words & pictures © Steve Martin & Harry BlissThe New Yorker presents The Origin of Team Steve Martin and Harry Bliss,a multi-page sequential comic as shown in their new book A Wealth of Pigeons.Spoiler: It’s not all fun and games.
A month late but GoComics is interviewing cartoonist Paul Trap as his Thatababy comic strip reaches its 10th year of syndication. GC: How do you keep the jokes fresh and funny every day for 10 years?Paul: Caffeine and panic. GC: What’s your trick/go-to to overcome artist’s block?Paul: I’m first in line if someone comes up […]
It’s Veteran’s Day, as Michael Ramirez (Creators) points out.Most years on November 11, the comics pages are flooded with little kids saluting tombstones and suchlike, but there weren’t that many this year.From a creative point of view, it’s not much of a loss because they aren’t generally very good and don’t stand out often, one […]
© King Features SyndicateHägar the Horrible is slated for prime time animation. From Deadline: Hägar the Horrible is set to make a raid on the small screen with an animated family sitcom series in development. Fresh Off the Boat writer and producer Eric Ziobrowski is writing the adaptation, which comes from King Features, the Hearst-owned […]
The responses to the King Features survey for suggestions to a comic revival brought varying responses as to which character to bring back in new strips. But they seem united in agreement that bringing back Krazy Kat would be sacrilege. (For the record I marked Krazy on #2 and for #3 Krazy was the only […]
(Non Sequitur — AMS)(Prickly City — AMS)The most unpleasant part of our current situation is that a pair of cartoonists, working from different sides of the political spectrum, could drop such spot-on strips today, despite each working with a substantial lead time.We’re that divided politically, and, more than that, we’ve also divided between people who […]
King Features Syndicate is running a short survey to find which Classic KFS comic strip fans would like to see revived with all new stories and art.While I remain totally noncommittal, you can secretly deliver your preference by casting your vote for King Classics at the SurveyMonkey page.all images © King Features Syndicate
Morten Morland (London Times) provides a pretty good picture of what Joe Biden is facing. Between things that never happened and things that never should have happened, this isn’t going to be a matter of quietly continuing but of a massive cleanup.The good news is that, having been a vice-president who was genuinely consulted and […]
Over the Hedge gives us their Sunday lead time (six weeks).© M Fry & T Lewis Are there no boundaries in Red and Rover?© Brian Basset Bizarro teases a hard copy that doesn’t exist (but the webcomic does).© Dan Piraro Curtis, Rex Morgan, and Lola all accept that they are figments of imagination.© King Features Syndicate© North America […]
Bon vivant and cartoonist Janet Salter has passed away.Janet S. (Lipsky) SalterDecember 10, 1922 – October 31, 2020From the obituary: Mom was on lots of commissions, but enjoyed the Fine Arts Commission the most.Early on, she became part of the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild, which honored comedians, actors and singers and raised funds for struggling […]
Rupert characters are © & ™ Express Newspapers & DreamWorksNewspaper comic features that are still appearing in newly produced and printed episodes after 100 year can be counted on one hand – Gasoline Alley, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Thimble Theater starring Popeye, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, and now Rupert Bear.*On November 8, 1920 […]
“A Wealth of Pigeons” by Harry Bliss and Steve Martin will soon be released. [Steve] Martin, who collaborate[s] with New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss, calls cartooning comedy’s last frontier. “It was a completely unique experience,’ he said. “It’s the precision of one thing. This is a one-second link between the picture and the words, or […]
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. — Winston Churchill, Nov 10, 1942Juxtaposition of the Past Four Years(David Rowe, Australian Financial Review, 2016) (David Rowe, Australian Financial Review, 2020)David Rowe bookends the Trump presidency, offering a conclusion to what […]
Piers Morgan explains: America’s new President-Elect, Joe Biden, has a framed cartoon strip on his desk. It features Hagar the Horrible, the red-bearded Viking character created by American cartoonist Dik Browne, stranded on a rock in a violent storm as his ship sinks, lashed by thunder and lightning. ‘Why me?’ he shouts up at God. […]
Kieran Meehan couldn’t have known how funny today’s Pros and Cons (KFS) would be when it hit, or, at least, how timely.We’ve had “news” that someone was caught throwing out ballots, only it turned out he was just discarding a sheet of instructions.And then we had “news” that dead people were voting in Michigan, only […]