Industry news for the professional cartoonist
There is a lot of kvetching over how horrible 2020 has been, but cartoonists are going to have to really kick out the jams to do better than Ann Telnaes (WashPost), who not only echoes Mike Dukakis’s Greek saying that a fish stinks from the head, but, working on-line, does not let herself be limited…
Oddly enough, I had just been thinking about the term “grasping at straws” before I saw this Ed Hall (Ind) cartoon. Technically, the straws should be floating on the surface, the expression meaning that a drowning man will look for even the most futile support, but I like Hall’s shower of useless efforts and it…
The Best Comics of 2020 Heart © AMS; Six Chix © KFS; Nancy © UFS Pop culture site Nerdist has picked The Best Comics of 2020. The list is mostly graphic novels and floppy comic books, but a few comic strips make the list. Heart of the City by Steenz … Steenz’s gorgeous redesigns and…
A lady once asked him how he came to define ‘pastern’, the knee of a horse: instead of making an elaborate defence, as might be expected, he at once answered, “Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance.” — Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson” Sometimes the best defense is no defense at all, but for an arrogant egotist like Johnson…
A Chris Britt cartoon has angered a Blue Lives Matter group. A resident of Tacoma, Washington, Chris Britt is a firebrand editorial cartoonist who regularly lampoons President Donald Trump and others he doesn’t agree with. He’s merciless. He was only a little more tame when I hired him in the late 1980s to draw editorial…
We’ll start with John Cole‘s cartoon and a bit of my own gossip, which in this case I define as anecdotal observations that may or may not reflect a wider truth. I worked the Primary yesterday from 7 am to noon, and we didn’t have anyone come in who had voted by absentee ballot and…
I tend to avoid cartoons that simply mock someone without making a salient point, but Clay Bennett is spot-on in noting that Trump has begun to step over the line from deeply prejudiced to deeply disturbing. The cartoon is insulting, but meaningful. Best tradition of the format. As noted often, most presidents have put experts…
Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come…
I wasn’t sure whether to start or end with Matt Wuerker‘s cartoon, but I think it does serve to set the scene as well as to wrap it up. The Trump Whirlwind is a brilliant piece of graphic personification, but let me belabor the storm metaphor for a moment, because, as we watch Louisiana dig…
From an upset newspaper reader: To The Daily Sun, I am appalled at the cartoon depicting an active shooter drill, and cannot believe your publication would publish it. This type of message is stereotyping our black youth, and most definitely is NOT furthering the cause of any organization or entity working against racism. Further, the…
Peter Brookes leads us off today with a commentary on the bizarre mashup of celebration and disaster surrounding the Republican National Convention, which, as several people have noted, is unusual because an incumbent president is basing his appeal on the horrific condition of the nation he has been leading. We sure aren’t hearing Republicans ask,…
Dave Brown indulges in what I think is a perfectly valid case of whataboutism, as the Republican Party and its Dear Leader ignore the beam in their own eye to attack the mote in Joe Biden’s. Only, as his parallel drawings suggest, there isn’t even much of a mote. For Trump and his myrmidons, it’s…
A quiet end to a great comic strip, and if the last episode of Stone Soup reminds you of Calvin and Hobbes heading out for new adventures, that’s not entirely inappropriate: Jan Eliot got her break in the business — after four years of pestering the syndicates with submissions — when Bill Watterson hung up…
Today’s The Other Coast pings a particularly sweet spot for me, because I remember asking my mother about the same problem: Santa comes down chimneys and we didn’t have one. Well, we did, but it led directly into the furnace, which didn’t seem like a good entrance to the house. The background to her answer…
Edison’s back in the Kenosha News and all’s right with the world. Though maybe that’s all that’s right with the world. Between the Alabama abortion law, a pending war with Iran and Mexico burning itself to the ground, there’s plenty to fill the 12 or 16 pages of the Daily Herald. But never mind, because…