When contacted by the Boston Globe about her cameo in Stan Lee’s comic she’s reported to have responded: Lopez said she wouldn’t be caught dead being a reporter, even in a comic strip….  Why don’t you live your own?”If you read the segment, the character Maria Lopez doesn’t even look at all like the TV judge.

The South East Chapter of the National Cartooning Society will be converging on Gainsville (GA) on November 4th for their annual convention (tentative schedule posted on their web site). A selection of artwork by SECNCS members is now on exhibit at Gainsville State College through November 8th.

Jules Feiffer has been honored by the School of Visual Arts on Tuesday of this week.  The school held a reception and dinner in his honor to kick off a new exhibit called The Masters Series: Jules Feiffer.  The exhibit contains works of art that span his 50 year career of cartoons, illustrations and water colors.

In an effort to create buzz around the coming release of the first Girls & Sports book (Opening Lines, Pinky Probes, and L-Bombs: The Girls & Sports Dating and Relationship Playbook), Andrew Feinstein and Justin Borus have created the first Girls & Sports short animation and have posted it on YouTube.

Tom Spurgeon over at Comics Reporter points us to the Diesel Sweeties web site where Rich Stevens, the creator of the web comic Diesel Sweeties (that will be syndicated nationally beginning on January 8, 2007) has received a cease-and-desist letter from LucasFilm LTD regarding a variety of t-shirts that Rich sells on his web site.

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown will be celebrating its 40th anniversary on the air this Friday night. The Halloween special was created after the enormous success of A Charlie Brown Christmas.  Also airing tomorrow night is You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown – another special created in 1972 about Linus running for school president. The show has a Great Pumpkin subplot.

For the second week in a row, an editorial cartoonist has been given the proverbial pink slip.  This time Scott Nychay of the Northwest Herald (Crystal Lake, Il) according the the AAEC. Scott has been with the paper for the last eight years and has won numerous awards for the paper and even helped raise $50,000 for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami victims through reprints of his cartoons.

The list comes out every year and Charles M. Schulz is typically second only to Elvis, but this year’s Forbes list of the Top-Earning Dead Celebrities, Sparky drops to number three as Kurt Cobain comes from out of no where to take the top honor.  Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love sold a 25% stake in Nirvana’s song catalog to a New York music publishing company for a reported $50 million – which put Cobain on the list – at the top.

Last May, Paul Combs announced that he was leaving his editorial cartooning position with the Tampa Tribune to return back to Ohio.  He hinted that there were cartoon related opportunities possibilities awaiting and now Editor & Publisher reports that Paul will be doing three cartoons a week with Tribune Media Services and will also be doing local cartoons for The Crescent-News in Defiance, Ohio.  He’ll continue to do firefighting (his occupation before he got into editorial cartooning).

This third volume of Hank Ketcham’s Complete Dennis the Menace publishes every single panel strip from 1955 and 1956 in one handsome and thick hardcover volume.  Ketchamâ??s legendary pen and ink work achieves its full flowering in this volume as do the various situations and themes that Ketcham would return to: the first â??split screenâ? (two-panel strip) that Ketcham would occasionally use; Dennis actually flirts with a girl; he rats Dad out to Mom; exacerbates confrontations between Dad and the police; and stymies hapless baby-sitters.

Blogcritics has posted an interview with Randy Glasbergen who does the “Better Half” panel.

Cagle has posted news that he’s wrapped up the book The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2007 and that it will be on bookstore shelves before Christmas. The book will have 288 pages and you will also be available in electronic version.  Cagle also addresses a lot of complaints editorial cartoonists have leveled at him over the years about his book.

Six Chix cartoonist Stephanie Piro has a couple of exciting tidbits of news. She has a new book out called, “My Cat Loves Me Naked“. Get it at Amazon.com.

I just spent a half hour reading The Washington Post Magazine’s article on Garry Trudeau called Doonesbury’s War.  In the hectic Monday morning before rushing to work, nothing gets that much attention from me, but this article is well worth my time. I hope you’ll take some time to read it.  As private as Garry is, (and the article will tell you why), I don’t think we’ll see another extended glimpse into his life until he passes away decades from now.

Pat Bagley, editorial cartoonist for the Salt Lake Tribune, has written a third Clueless George book, this one entitled “Clueless George Takes on Liberals!“  His other two books, “Clueless George Goes to War“ and “Clueless George Is Watching You!“ are available on Amazon.com.