This is very complicated and, without my going to Youngstown and Warren, Ohio, and interviewing people, it’s not possible to be completely accurate, but, from here, it appears that comics may have delayed, perhaps even prevented, the destruction of a local paper.The Vindicator, Youngstown’s hometown newspaper, recently announced its death, leaving a significant city without […]
Paul Berge’s current blog features a collection of 1919 cartoons about the “Summer Widower,” and he addresses it as something known only in those days.Not sure how old Paul is, but I caught the tail end of the phenomenon.There was a time, O Best Beloved, when people didn’t — couldn’t — go all that far […]
Way back in 1957 the people involved with newspaper comic strips were celebrating the 60th anniversary of their craft. Yeah, they were a couple years off. These days it is 1895, not 1897, that is generally celebrated as the birth year of newspaper comics (though newspaper comics had appeared earlier than 1895).Anyway…In 1957 a few […]
I fell off a bike into an outpouring of charity. But Americans shouldn’t have to seek out strangers to pay health bills.Dustin Harbin was involved in a mishap.I was recently in a bicycle accident which resulted in me landing–by all evidence, directly on the mouth–face first on the asphalt. I’m not sure what happened, because […]
I’m starting with Clay Bennett‘s diagram of the table for the G-7, because it doesn’t allow for a whole lot of debate or denial or refutation.You can interpret it: There is discussion that the conference host, French President Emmanuel Macron is primarily concerned not with possible disagreements over this or that economic factor but simply […]
Only one quarter of grown-ass adults can correctly name all three branches of the U.S. government, according to a 2017 study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. This bad. This very bad. But a new project by Vermont’s Center for Cartoon Studies offers a glimmer of hope that the next […]
Pia Guerra is one of the most poignant political cartoonists working today, yet she wasn’t even creating such art full time before President Donald Trump. Now, when human tragedy makes international news, Guerra is a go-to visual commentator for many readers.Partly because she comes out of the world of comic books, Guerra composes political cartoons […]
It was the 1960s and Sam Gross began his cartooning career. Like other cartoonists he had a number of goals, but one was foremost.To paraphrase: not because it is easy, but because it is hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of his energies and skills, because that challenge is […]
Occasionally cartoonist Sandra Bell-Lundy dreams of the Old Country.The Old Country is Newfoundland, the home of her mother and grandmother. Occasionally it is mentioned by name in Sandra’s Between Friends comic strip.It’s because Bell-Lundy has a strong connection — both her mother (Shirley Bell, nee Graham, age 85) and grandmother (Harriet Graham, nee Taylor, born […]
We still haven’t actually seen Eugene the Jeep in this week’s 1936 Thimble Theater, but there’s already a villain seeking to kidnap — jeepnap? — the little fellow.Wikipedia (mostly) disputes the story that Eugene inspired WWII GIs to refer to their small, go-anywhere vehicles as “Jeeps” but doesn’t explain why, or provide examples of how, […]
Humorist Larry Siegel has passed away.Lawrence Harvey (Larry) Siegel October 29, 1925 – August 20, 2019From the Larry Siegel Facebook page:It is with great sadness that I have to share the news that my father, Larry Siegel passed away last night at the age of 93 after a long battle with Parkinson’s. He was a […]
Big conventions, like those in Salt Lake City and San Diego, attract huge numbers of artists and fans. For Santa Barbara, California-based Dana Simpson, it became too much. “I’ve started doing more of these smaller conventions. I got tired of the big conventions because they’re big and loud, and it’s easy to feel lost. I […]
Jimmy Margulies explains today’s lack of any particular theme. Dear Leader has become so erratic that it’s possible to blend the political with the comical and the only real problem is that he’s got access to the launch codes.We’ve managed to bring Great Truth to that cynical National Lampoon parody of Desiderata:You are a fluke […]
Pedro X. Molina, who was presented with the 2018 Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award from the Cartoonists Rights Network International at last year’s AAEC Convention in Sacramento, and earlier this year was honored as a recipient of a 2019 Maria Moors Cabot Prize for outstanding reporting on the Americas from the Columbia Journalism School, has […]
Dan Piraro makes an announcement:A while back and for a number of years, I used to do a feature called Bizarro’s Sunday Punnies and here’s how it worked: About once a month, I’d do a Sunday cartoon with three panels, each of which was my illustrated version of a pun submitted by readers. (See example […]