on the spot.

There is a saying in cartooning that good writing can save bad art but that good art won’t save bad writing. Not an issue for Keith Knight, who has a rare talent for combining hilarious art with solid observational humor. This gag simply would not work if (A) the expressions on the baby weren’t so […]

Norm Feuti’s “Retail” is one of the mysteries of the newspaper industry — a funny strip about working at the mall, a theme that taps right into the desirable 18-to-24 age group with the attitude that makes movies like “Office Space” and “Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle” instant classics. And yet it hasn’t […]

There is a small kerfuffle going on in the comics world because Wiley Miller’s Non Sequitur is up for a National Cartoonists Society Award for “Best Comic Strip,” and some people think it should only be eligible for “Best Panel.” Actually, it’s sometimes a panel and sometimes a strip, and Wiley entered some panels in […]

(I wrote this profile of Frazz cartoonist Jef Mallett in 2003 for the Post-Star of Glens Falls, NY)”Frazz is who I would be, if I were about 100 times cooler,” Jef Mallett admits.The parallel is purely intentional. Like the cartoon janitor of his school-based comic strip, Mallett is a lifelong learner who has always preferred […]

As it happens, March has been an oddity in this part of the world. We managed to duck the worst of the spring storms with only one day-long power outage, but everyone remains braced for that final blast of branch-busting winter snow, and will likely remain that way until either the storm hits or May, […]

Jan Eliot’s “Stone Soup” is, quietly, one of the smartest strips out there. It’s not exactly based on her life, but she went through some rough spots and, as in the folk tale for which the strip is named, got by with a little of this and a little of that. Jan reports that, to […]