I was into my Vintage line-up this morning and was struck by “today’s” (December 14, 1956) Big Ben Bolt, in which Ben’s sidekick is talking to a woman he’s smitten with about her college-aged son. It’s three panels of two people talking to each other, and John Cullen Murphy had to make some choices, given how […]

Arctic Circle got Tuesday off to an intelligent start, and I don’t know if that skewed my appreciation of the comics that followed or not, Comics Kingdom being my first start and Arctic Circle being alphabetically near the top of that page, though I’ve done a little bit of customizing on the order.In any case, […]

Pajama Diaries on a common issue for those of us who work at home: When does the factory whistle blow?There’s always been spill-over, at least among people with a tendency to be workaholics. I remember one publisher I worked for who would walk out to her car every night with a double armload of ledgers and […]

Reply All starts us off with a reflection on personal responsibility, specifically in the area of crying “Bullshit!” when appropriate.At one end of the scale, we’ve got the faux-clever people who think everything is bullshit, or, at least, who think calling everything bullshit is clever, and the Internet was made for them. I’m somewhat sympathetic to […]

Someone recently said that the Internet has ruined April Fool’s Day by pummeling us with a constant barrage of untruths for no apparent reason.I had a friend who would cheat at anything, which made some less-than-admirable sense when he had his kids lie about their ages to shave money from ticket prices, but made very […]

Least weighty comment of the day: I always enjoy Red and Rover, but was struck today not by the gag but by the middle panel. Clearly, Brian Basset has seen a dog stretch before, and the toes and tongue are perfect.As I said, that’s not a profound comment, though I do find it proof that […]

Betty puts a thoughtful spin on the usual men-and-housework cliche. Cartoonists have moved away, for the most part, from endlessly bashing women for overdrawing their checking accounts and smashing up their cars, with only a few old dinosaurs hanging on to those condescending gags.But the incompetent, uncooperative hubby remains at the center of a lot of […]

It is as if cartoonists were conspiring to see who could touch off my most off-topic rant.We’ll start with what is not only the best ‘toon of the day, but surely the least intended to set me off, this Cartoon Movement piece by Moroccan cartoonist Jalal Hajir on Brexit and the now-approved Scottish referendum.The cartoon brilliantly […]

Today’s Speed Bump acknowledges what we’ve all observed recently, although I’m not finding much greater need to avoid bringing up politics than in the past.Granted, I purged my social media of trolls and the heartless during the run up to the election, in keeping with my well-established “Archie Bunker Rule,” which originally said that nobody who […]

Poor Carmen, the conservative half of the Prickly City duo, has been undergoing a dark night of the soul since even before the elections, in the course of which Scott Stantis brought in a sympathetic Bernie Sanders character and Carmen wound up working for Gary Johnson.Last week, she and Winslow, the liberal coyote, compared the […]

It’s not easy to come up with topical cartoons, and poor Tim Eagan gives us a case study of how quickly things can fall apart.This is brilliant work. It’s an excellent predator/prey metaphor and he did a truly great job of melding Putin’s face with that of the self-satisfied lion.Really, really nice work.And then the son […]

Well, that didn’t go very well, did it?Matt Wuerker imagines a dialogue between Paul Ryan and John Boehner, the joke being that Boehner kind of stuck Ryan with the job when it was only somewhat thankless, though they both ended up being made fools of by their own party.It is a kinder, gentler take on […]

Soup to Nutz offers a grim but funny — yes, that’s possible — commentary on the search for humane meat.I do believe in humane treatment of animals, even those destined for the table. What life they have, however short, should not be brutal, at least beyond the facts of life, their fact of life being “You […]

Warming up with the whole “saddest words” thing over at Candorville.Lemont is moving to Canada to be with his girlfriend in Vancouver, whose name, as far as we know so far, is simply “Vancouver.” They met on-line and he’s been up there to visit her.Once.I’d love to be a romantic, but, boy oh boy, I’m […]

Matt Wuerker posted an unusual query on Facebook the other day, and, as you’ll see at the right, he got 133 comments and, as you’ll see above, he got a pretty good cartoon out of it.I don’t know how many words Eskimos, or Inuits for that matter, have for snow. In New England, we get […]