Drawn! had a link a couple of days ago pointing visitors to “Bill Watterson’s Rarest” – a site dedicated to chronicling artwork produced by Bill before and during the Calvin and Hobbes years. They also point to another site Calvin & Hobbes: Magic on Paper which is much of the same, perhaps even more detailed. If you’re a Calvin and Hobbes fan, these are great sites to check out.
Tony Cochran, creator of Agnes will be the next guest cartoonist on the Washington Post’s Meet the Artist chat session. Agnes is in a eight week tryout with the Post and that is the topic of the conversation.Â
Glenn McCoy will be a featured speaker at the Missouri Press Association’s annual convention this September 15th. He’ll talk about the art of editorial cartooning. Glenn produced editorial cartoons that are syndicated through Universal Press as well as the creator of The Duplex and co-creator of The Flying McCoys which he produces with his brother Gary.
Patrick McDonnell (Mutts) has been a big supporter of Animal rights. Not only has he been nominated for a third term on the board of directors of The Humane Society of the United States, but he’s championed programs to reunite lost animals with their owners after Hurricane Katrina. Last year, he ran a six day series depicting the rescue of a dog stranded on a New Orleans rooftop. That series has now been made available as unsigned collectible posters.
Lynn Johnston has a new For Better or For Worse book collection coming out in the coming weeks. This one entitled, She’s Turning Into One Of Them is a daily and Sunday collection and is published through Andrews McMeel Publishing.
The Dallas Morning News recently interviewed Scott Stantis about his Prickly City feature and Scott tells his views on what makes a great comic, what it’s like being married to a ‘liberal,’ and a brief mention of his podcast.
One of the featured cartoonists is Lynn Johnston and her For Better Or For Worse comic. The video interview runs about 14 minutes and is quite interesting – even if you know a lot about Lynn.
Kevin Frank’s Heaven’s Love Thrift Shop continues to get attention from around the country for creating a faith based comic strip this time in a write up John Leland of the New York Times. The NYT interviewed Frank, Brian Walker, and King Feature’s Jay Kennedy and focused on the uniqueness of the feature on the comics page.
I’m a bit late with this, but E&P reported that Creators Syndicate has named three new vice presidents. Marianne Sugawara is not now the vice president of operations, Melissa Lin is now vice president of business affairs, Kathy Kei is now vice president and editorial director, and Andrea Fryrear is the new operations manager.
Okay, the title got you, but Dave Astor does make a pretty bold declaration in a recent column over at Editor and Publisher stating that Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse is the best comic strip. Ever. Better than Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, and other early features such as Little Nemo and Krazy Kat.
Darrin Bell has mentioned on his blog that his feature, Candorville, along with eight other features are part of a comic survey at St. Paul Pioneer Press. Readers are encouraged to vote for their favorite and can vote once a day.
Phi Frank, who draws Farley, one of the few local comic strips left in the U.S., will be the featured speaker at the Yosemite Association’s 31st annual member’s meeting on September 9th at the Pioneer Yosemite History Center in Wawona, Yosemite National Park. He will also be on hand to sign books and sell original drawings.
For those who are not familiar with Farley, here is the wikipedia entry for the feature and artist:Farley is a American comic strip written and drawn by Phil Frank, appearing daily (except Saturday) in the San Francisco Chronicle. The strip originally began in 1975 as Travels With Farley, a nationally syndicated strip, but missing the “timeliness and joy of doing local politics” and dissatified with the four-to-six week lead time required of syndication, switched to working exclusive for the Chronicle, enabling him to quickly mine local events — usually overnight — for his satire.Phil collaborates on The Elderberries with Joe Troise.
The Daily American (PA) is asking readers to rate the comics. The online article didn’t mention which features they currently run, but listed a few that are not in the current line up that might be picked up if survey results are good: Lio, Non Sequitur, The Pajama Diaries, Stone Soup, and Zits.
Last week, I reported that the 60+ year old comic Mary Worth was getting some attention with a new story line of a potential stalker named Aldo. E&P points out that a humorous video called “Aldo Stalks Mary Worth.” It reminds me of the Benny Hill closing credits, but humorous none the less.