In 1963 syndicates and newspapers joined forces with cartoonist and comics historian Gordon Campbell to produce an exhibit of pages from Sunday color comic supplements.From the October 13, 1963 New York Sunday News:The show was free as was a tabloid history of comics handed out to visitors. The Phantom Fan has some background on the […]
Here’s the problem: It’s becoming hard for political cartoonists to satirize our situation, because our situation is beginning to feel like satire itself.So Ruben Bolling lays out a mocking synopsis of how foolish people reject science, common sense and civic decency, and it feels more like a documentary than biting commentary.A very well-crafted documentary, mind […]
Well it’s trending on the spots I check in on.In early 1962 Charles Schulz and United Feature Syndicate distributed to newspapers a Sunday format pseudo-Peanuts comic strip promoting the preeminent news source of the time. The promo ran in late January or early February on weekdays in black and white or on Sundays in the […]
Ann Telnaes notes some bad news coming out of Afghanistan, as the Taliban shows how empty its promises of respecting women turned out to be.She does well to point out the dismal situation, but there’s a question as to whether it qualifies as news, since it seems to fall under the category of “What did […]
Dale Messick and Floyd Norman are the comic artists inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame this year. Known as the “Grand Dame of the Funnies,” Dale Messick … for creating the popular adventure comic strip Brenda Starr, Reporter. Debuting in June of 1940, it was an immediate hit. Each week […]
Everybody remembers Garfield Minus Garfield, where Garfield was edited out of his own comic strip. Now there is a new Garfield meme where a Garfield comic strip is edited by replacing the last panel with one specific shot. As a longtime favorite in the Sunday funny pages, Jim Davis’ Garfield has long been the subject of […]
Timing is everything, and, when I first saw this Matt Wuerker (Politico) piece, I planned to feature it with an amusing discursion on Willie Sutton, who was something of a celebrity bank robber, in that, after serving his time, he popped up on the interview circuit. As it happens, he denied ever saying that he […]
Robin Moore‘s book about The Green Berets in Vietnam was released in the Spring of 1965 and before that season was over it was hitting best seller lists. Before the years was over Robin Moore had written syndicated newspaper articles about the troops and Vietnam, the book would be issued in a mass market […]
Cartoonist and educator Lynda Barry is a favorite here at Open Culture. We’re always excited to share exercises from her books and intel on her classes at the University of Wisconsin, but nothing beats the warmth and humor of her live instruction… even when it’s delivered virtually. Last week, she took to Instagram to inform the fourteen lucky U of W students enrolled […]
If you know me, you know I’m a huge fan of Chester Gould, and I have a number of Dick Tracy originals hanging on my wall. They bring inspiration and a smile to me every day. For my upcoming birthday, my son [Aaron Smith] created a ‘DETECTIVE GRAYSMITH’ comicstrip in the same Dick Tracy style! […]
The perceptive little girl in this Christopher Weyant cartoon asks an excellent question for which her father — judging by his expression — doesn’t have an excellent answer.“Read” the news, we can assume, is shorthand for “consuming” the news, for “paying attention to” the news.Actually reading the news has long been for those interested in […]
© Grimmy Inc.The Comics are a visual media, words and images for the eye. But today a number of cartoonists used music to invade our brains. © Creators SyndicateHeathcliff (above) and Mother Goose and Grimm (top) give us a generic sense of sound.But others got more specific.Fittingly the British Andy Capp gave us Queen. © M.G.N. […]
What could be more nonsensical than a MAD parody of a non-existant TV western? How about a second MAD parody of that same non-existant TV show. Tom Richmond and Andrew Secunda take on “Bounty Law” again, this time it will be part of the bonuses in the new hardback novelization of “Once Upon a Time […]
In Between Friends (KFS), Susan sometimes struggles with “older,” but she’s becoming more comfortable with “wiser,” which makes sense, since the phrase “older but wiser” suggests that the latter is compensation for the former.I prefer “older AND wiser,” and how sad if they don’t coincide. (There is, indeed, no fool like an old fool.)I don’t […]
Most comic sites upload the new strips around midnight – GoComics, Comics Kingdom, Arcamax, and the like all do it around that time (give or take depending on your time zone). But Creators Syndicate fairly recently began giving us the next day’s comics around 5pm Eastern (2pm Pacific).For example Tony Cochran references The Lone Ranger […]