Derf Backderf’s short comment, as he wrapped up this year’s MOCCA Festival, was enough to send me scrambling to the Internet to order a copy of Aimee de Jongh’s “Days of Sand,” and, if that’s not enough of a compliment to Derf — author of “Trashed,” “My Friend Dahmer” and “Kent State: Four Dead in […]

According to Lewiston (Maine) Sun Journal columnist Mark LaFlamme: So, I was just hanging around, minding my own business, when I started to notice a new cartoon populating the Sun Journal pages. In one of them, the proposed Lewiston homeless shelter and the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department building were presented as homeless people on a […]

Comic strip historian Allan Holtz is moving his Stripper’s Guide blog to Comic Strip History website. Hello, fellow strippers. After a decade and a half hosting this blog here on Google’s Blogger interface I have decided that it is time we graduate to adulthood, taking the training wheels off. I have been working with a […]

 A different sort of Juxtaposition to start the day: The famous lines from Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Silver Blaze,” combined with Ann Telnaes’ righteous outrage over the revelations of Senator Mike Lee’s texts, outlining his plan to cooperate in overturning the 2020 elections.The texts caused an uproar on social media, but, as in the Sherlock Holmes […]

“An Easter Egg is a term used to describe a hidden detail …” Today’s Sally Forth has an obvious homage to The Killing Joke comic book. © King Features Syndicate © DC ComicsBut as Francesco Marciuliano points out Jim Keefe goes far beyond that one panel.  Terry Beatty hid an easter egg in last Sunday’s […]

Those Disney and Newspaper Enterprise Association Christmas strips get all the fame and glory, while the Easter strips get forgotten. But there were special daily comic strips created for the weeks leading up to Easter. For a short while in the 1950s they were an annual tradition for NEA and the cartoonist was the same […]

Morten Morland offers an Easter-themed bit of Moskva Mockery.Most of today’s Easter cartoons, as with most mandatory holiday cartoons, seem unremarkable, though his detailed style adds some interest here. It’s not Beatrix Potter’s watercolors; more like Uncle Wiggly, but it echoes traditional gentle bunny depiction, with the addition of a sly expression that couldn’t be […]

We have previously mentioned Nunavut’s young cartoonist Ayla Kreelak and her comic strip Smidge and Friends who got a short run in The Nunatsiaq News.The strip was popular enough to warrant a return engagement. Smidge and Friends, an original comic strip drawn by Baker Lake artist Ayla Kreelak, has returned. Nunatsiaq News will publish a […]

Punchbooks has posted this cartoon from April 16, 1919, in which British Prime Minister David Lloyd George cheerfully presents the Paris Peace Agreement, citing the 1895 Punch cartoon which had turned an old joke into a permanent part of the culture:Parts of the agreement that ended the First World War were excellent, but it wasn’t […]

PEN America has published a report on the rise of books being banned in public schools. Book bans in public schools have recurred throughout American history, and have long been an issue of concern to PEN America, as a literary and free expression advocacy organization. Over the past nine months, the scope of such censorship […]

Cartoonist Alison Bechdel, known for her groundbreaking, richly layered depictions of queer life and family relationships, will receive the 2022 International Humanities Prize from Washington University in St. Louis. Awarded by the university’s Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences, the biennial prize honors the lifetime work of a noted scholar, writer or artist […]

Below are some comic strip and cartoon books scheduled for April 2022 release.Images and links (mostly) via Amazon,though ordering through your local comic or independent book store is a good idea. Famous, Infamous, and Forgotten  The Art of Living: Reflections on Mindfulness and the Overexamined Life  Birth of a Beetle: The Magazine Cartoons of Mort Walker   Unicorn Selfies: […]

Glen LeLievre leads off today’s roundup of dubious pieces and dubious claims, with a cartoon that has been getting a lot of reposts on social media.The dubious part isn’t that it deals with a religious subject at that religion’s most sacred time of year, because it doesn’t mock any theological beliefs. In fact, it seems […]

Sorry about the tight deadline (April 20, 2022) but here’s a fun project for the cartoonist in your family. RubeGoldberg.com hosts the famous annual Rube Goldberg Machine contest where building a physical Rube Goldberg contraption is the object. Now they have added a cartoon contest!Details and rules at RubeGoldberg.com New at GoComicsWhile Andrews McMeel Syndication is […]

Comic book and comic strip artist Angelo Torres joins our Senior Strippers as he turn 90 years old, having a birth date of April 14, 1932.       Early on in his career Angelo became a member of what Harvey Kurtzman (or Nancy Gaines) dubbed The Fleagle Gang – Roy Krenkel, Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson, […]