© Bill Griffith 2020Of the 126 or so cliché cartoon gags probably none is as well known as the one with a palm tree on a small tract of land sticking up out of the ocean. After all, you aren’t asked what ten CDs you would want if you were abducted by aliens, or to […]
Cartoonist and comics historian Reinhold Reitberger has passed away. Reinhold C. Reitberger December 25, 1946 – June 25, 2021 A cartoonist and comics historian based in Germany, Reinhold and Wolfgang Fuchs’ Anatomy of a Mass Medium, along with George Perry and Alan Aldridge’s Penguin Book of Comics (which I got one within a year of […]
The San Diego Comic-Con has announced the comics writers who will be awarded The Bill Finger Award this year.Comic-Con is proud to announce six writers who contributed greatly to the history of comics have been selected to receive the 2021 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. The selection, made by a […]
Beginning in the Fall of 1951 until the Spring of 1952 The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a series of profiles illustrated by cartoonists who were appearing on their daily and Sunday pages.Over two dozen comic artists contributed original art, caricatures, and photos for the project which ran as a third-page in the Sunday color comics […]
Who would have guessed that Chicago was the birthplace of comics? The exhibition focuses on the origins of the comics in popular publishing, the immeasurable importance of African-American cartoonists and publishing, the first woman cartoonists and editors, the first daily comic strip, and finally the art and comics of undeservedly forgotten Frank King, who with […]
Little Orphan Annie and the Melting Pot Harold Gray has been derided as a conservative, and that he was, but he had a complicated relationship with ethnic figures. He both painted them with limiting stereotypes at the same time as elevating them to heroic status that few other comic strip creators of the era […]
Below are some comic strip and cartoon books scheduled for June 2021 release. Images and links (mostly) via Amazon, though ordering through your local comic or independent book store is a good idea. Scoop Scuttle and His Pals Charlie Brown’s America review Squiggles by Sharon Coping Skills by John Cuneo It’s Life as I See […]
The annual Eisner Awards, in association with the San Diego Comic-Con, have announced the nominees in their various groupings. While there is no exact comic strip or editorial cartoon categories, there are some divisions and nominees to which we can relate among the mostly comic book awards. The most direct comic strip category is […]
Apple TV+ today revealed the trailer and premiere date for its upcoming documentary special, “Who Are You, Charlie Brown?,” set to make its global debut on Friday, June 25 on Apple TV+. Honoring the “everyman” creator, Charles “Sparky” Schulz, “Who Are You, Charlie Brown?” celebrates the significance and global multi-generational popularity of the comic strip […]
In 1905 twenty-year-old Harry Conway (Bud) Fisher left Chicago for San Francisco where he got a job working for de Young’s Chronicle newspaper. It seems his theatrical portraits began appearing in the paper in November of 1905, with his sports cartooning splash coming on November 15, 1905.His caricature of Bob Fitzsimmons, an aging, freckled, knock-kneed […]
Pop Culture scholar and historian M. Thomas Inge has passed away.Milton Thomas (Tom) Inge March 18, 1936 – May 15, 2021 As CBR noted in their subhed: “M. Thomas Inge [was] one of the very first academics to cover comics as a college course and one of the earliest scholarly comics writer[s].”Tom Inge has long […]
Below are some comic strip and cartoon books scheduled for May 2021 release. Images and links (mostly) via Amazon, though ordering through your local comic or independent book store is a good idea. Back Issue #127 We’ll start the book section with a couple filed for May but released in April. Caricature and National Character The […]
Happy Birthday to Lily Renée (Lily Renée Willheim Peters Phillips) born 100 years ago today. Lily joins a few other centenarians on our Senior Strippers list.This seems a good time to update our Senior Strippers roster, cartoonists who for 90+ years continue to survive “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”Below is, […]
Before Working Girl, 9 to 5, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, or even Our Miss Brooks, which each featured single females in the mostly male world of business, there was the groundbreaking Winnie Winkle. She was the iconic working girl of the 20th century, who first appeared on September 20, 1920, in the comic strip […]
Five years ago this week, cartoonist June Brigman took over the iconic newspaper comic strip “Mary Worth,” continuing a popular feature whose roots some say are tied to a Depression-era strip with a lead character of the same name but much different circumstances. Brigman is a veteran illustrator, working on comic books including “Supergirl” (DC) […]