Industry news for the professional cartoonist
It’s National Grammar Day, and Day By Dave (AMS) celebrates it by dragging fingernails across a blackboard. Using “should of” for “should have” is not a grammatical error, dammit. It’s a usage error. Or, if you really want to shut them up, point out that it’s a case of catachresis. And note, that, as it…
I don’t know how things are working in Ireland, but the couple in this Graeme Keyes cartoon would have to die quickly if they were Americans. The soaring prices of housing have, indeed, barred many people from homeownership, though much of it is the massive chunk of change required for a down payment. But I’d…
I wasn’t looking for anything too brain-involved today, and so the predictable foolishness of Sherman’s Lagoon (AMS) seemed just right. But even the funny stuff involves thought. Example: “Predictable foolishness” is different than repetitive or monotonous foolishness. There are all sorts of strips which simply repackage the same few gags in different settings. “Predictable foolishness,”…
I might have saved this Non Sequitur (AMS) for a day of political cartooning, but, instead, I’m using it to introduce a comedy/editorial mashup. We’ve always had “alternative facts,” but we’ve only weaponized them recently. There were people who believed fluoride was a communist plot and that Elvis was alive, but they were dismissed as…
For a change of pace it is GoComics being problematic not Comics Kingdom. We here at The Daily Cartoonist have no idea what’s gone haywire or how long the problem will exist. But here are some other places to find SOME of the Andrews McMeel Syndicate strips online. Also where to find the other syndicate…
A number of new content comic strips that Creators Syndicate holds the copyright to have not been updated to GoComics since Sunday November 6. Diamond Lil, Dogs of C Kennel, Heathcliff, Scary Gary, Strange Brew, The Barn, and Zack Hill are among the comics not updated to the GoComics site for the past two days….
They Can Talk provides an excellent starting point for contemplating cartoons that remind me of other things, because, by playing on the social tendencies of cats and dogs, it mirrors those tendencies within ourselves, which is how good comedy works. It’s allied to the half-empty/half-full glass trope, except that that classic division between optimists and…
My distaste for awards is sort of a running gag here, and this Sherman’s Lagoon (AMS) pretty well sums it up. It reminded me of an item in the late Charley Stough’s “B.O.N.G. Bulletin” — a periodic on-line roundup of news, gossip and jokes from the mythical Burned Out Newscreatures Guild — about a for-real…
We’re avoiding politics today, but that doesn’t mean unbridled frivolity. Betty (AMS) brings up a thorny question, which is how to be fair to workers without encouraging predatory management? Before we were bullied by card readers, hopeful counter help put out tip jars. You still see those, but now that nobody carries cash anymore, there’s…
The best part of this Daddy’s Home (Creators) is that he’s right, sort of. That is, we shouldn’t believe what they say, because we all use more than 10 percent of our brain, though the people who keep saying this perhaps do not. It’s appropriate that she’s on her laptop, because that’s a flowing river…
We’re working today on the premise that cartoons can contain a lot of truth, and starting with Wallace the Brave (AMS) because, yes, at the age of 11, I got lost in the woods, came upon another set of snowshoe tracks and began following them. The humor here, of course, is Wallace’s theory, which he…
I don’t know how far ahead Jef Mallett works on Frazz (AMS), but he hit this one squarely: Michigan, where he lives, looks to be hovering around freezing for the next week but in no particular danger of snow before Christmas. Here in New Hampshire, we got just under a foot yesterday and it seems…
Candorville (WPWG) reminds me of how much I miss the Olden Days. Not the medieval olden days evoked here, but the Olden Days when most on-line conversation happened on Usenet and most people recognized both the futility of responding to trolls and the wisdom of ignoring them. There was, in that bygone era, something called…
Daddy’s Home (Creators) puts me in mind of “The Archie Bunker Rule” that I had in our household when the boys were in junior and senior high. The rule stated that “Nobody who would not be welcome through the door is welcome through the television.” I realize I hold a (heh) minority opinion by feeling…
The political stuff today is mostly awful, so we’ll deal with that tomorrow and just go for silliness, starting with Bizarro (KFS), an exploration of the wonderful world of poop signs. I don’t know what there is about dog poop that makes sign painters become so illiterate, but, besides this, there are also a number…