STAMPEDE cartoonist Jerry Palen has passed away.  Jerry Joseph Palen July 9, 1943 – November 25, 2021 rancher, painter, sculptor, cartoonistFrom the obituary: In 1964, Jerry married Ann Prosser, his high school sweetheart whom he met in art class at Central High. The couple interrupted their studies at the University of Wyoming to move to […]

For more than a quarter century, political cartoonist Jesse Springer has parodied and highlighted the uniqueness that is Oregon. His work has appeared in many regional newspapers across the state. Springer’s latest book, “Only in Oregon” is a compilation of several hundred cartoons taking on everything from climate change to COVID-19 to gerrymandering. Jesse Springer […]

Drew Litton, sports cartoonist for The Colorado Sun and 9News (KUSA, Denver), recently got a segment on his television station celebrating “a nearly 40 year career.” That marks when he joined The Rocky Mountain News in 1982. But Drew began his newspaper career four years before that with The El Paso Times as copy boy/photographer/editorial […]

Tank McNamara (AMS) sets the stage with a straightforward explanation of how we allow ourselves to be exploited.In 1980, Jimmy Carter pulled the United States out of the Moscow Olympics to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, and the US was joined by 64 other countries. It was a major embarrassment for the Soviets, […]

The Art of the News: Comics Journalism opens at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in the Fall of 2021. At a time of eroded public faith in traditional news media, comics journalism has emerged as a powerful antidote to the dissemination of inaccurate information and fake news. Practitioners in this field re-assert the ethical […]

With Thanksgiving done and gone it’s time to start thinking about buying … calendars for the upcoming year.Here we consider comics related calendars for 2022, and the Hogan’s Alley store has a fine selection of classics available. Krazy Kat, Polly and Her Pals, Little Nemo, and The Yellow Kid for those, like me, who are […]

Well, yes, Ethel, there is that: Willie ‘n Ethel comment on my first year-and-a-half as a retired person. The pandemic was indeed a lovely ego-crutch, though, as noted here, I did just sneak out to visit family in Minnesota.Please don’t tell my credit card. Though, as Kevin Kallaugher notes, coffee break is over and it’s time […]

  New Yorker cartoonist Hilary Fitgerald Campbell is far too young to have a full-blown biography, so this Press Democrat profile will suffice.When Campbell was a kid, a sketch of Charles Schulz’s Snoopy hung in the hallway of her Sonoma home, a gift from Schulz to her mother. Campbell’s grandfather, the late Daniel Vaughan, was […]

Monty (AMS)‘s pal Moondog is still hauling a turkey around and aren’t we all?Thanksgiving leftovers are something people in cartoons complain about but that I suspect people in real life not only don’t mind but actually enjoy.The microwave really shines this time of year, when you can quickly recreate Thanksgiving dinner in miniature, cold turkey […]

John Cole has been the editorial cartoonist for the Scranton (Pa) Times-Tribune since 2005. He also moonlights once a week for NC Policy Watch (he had spent twenty years previous to The Times-Tribune as staff artist/cartoonist for the Durham Herald-Sun). John recently sat down with Ed Pikulski for a twenty minute interview.The topics ranged from […]

Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates comic strip has been collected in a number of formats – from Big Little Books to complete collections.    But now comes the last word for Terry and the Pirates in book form. The Library of American Comics and Clover Press are proud to publish Terry and the Pirates: The […]

A bit of Black Friday humor from Frazz (AMS) to mark the day.I’m having a little trouble with shopping options, given, as Frazz notes, that the era of the shopping mall is pretty well dead.It sure didn’t last long, given the investment involved, but, then, it was a dubious concept to begin with: The developers […]

© Ward SuttonWard Sutton and The Village Voice start us off with a Thanksgiving Day comic. Roadside America takes us to Lancaster, Ohio where they celebrate local boy made good with the headline Richard Outcault: Inventor of the Comic Strip. Richard Outcault (1863-1928) was an American illustrator and creator of The Yellow Kid, the first published […]

Dave Granlund points out that Thanksgiving, as a national holiday, was not about Pilgrims. It would be nice to say that it was instituted to give thanks that the Civil War was over, but, in fact, it was declared in the midst of the conflict.Note that Sarah Josepha Hale, when she asked the president to […]

Alden Capital’s attempted to takeover Lee Enterprises has stalled.From The Wrap: Lee Enterprises Inc. — one of few sizeable American newspaper chains not owned by hedge fund Alden Global Capital LLC — has adopted a limited duration shareholder rights plan that would prevent Alden from acquiring more than 10% of the company, as Lee Enterprises […]