Industry news for the professional cartoonist
Dave Blazek, Paul Kirchner, Michael de Adder, Chris Britt, Leigh Rubin, Randall Enos, Jerry Craft, Dan Piraro, Dan McConnell, and a couple more are featured in some reports that due to a hectic holiday schedule, were undeservedly not featured here. So before this month and year is ushered out… The Wenatchee World reports local cartoonist…
The Dogs of C Kennel (Creators) are experiencing a temporary lull, but we’re not. However, St. Stephen’s Day is, granted, not as exciting as Christmas and the dopamine hit is more subtle. We’ll get to the wren in a minute, but there’s no park. I just liked the headline, because if you are of the…
As we reported last month Bunny Hoest with John Reiner are switching distributors, taking The Lockhorns panel to Andrews McMeel Syndication (AMS) beginning January 1, 2024 after 55 years with King Features Syndicate. Further confirmation is that AMS has added The Lockhorns to its list of comics available to newspapers… and created a The Lockhorns…
Dan Piraro/Bizarro; Tom Tomorrow/This Modern World A message from Dan Piraro: IN JANUARY, 2024, CHANGES ARE COMING TO RANCHO BIZARRO that we hope you’ll enjoy, or at least won’t make you puke! Have you ever spent the majority of your life weaving a beautiful rug only to have it pulled out from under you by…
In places like New York City, papers were sold to the masses at a penny a copy. Thus this era is called the Penny Press. It’s also the era of what was called Yellow Journalism. The term arose out of a battle between newspaper barons Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst about a comic strip…
Gaming the Funny Pages – part two Last weekend we noted Joe Wos playing games. This weekend it was Jef Mallett. Don’t know if Jef knows of a comics page with Overboard right below Frazz, but in Mallett’s neighborhood (the northern mid-west) there is The Fond du Lac Reporter where the hummus could have slid…
You may have read some Phil Witte cartoons… Phil’s cartoons have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, San Francisco Chronicle, Reader’s Digest, Alta, The Chronicle of Higher Education, New Statesman, Private Eye, Prospect, and many other publications in the U.S. and U.K., as well as books, calendars, and greeting cards. He has also collaborated…
Swiping a cartoonist’s style is not new to Artificial Intelligence. Here, from 1973, is an RCA Records advertisement for a new David Bowie 45. The ad agency knew what they wanted, but they, or RCA, didn’t want to spend the money to hire the real cartoonist. Recalling my childhood. Animation Resources recently present us with…
Sunday’s Bizarro (KFS) provoked both a laugh and a sigh. My dad, who died 30 years ago last week, did indeed get a label maker at one point — the old school plastic-strip type — which became a brief but intense obsession. The “brief” part is likely what kept our mother from clonking him in…
(Bizarro — KFS) (Loose Parts — AMS) (Rubes — Creators) I’m not sure how all three of these cartoonists seized upon myrrh this year, but it is the most mysterious of the three gifts of the Magi. We’re all familiar with gold and I think a lot of people recognize frankincense as (mostly) a…
Is this the beginning of the end for the daily printed comics page in many American towns and cities? Michael Cavna and The Washington Post cover the disturbing trend of U.S. newspapers kicking comics to the curb (or to the their websites), in particular the recent Lee Enterprises decision to standardize their funny (half) pages….
No matter what kind of change, other than doubling the amount of comics while keeping all the regular ones, newspaper editors must be prepared to receive negative comments from their readers. The latest change to Lee Enterprises newspapers brought the inevitable response. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which went from 34 comics to 10, has been…
On September 16, 2022 the National Cartoonists Society announced the winners of their Divisional Awards for work produced in 2021 at the 76th Annual Reuben Awards Banquet. Winners in bold. Nominees for Comic Book: Trish Forstner; Gideon Kendall; David Peterson Nominees for Gag Cartoons: Emily Flake; Amy Hwang; Christopher Weyant Nominees for Greeting…
There are only so many new ideas out there, and Pardon My Planet (KFS) isn’t the first strip to make an organized/disorganized religion joke. But a good gagster can add freshening elements, and Vic Lee hits some football matters just as the Hall of Fame Game has fans ready for a new season. Specifically, it…
The Great Bend (Kansas) Tribune announced new comics coming to the paper. June 19 [2022] marks the day for new comics in the Sunday paper. The Great Bend Tribune is excited to introduce fresh, new comic strips to you. We hope you will enjoy them, as we tried to pick comics that would be appropriate…