Of the many challenges cartoonists face — rejection, money, drink, or lack of — one of the trickiest is the growing pressure to depict diversity. Nowadays readers often write to publications complaining about the dearth of ethnic minorities in our drawings and demand for cartoons to be more inclusive. Attempts to make cartoon characters more […]
Today’s Frazz (AMS) reminds me of my father saying that some people duck down behind a protective fence to avoid getting hit with pies, but then can’t resist taking a peek to see if the pie-thrower is still there, and WHAP!He didn’t say it in a disapproving way, mind you. It was an observation and […]
Last week The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) held their 2021 convention and among the panels was one devoted to editorial cartooning.Four of America’s top political cartoonists gathered in a virtual room during the 2021 Society of Professional Journalists online conference. The topic? The perils of working in visual satire in the age of the […]
Heidi MacDonald, at The (Comics) Beat, reviews the new comic strip(?) Batman: Wayne Family Adventures that debuted today on the vertical Webtoon platform. As reported earlier, the first Webtoon/DC collaboration debuted this morning, and unsurprisingly, it’s Batman. Specifically Batman: Wayne Family Adventures, by CRC Payne, Maria Li, Lan Ma, Starbite, Jean Kim and Keilamel Sibal. […]
Everyone knows that the orange tabby Heathcliff appeared five years before that other orange tabby Garfield. And the subsequent massive popularity of Garfield was probably a bit of a sore spot with the Heathcliff creators. These days current Heathcliff cartoonist Peter Gallagher pretty much takes it in stride, though he still feels the urge to […]
Okay it’s a local not national but Stephan Pastis was the number one best selling author at Copperfield’s Books in Petaluma last week on two different lists.In a rare feat of cross-audience literary popularity, cartoonist and author Stephan Pastis (“Pearls Before Swine”) has the No. 1 book on both Petaluma’s Fiction & Nonfiction Bestsellers list […]
Zits (KFS) reminds me that I’m old enough to remember when Frosted Flakes, Sugar Smacks and Sugar Corn Pops seemed to be about the extent of morning junk food. The first fruit-flavored cereal, Trix, appeared in 1954, the year I started kindergarten.But let’s not pretend to be pure: We poured plenty of sugar onto Wheaties […]
Post World War II North America: 21st Century North America: Canada: Tintin and Asterix books destroyed because they are considered harmful to the natives A total of 5,000 books and comics have been thrown away, some burned and buried, by a school board in the province of Ontario which, on Radio Canada, believes that these […]
Willard Scott was a clown.If you know anything about the late Today Show weatherman, shown in this tribute from Dave Granlund, you’ll realize that’s simply a statement of fact and not a judgment: He began his career in entertainment as a clown, though his being the first Ronald McDonald is somewhat mythic: He played a […]
Reading a single page of a comic book takes about 15 seconds. Creating it, on the other hand, takes 40 hours on average, according to artist and illustrator Chris Ware. Of course, now, Ware is best known for his New Yorker magazine covers, as well as the wildly successful stories of Quimby the Mouse, Rusty […]
Daddy’s Home (Creators) puts me in mind of “The Archie Bunker Rule” that I had in our household when the boys were in junior and senior high.The rule stated that “Nobody who would not be welcome through the door is welcome through the television.”I realize I hold a (heh) minority opinion by feeling disquieted by […]
A Letter to the Editor of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch:On Aug. 31, as I usually do, I opened the newspaper, paged through the news section, read the editorials, the op-ed columns and the letters to the editor. Then I turned to the comics. In the comic strip “Prickly City” by Scott Stantis, the character Carmen […]
It’s not unusual for comic strip characters to make cameo appearances in other strips. But this one surprised me. Frank Cho’s Liberty Meadows (1997 – 2001) was known for featuring other characters in his strip.Look who showed up in the Liberty Meadows Sunday rerun today: © Frank ChoI think I got most of the comic […]
(I pirated today’s headline!)Brewster Rockit (Tribune) is totally on target, though I can’t remember who it was that I backdoored the other day to avoid their automatic answering system. But when I mentioned what a pain it was, she laughed and acknowledged it.Everybody knows except the brass who bought it.Might have been my doctor, since […]
Cartoonist and illustrator Bob Kain has passed away. Robert (Bob) Kain August 12, 1932 – August 31, 2021 From the obituary:His great love of cartooning took him to study at The Ontario College of Art, and then to New York City to attend The School of Visual Arts. For 35 years he ran Videoart, a […]