Like Baldo Smudge, Stanley Ford is a fictitious comic strip cartoonist.Stanley Ford is the main character in the 1965 movie How to Murder your Wife, starring Jack Lemmon as the cartoonist. Stanley Ford is the highly successful creator of an action/adventure comic strip featuring secret agent Bash Brannigan.That all changes when Stanley, and inevitably, Bash […]
Jimmy Margulies produces the most concise picture of what we’re facing: Trump’s wall has very little to do with border security and everything to do with his ego.If the topic were border security, he could have come to an agreement with Congress months, perhaps years ago: Both parties take the matter seriously, though only one […]
One benefit of the “Friday Funnies” is that not only can I use comics from the past week that didn’t fit on the day they ran, but sometimes they roll around in my head and gain additional meaning.In this case, Pajama Diaries provided a nice rundown on the chaos of modern pictures, but it was […]
Lincoln Peirce is in the news with his new book Max and the MidKnights. Publishers Weekly interviews Lincoln about the book and his Big Nate comic strip.One topic brought up is what to call this not-prose, not graphic novel type of literature: Despite your new book’s departure in setting and genre, the pages echo the […]
Good Timing AwardI got a major Update message the other day from Lenovo, so I don’t know if it was their upgrade or Microsoft’s, but after it was installed, my laptop began freezing up.The next day, I saw an “Update and Shut Down” prompt as I logged off, which made me think they’d found and […]
A New York Times summary of a recent Authors Guild survey regarding the income of writers these days, and finding the median is below poverty levels..The survey showed a shift in book earnings to other writing-related activities, such as speaking engagements, book reviewing or teaching. Including those sources, respondents who identified themselves as full-time book […]
When Brian Fies lost his house in the wildfires of 2017, his friends were appropriately horrified.When, shortly thereafter, he produced a short, multi-panel cartoon memoir of the disaster, however, I will confess to a bit of joy, in part because I knew that was how my friend heals, and in part because, we all admitted […]
Next month is February and some publishers are preparing Valentine’s gifts for us.The long awaited and always greatly anticipated Hogan’s Alley magazine is due in your local comic book shop on February 27, 2019. Tom Heintjes has generously shared the cover and contents page of issue #22 with comics fans.An earlier gift is the new […]
Judge Parker threatens to become self-aware, likely because Francesco Marciuliano, who also writes “Sally Forth,” is writing the stories.Sally Forth has made shattering the fourth wall an ongoing feature, and that’s fine there but I’d hate to see it here. However, if Ronnie’s caustic grasp on normalcy becomes the catalyst that brings it down to […]
update – January 7, 2019As noted by Les Taylor (comment #63) the Boston Globe has heard the chorus of complaints and relented, somewhat.The uproar even made the local TV news.They put a notice in the January 7, 2019 edition of The Globe:Regarding the cut comics and puzzles they are “planning to restore some of them.” […]
Let’s have the teacher/cartoonist, Mr Fitz, lead off today.He not only raises an important question but suggests several subtopics.To start with, a lot of art proceeds from troubled souls, and if you’re going to refuse to study works by unpleasant people, you won’t have a whole lot left to work with. Even those schlocky sad-eyed […]
The NEW Alley Oop by Joey Alison Sayers and Jonathan Lemon begins now, January 7, 2019!And coming Sunday January 13, 2019 = Li’l Oop! UPDATEOn the occasion of the new Alley Oop Stephen Roth at GoComics interviews writer Joey Alison Sayers and artist Jonathan Lemon.The new creators expand on how they see their version of Alley […]
90 years ago, on January 7, 1929, there debuted two important comic strips. The Tarzan comic strip was covered here, so let’s go back to the future with Buck Rogers.Anthony Rogers first appeared in the science fiction story Armageddon 2419 A.D. by Philip Francis Nowlan in the August 1928 cover dated issue of Amazing Stories. […]
After 20 years in suspended animation copyrights have expired on works created in 1923. Congress, bowing to pressure from a few corporations, extended U. S. copyright rights from 75 years to 95 years in 1998. Some details of the results can be read here and here and here.Some creations never had their copyrights renewed under […]
Some serious thoughts, some purely silly ones, but starting with a good insight by John Cole into the impact of the shutdown.There have been several cartoons commenting on the fact that our National Parks are unable to service their trash cans and washrooms, and I’m certainly not going to dismiss that.But I don’t see a […]