Brant Parker, co-creator of The Wizard of Id died yesterday at the age of 86 in Lynchburg Va. His death was preceded only by 8 days of Johnny Hart, the other creator of Wizard of Id. “Id” will be continued by his son, Jeff, who has been working on the feature since 1997.

A new Rose is Rose collection is due out this month entitled The Enchanted Rose. This is the second book collection since Don Wimmer began contributing to Pat Brady’s comic feature. The book retails for $12.95, but you can buy it at amazon.com for about $10.36 and support his site.

Mike Lester, editorial cartoonist for the Rome News-Tribune, has won the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for excellence in journalism.Regarding his entry, the judges note: “We felt Mike Lester’s editorial cartoons for the Rome News-Tribune showed a unique, breezy and consistent style. Each panel was strong and wry while commenting on important […]

Prickly City creator Scott Stantis will be a featured speaker on First Amendment protection for media on May 4th in Kansas City. The forum is part of the 20th Media and Law Seminar.

King Features is set to launch a new comic feature on May 6th called My Cage – a manga-influenced strip by Melissa DeJesus (artist) and Ed Power (writer). From the press release: The strip’s name is a parody of the monolithic “My Space” social networking site and is comprised of vignettes that explore the trials […]

Pat Bagley, the editorial cartoonist with the Salt Lake Tribune, recently spoke at the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah where he spoke about the unique, and ripe culture for cartooning that Utah provides. Bush has “been good for me because he’s radicalized me,” Bagley said. “I used to be kind of […]

According to E&P, Ray Billingsley, creator of Curtis will be the next guest on Bob Andelman’s “Fridays with Mr. Media” blog. The topic for the day will be “the unique pressures on African-American cartoonists” and last’s month’s death of King Editor in Chief Jay Kennedy.” You can check out the blog by going to mrmedia.com

Berkeley Breathed, creator of Bloom County, Outland, and Opus is coming out with a new children’s book called Mars Needs Moms and will be promoting the book at various locations around the country. Here are the dates and times so far:Friday, May 4th, 7pm, Willow Book & Caf, 279 Great Road, Acton, MA 01720Saturday, May […]

Bill Griffith uses his Zippy the Pinhead comic to pay tribute to Jay Kennedy who died last month while vacationing in Costa Rica.On a Zippy related note, Bill will be speaking at Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus according to E&P. His topic: “Up from the Underground with Zippy: 38 Years and Still Climbing.”

I enjoyed this article by Stew Rieckman, executive editor of The Northwestern (Oshkosh WI), who related his readership’s response after he gave a local cartoonist a 30 day trial run on the funny pages – more or less to be a nice guy. His readership became verbally abusive when the new strip took Crankshaft’s place. […]

Johnny Hart, age 76, has died Saturday from a stroke at his drawing board in Nineveh, NY. Johnny is the creator of B.C. and The Wizard of Id. From an Washington Post story about Johnny’s history: John Lewis Hart, a firefighter’s son, was born Feb. 18, 1931, in Endicott, N.Y. As a child, he said […]

Darrin Bell and Matt Richtel have redesigned their Rudy Park web site and have added a new feature called “Ask Sadie” (the octogenarian character). From E&P we learn that the two have received about 40 questions so far. The “Rudy Park” writer joked that Sadie, because of her “rigid schedule,” would “prefer if people writing […]

Milton Caniff seems to be the big rage this year – and deservedly so. It was his collection that jump-started the OSU Cartoon Research Library that is celebrating it’s 30th anniversary and will focus on Milton this October during the Festival of Cartoon Art, R.C. Harvey is writing Milton’s biography, and Humorous Maximus received permission […]

The Des Moines Register’s Brian Duffy appears in a video on the paper’s web site about how he creates his cartoons. It runs a couple of minutes, but there are some cool things to learn. The video states that Brian’s cartoons appear on the front page. And you’ll see Brian working with a crow-quill pen […]

The Jewish Exponent covered a recent speaking engagement with Tony Auth, the editorial cartoonist for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Tony shared some of his work from his 30 year career with the Inquirer and since he was speaking at a Jewish gathering, he talked about some of the controversies that have been raised due to his […]