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CSotD: Idiot Plots and Tangled Knots

by Mike Peterson 3 comments February 22, 2020

We’ll lead off today with aJuxtaposition of the Day(Retail)(Rob Rogers)Transposed like this, the connection between the penultimate Retail strip and Rob Rogers’ piece of Bill Barr is more obvious than I expected it to be.Back in the glory days of PBS, Ebert & Siskel used to criticize what they called an Idiot Plot, defined as […]

Nick Cuti – RIP

by D. D. Degg 2 comments February 21, 2020

Cartoonist Nicola Cuti has passed away.Nicola (Nick) Cuti October 29, 1944 – February 21, 2020 News of Nick’s passing was made public on his Facebook page:Legendary comic creator Nicola Cuti, whose career has spanned over fifty years, has died. Sources close to the family have reported that Cuti passed in Tampa on Friday, February 21, 2020, […]

CSotD: Friday Funnies, shaken, not stirred

by Mike Peterson 0 comments February 21, 2020

Arlo plays the old gaffer yet again.I was going to make a joke about how “Seven O’Clock Straight Up” means “without ice,” but, then again, we’re living in a world where people assume a martini is made with vodka.And I grew up in a world in which not only is a martini, by definition, made […]

David Fitzsimmons on The State of Cartooning

by D. D. Degg 24 comments February 20, 2020

When I opened my annual “American Association of Editorial Cartoonists Notebook”, our trade journal, the bell tolled for my profession, page by page, cartoonist by cartoonist. The Golden Age of Oliphant, MacNelly and Paul Conrad is long gone. This year our annual AAEC convention will convene in Ottawa with our Canadian colleagues because our numbers […]

CSotD: Obscene Cartoon Warning

by Mike Peterson 3 comments February 20, 2020

Ed Hall offers a commentary on an item from Dear Leader’s budget, which eliminates funding for Stars and Stripes, the newspaper that has kept the military informed since the Civil War, operating out of the Department of Defense but with full First Amendment rights and a separate congressional ombudsman to protect them.It is, of course, […]

Big Nate Gets Animated

by D. D. Degg 1 comments February 20, 2020

Lincoln Peirce‘s multimedia success (popular comic strip, best selling comic collections and illustrated novels, musical theatre) is now getting a Nickolodeon animated series.Animation Magazine reports:On Wednesday, Nickelodeon detailed its new, wide-ranging content slate for 2020-21, with a brand-new book-inspired animated series amid several live-action originals… Greenlit for 26 episodes, Big Nate is an all-new animated […]

CSotD: To Speak of Country Matters

by Mike Peterson 5 comments February 19, 2020

Steve Sack offers a bit of good old country comfort from the frozen north, as a way of breaking the Democratic logjam.Logjams being a hazard Minnesotans learned to deal with generations ago and country matters being where the Democrats dropped the ball in 2016.And “Hot Dish” being a Minnesota tradition at church dinners and such […]

74th Reubens: Garfield’s Jim Davis Guest Speaker

by D. D. Degg 0 comments February 18, 2020

The National Cartoonists Society has announced that Jim Davis, creator of Garfield, the most widely syndicated comic strip in the world, will be a guest speaker at their 2020 Reubens weekend:A previous Reuben-winner, Jim will be speaking at the NCS conference on Friday, 5th June at the Marriott Kansas City Downtown. His exclusive talk for the NCS “The […]

DeBartolo Streak Ends; Aragonés Now Top Streaker

by D. D. Degg 1 comments February 18, 2020

MAD #12 comes out tomorrow and does not contain NEW material from Dick DeBartolo. That ends a streak going back to the June 1966 dated MAD  and lasting to the February 2020 dated MAD, encompassing 459 issues!As Tom Richmond notes:It’s also very much worth noting that this issue of MAD magazine is the first one […]

The Weed of Cartooning Bears Bitter Fruit (2)

by D. D. Degg 0 comments February 18, 2020

At Boing Boing Rusty Blazenhoff writes of rejection. Specifically Drew Dernavich and his pile of cartoons rejected by The New Yorker.…That search led me to Brooklyn-based Drew Dernavich (and, boy, I sure am glad I found him!). On top of The New Yorker, he’s been published in Time, the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, […]

CSotD: Ostriches and Reality

by Mike Peterson 3 comments February 18, 2020

Tom Toles expresses some impatience with the public’s willingness to ignore what’s going on around it.Granted, ostriches do not, in fact, stick their heads in the sand and imagine that they are hidden.We do, however, and, as Toles suggests, we not only do it, but we do it wonderfully well. We also do it unpredictably. When […]

The Weed of Cartooning Bears Bitter Fruit! and other shady comic strip stuff

by D. D. Degg 1 comments February 17, 2020

Today’s Reality Check by Dave Whamond which immediately brought to mind, not Maxwell Grant’s, but Mike Kaluta’s The Shadow.  James Allen has now spent years as the signed artist of Mark Trail, and I, for one, am happy to see him drawing his own version of the character instead of lightboxing (or whatever) Jack Elrod‘s […]

CSotD: Dark Side of the Moonbats

by Mike Peterson 3 comments February 17, 2020

I’ve told this story before, but Ted Rall’s latest cartoon makes it seem more relevant than ever.A college friend was doing his psych rotation in med school about the time the Church Committee Report came out.The Report, O Best Beloved, was part of the examination of government we went through following Watergate, and revealed things […]

Nick Downes is the Latest Case For Pencils

by D. D. Degg 0 comments February 16, 2020

A Case for Pencils asks cartoonists about the tools of the tradeNick Downes is the latest to take the survey, and he discounts my earlier theory (elsewhere today) that pencils are a thing of the past:I eschew electronic means of creating work as much as possible, as I enjoy the process of drawing, inking and […]

Newspapers: Stars and Stripes Funding Threatened

by D. D. Degg 1 comments February 16, 2020

In an effort to keep active duty frontline soldiers uninformed, the new Pentagon budget would cut all funding for the Stars and Stripes newspaper.The proposed cuts to the editorially independent news organization, which is partially funded by the Pentagon, were a product of the recent defense-wide review ordered by Defense Secretary Mark Esper, said Elaine […]

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