Point: While I have long thought “Mallard Fillmore” to be not funny and in poor taste, the Feb. 2 strip surpasses all previous ones: “Not ‘Congresspersons.’ It’s ‘Persons of Congress.’” Besides the fact that I have never heard of the new term for our representatives, it would be abbreviated POC, which is a term I […]
Seems cartoonist Jerry King has a new gig. The Fast Lane Truck site is enjoying Jerry’s humor. Coloring CamouflageI had a bit of a breakthrough when coloring this one. Initially, I tried to fill in the individual areas on each item of camouflage clothing with different colors, which quickly became overwhelming.While coloring the above daily Bizarro […]
Clay Bennett has a refreshingly neutral commentary on the number of Democratic candidates lining up for the 2020 Presidential race.It’s a lot of lanes, but at least the groundskeeper is keeping them even, which is more than I’m seeing elsewhere, in both cartoons and social media commentary.Someone was trashing Kristen Gillibrand on Twitter, for instance, […]
The Butler Eagle dropping Non Sequitur over the F… Yourself Trump hidden message in the Sunday February 10 comics sections was only the tip of a growing iceberg. Other newspapers are also banishing the Wiley Miller’s comic.Among the papers ending their association with Non Sequitur are: The aforementioned Butler Eagle“We apologize that such a disgusting trick […]
As my colleague DD Degg noted recently, Stephan Pastis has been getting more philosophical at Pearls Before Swine lately, with his tribute to his dog getting a great deal of attention.This shift means that the strip doesn’t always produce the belly laughs it did when it was new, but it probably wouldn’t anyway.We’re oversupplied with […]
From the Butler Eagle:“A reader brought to our attention that one of the syndicated comic strips which appears in the Sunday Butler Eagle may contain a hidden message which was apparently placed there by someone in the creative department of the creator of the comic strip or the syndication which controls it,” said Ron Vodenichar, […]
As reported here the Cleveland Plain Dealer, without notice, dropped the Pickles comic strip and replaced it with Animal Crackers.Response from indignant readers was immense and immediate:Oh, no, my very favorite comic, Pickles, gone! Why on earth would you drop Pickles from your comics page? The decision to replace “Pickles”… is tantamount to trading in […]
“Personally, I don’t think there should be a line.”Because who is going to decide what should or shouldn’t?Voice of America highlights editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes in a 2½ minute video.
Tank McNamara takes on a large issue in sports, which has to do with integrity and idealism and hypocrisy.There was a time when gambling and sports were kept at arms’ length, not only with Pete Rose’s well known ban from baseball for gambling, but also the suspensions in 1963 of NFL stars Paul Hornung and […]
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has made some changes to its Sunday edition.Today, I’m happy to report, we’re answering requests from subscribers to stop jumping stories backward from the last pages of two Sunday sections. Over the years, we’d dealt with some press and cost issues by combining sections in a way that irritated many readers. […]
Author, Illustrator and cartoonist Tomi Ungerer has passed away.Jean-Thomas (Tomi) Ungerer November 28, 1931 – February 9, 2019* *Ungerer died sometime during the night of Friday February 8 to Saturday February 9.In 1956, he traveled to America, hitting New York in 1956 with $65 in his pocket and many drawings whereupon Ursula Nordstrom, a publisher […]
Chan Lowe points out what we’ve been seeing on Facebook, which is that what people were warned about six months ago or more is happening now.The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed in 2017 and so this is the first year it impacts your taxes.There was always a suspicion — big surprise — that […]
Back in the day it wasn’t unusual for cartoonists to do specialty drawings for individual newspapers that carried their comics, whether for promotion or as a thank you or an anniversary celebration. Below are Milton Caniff (1984) and Chester Gould (1963) samples. It’s good to see the tradition hasn’t completely gone away.Recently John Rose did one […]
Usually when Stephan Pastis causes tears to roll it’s from laughing too hard. But occasionally Stephan gets serious in his Pearls Before Swine comic strip.Sometimes he gets profound. Sometimes Stephan gets really intense. Michael Cavna, at the Washington Post, took note that a late 2018 Pearls Sunday strip about Stephan’s dog dying tugged at his readers […]
“Reducing our comics section was not our best decision”As you may recall the Boston Globe created a bit of a hullabaloo when it dropped nearly half of its comic strips and a couple of puzzles. Forced to see the error of their way, they promised “to restore some of them.”Their early January note said their […]