The year 1959 marked a new wave for Peanuts. Charlie Brown’s sister, Sally, made her debut on May 26, 1959. Linus also first spoke about the Great Pumpkin in October of 1959. Not only was Schulz inventing new topics for his already popular characters, but his emotional side began to engulf the strip as well. On […]
Ann Telnaes offers a good reflection on what we may have just seen happen.I hadn’t expected either a full conviction on all charges or a full exoneration, so I’m a little gobsmacked at the moment, but I think the Rittenhouse verdict falls in somewhere among the acquittals of OJ Simpson on charges of murdering his […]
Artist/cartoonist Peter Pereira has passed away. Peter (né Pierre) Gerard Pereira May 15, 1962 – November 10, 2021 “He will be cartooning in heaven”From The Spirit obituary:Peter Pereira, an artist, illustrator, photographer and cartoonist whose work brought wit and whimsy to Straus News Manhattan’s newspapers for the past eight years, died on Nov. 10, 2021 […]
‘I can explain the meaning of life, but not the meaning of New Yorker cartoons.’ So New Yorker gags are more philosophical than their British counterparts. Here, virtually anything goes — sick jokes, coarse jokes, badly drawn jokes, puns. The New Yorker has a metropolitan disdain for crudity and eschews wordplay. We reckon that if […]
In case you haven’t flown in two years or so, it hasn’t changed much, or, at least, there were no fistfights on my plane and nobody had to be subdued and duct-taped into their seat.Nor, despite Mike Twohy’s New Yorker cartoon prediction, did anyone seem to get agitated about seatbacks. I reclined just enough to […]
In one of his most celebrated paintings, O the Roast Beef of Old England, William Hogarth appears as himself, sketching the fortifications at Calais at the very moment of being mistakenly arrested as a spy in 1748. It is not what you would call a subtle scene. The raggedy French soldiers are on their last […]
While not every writer or artist requires seclusion for focus and/or inspiration, it seems award-winning cartoonist and children’s book author Berkeley Breathed has benefitted well from the relative (if luxurious) isolation afforded him at his long-time mountaintop estate on the outskirts of Santa Barbara, California. Squirreled away at the end of narrow road that makes […]
The Reader is thrilled to announce that we are now carrying the work of award-winning cartoonist and South O. native Jeff Koterba online and in print. Last year Jeff Koterba was laid off from the Omaha World-Herald, now he returns to Omaha in the pages of the area’s alternative newspaper The Reader. The Reader welcomes […]
I’m headed out to Logan Airport so I can fly to Minnesota and explain things to my grandchildren, so, in lieu of my usual posting which would cause me to miss the plane, here are some old favorites, starting with a Cul de Sac.I miss Cul de Sac, but I miss Richard Thompson more. Aside […]
Seems it is the season of Peanuts. Yeah , all those TV specials – but also…Well, other special videos.Beyond The Scenes is a Daily Show extra, and this one discusses Franklin as the Black representative in the Peanuts. Host Roy Wood Jr. talks with Daily Show writer Josh Johnson and comics creator Robb (“JumpStart”) Armstrong […]
Jeff Koterba starts us off with a “Yes, but No” take on Michael Flynn’s bizarre declaration that the US is and must be a Christian nation. Yes, the nation was founded on the principle of freedom of (and from) religion: Any fair reading of the Founders, and any literate reading of the Constitution, makes that […]
Clockwise from top left: Jackie Ormes, Tom Floyd, Jay Jackson, panels from Tom Floyd’s book “Integration is a Bitch!,” “Southern Inconsistency” by Leslie Rogers, “Spotty” by Daniel Day. Leslie Rogers created the Bungleton Green comic in 1920, which ran into the 1960s—and still holds the record as the longest-running Black comic strip in U.S. history. […]
If you are unaware of the renowned British editorial cartoonist and caricaturist here is cartoonist Mel Calman on Sir David Low:“Low was undoubtedly the best political cartoonist of his time.” That would run from 1910 to 1960, starting in New Zealand and ending in Great Britain. His heydays were with the conservative Evening Standard during […]
“We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.” — Robert WilenskyJuxtaposition of the Day(Jen Sorensen)(Tom Tomorrow)A simple start: Sorensen mourns what we tried to have, but which failed, while Tom Tomorrow lays […]
Tom Gauld comicBelow are some comic strip and cartoon books scheduled for November 2021 release.Images and links (mostly) via Amazon,though ordering through your local comic or independent book store is a good idea. American Comics: A History Pearls Awaits the Tide Graphic Witness (second edition, expanded) Rubes Twisted Pop Culture Rube Goldberg and His Amazing Machines (review) Comics and the Origins […]