King features is launching a new comic strip on November 12 called The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee by John Hambrock. The feature centers around a 10-year old genius named Edison, his family (mom and dad, grandfather) and a talking rat. The strip is described as “An intelligent left-leaning comic strip that masterfully mixes social commentary and humor.”

From the LA Times comes a story that the LA Daily News has laid off the paper’s publisher and 20 others.  The Daily News is home to editorial cartoonist Patrick O’Connor who reports that his job has not been directly affected.  Patrick does mention that the ousted publisher has been a great advocate of his work and as he puts it: “championed my work and stuck up for me when I was under fire.” 

Last week I mentioned that Dinette Set creator Julie Larson had a new book and was out and about doing book signings and speaking events in conjunction with the release of her book. Julie has written in to give me links to photos of the book signing taken the Peoria Journal-Star. Additionally there are other book signings planned. See below.

Tank McNamara creators Jeff Millar (writer) and Bill Hinds (artist) will be awarded a special recognition for visual journalism by The Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University and the Northeastern University School of Journalism on December 4th.

According to E&P, Guy Gilchrist, co-creator of Nancy has started a program called “Cartoonists to Go” which sends professional cartoonists to parties, business gatherings, etc to do portraits and caricatures, cartooning lessons, and temporary tattoos.

From the ComicsDC blog comes news that the Washington Post has returned Cory Thomas‘ Watch Your Head to replace Boondocks.

Farley and Elderbeerries creator Phil Frank will be the recipient the Sausalito Chamber of Commerce’s Lifetime Achievement Award this Friday.  The award is given to an individual for exemplary service to the community.

Comicsreporter.com points us to a story about a Dennis the Menace statue being stolen from a park in Monterey CA.  There is a reward for the arrest and conviction of the mischievous person(s) involved.

A Hector Cantu and Carlos Castellanos‘ Baldo cartoon is reported to may have helped a woman avoid a con-artist scam and catch the two con-artists.  In Woodland CA, a woman was walking out of Wal-Mart and was approached by a woman speaking in Spanish asking for help to find an address and explaining that she had been in an accident and needed to sell some diamonds. A second woman approached the two acting like she had overheard the conversation to ask questions.  The intended victim remembered news about this type of scam from a newspaper article or the Baldo cartoon and left the scene and reported it to authorities.

Back in 1994, Gary Larson produced an animated TV feature called Tales from the Far Side. A copy of the feature has been posted to Google Video where you can view it for free (or at least until they take it down).

Jean Schulz can’t be happy with this.

The Harvard Crimson’s editorial cartoonist, Kathleen Breeden’s editorial cartoons are coming under scrutiny for possible plagiarism.  An unnamed individual informed the the newspaper Saturday and pointed out the similarities of her work with those on Cagle.com.  In question are four cartoons published on September 22nd and October. 11, 18 and 25th.

Mark Anderson points us to an article over in the Chicago Tribune about a Bill Mauldin exhibit that opened up on Friday at the Jean Albano Gallery.  There are some interesting historical tidbits about Bill that I didn’t know, such as:

It’s been a while since I’ve reported on any newspaper industry trends. This article out of the Clickz Network reports that newspapers in September attracted more than 58 million unique readers according to a  Nielsen/NetRatings report.  That is the highest number for newspapers ever.  The increase is attributed to an increase number of video and podcasts produced by newspapers.