Is it better for a comic creator to sell out or remain creatively pure? That dilemma is embodied in two cartoonists who had radically different attitudes toward their creations. I’m talking about Charles Schulz, the creator of Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang, and one of his inheritors, Bill Watterson, the artist behind Calvin and […]

Last Summer the good news was that Gannett/Gatehouse was unloading the local weeklies they had accumulated back into the hands of local owners.This year sees a new approach to local weeklies:Boston.com reports: Starting in early May, at least 19 weekly newspapers across Massachusetts will shutter their print publications and go completely digital. Nine other weeklies […]

Note the interplay in this Wallace the Brave (AMS): First, Rose is the right character to have a turquoise necklace, or, at least, she’s the right character to show it off to her friends. Amelia might have one — heck, even Spud has had one — but Amelia wouldn’t make note of it.And, of course, […]

Disney Sketchbook Disney+’s new six-part original Series Sketchbook will give “an insider’s look into the animation process” as studio artists teach viewers how to draw Disney characters like Kuzco (Emperor’s New Groove), Olaf (Frozen), Genie (Aladdin), Captain Hook (Peter Pan), Mirabel (Encanto), and Simba (The Lion King). Disney describes it as “an intimate instructional documentary […]

St. Olga’s feast day is July 11, but given who she was and what she did, St. Patrick should yield his day to her this year.Ukraine’s patron saint is Josaphat, a Ukrainian monk who yielded himself up to be killed by a Russian mob, but we’re not celebrating meekness at the moment. Olga is patron […]

In 1970 Prince Valiant creator Hal Foster was nearing 80 years and decided to slow down. After interviewing a few comic artists to take on the task of drawing Prince Valiant’s Sunday page he settled on John Cullen Murphy. Hal would (mostly) continue to write and layout the comic through the 1970s.Nate D. Sanders Auctions […]

Taking a cue from those Countdown to Christmas newspaper front page comic panels Brett Koth has adapted the idea to a countdown to Spring. Get in on Jay Stephens‘ newest project. From Harvey and Eisner-Award nominated cartoonist Jay Stephens, Dwellings is an ongoing horror series set in the fictional small town of Elwich, Ontario. Lovingly drawn […]

Greg Kearney explains the US Senate’s move to put the United States out of sync with most of the rest of the world by making Daylight Saving Time permanent.As he notes, it simply shifts everything one hour forward which, as far as I can tell, accomplishes nothing except to make the concept of time even […]

Early last year Pab Sungenis ended his The New Adventures of Queen Victoria.Then very early this year Pab and Queen Victoria checked in on us.From Pab on that January 3, 2022 issue: Hi, gang. Just wanted to poke my head back in. I had no idea my upload links still worked. I was curious whether […]

Below are some comic strip and cartoon books scheduled for March 2022 release. Images and links (mostly) via Amazon, though ordering through your local comic or independent book store is a good idea. Very Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Women Cartoonists  It’s a Pug’s Life  Bandits, Misfits, and Superheroes  Britain’s Best Ever Political Cartoons  Comic […]

We’ll start the day with a quick, unexpected history lesson, courtesy of Jeff Danziger (WPWG).I went to look up Vyacheslav Molotov to confirm that he was Stalin’s Minister of Defense during the Hungarian uprising, and discovered that he wasn’t: He was Foreign Minister.More important, I discovered that the Molotov cocktail, though used to good effect […]

Mike Rhode writes: Since I first saw his cartoons about books and reading on the next-to-last page of the New York Times Book Review, Grant Snider has been one of my favorite cartoonists. His new book, The Art of Living: Reflections onMindfulness and the Overexamined Life (Abrams Comic Arts, $19) is full of his delightful […]

Since its debut in Death Rattle #8 in 1986, Mark Schultz’s post-apocalyptic adventure series has had an irregular release schedule, and been left with an open cliffhanger since the publication of Xenozoic Tales #14 in 1996. Which isn’t meant to imply that Schultz hasn’t released other work in the years since. His recent projects include […]

Constant Readers will not be surprised that this Bizarro (KFS) made me laugh.The pun itself is good: The way gibbons and some other apes get around by swinging their long arms is “brachiating,” and one of the rules of puns is that it has to work.He will, of course, now ask the gibbon a question […]

“Russian warship, go f*ck yourself!” That was the epic response from a small group of Ukrainian soldiers defending Snake Island to a Russian vessel’s demand that they surrender. A recording of the radio exchange quickly went viral, with the salty phrase becoming “a rallying cry for Ukraine’s defenders” and appearing in countless memes and even on T-shirts being […]