People keep saying that Trump is a feast for political cartoonists, and this past week has certainly offered plenty of fodder.But too much easy living can leave you fat and lazy. The week’s cartoons offered more laughs than insight.On the other hand, some cartoonists have maintained their edge despite all the low-hanging fruit.For instance, regular […]

Sometimes even when you work weeks ahead, you manage to drop the right cartoon at the right time, and Scott Stantis did that with this morning’s Prickly City.When the Washington Post reported Dear Leader’s outrageously racist remarks yesterday, there was a flutter of people getting the vapors on CNN, and a surge of cartoonists on […]

Retail has been playing in the rumor mill this week, with dubious predictions of store closings and Marla wondering if those rumors are true and, if so, might her store be on the hit list.While actually closing the place down is, perhaps, specific to the retail industry, the overall concept of cutbacks and layoffs is […]

Part of the mission here is to explain comics. Steve Sack ran this cartoon last week, when Michele Bachmann announced her interest in running for Minnesota’s soon-to-be-open Senate seat.It’s a joke.Steve was not actually hoping that Bachmann would run. He was simply making a joke because she is such a polarizing, absurd figure that, if she […]

There was a time when, if some movie star or other random celebrity gave a good speech, someone might say “That’s who should be in the White House!”And everyone would agree, but nobody would take it seriously. There was never a sincere effort to make Mark Twain or Will Rogers president, much less Mary Pickford […]

In today’s Between Friends, Kim asks a question that all writers — and creative people in general — face, or, at least, ought to. The key is not what people want to read but what you want to say.It’s not that hard to see what is popular but there is that old Hollywood gag that what […]

Chip Bok makes a valid point about Jeff Sessions’ recent decision to crack down on pot: He’s the Attorney General and he should be enforcing the law. You can’t blame him for the fact that federal law has not kept up with social trends or science or medicine.Though at that point the argument divides.Bok is […]

Leading with Mike Thompson’s cartoon because he takes advantage of one of the most astonishing press briefings to emerge from an astonishing White House.In case you missed it, that insufferable teacher’s pet that Dear Leader puts in charge when he leaves the room explained the objection to “Fire and Fury” thus:“The president believes in making […]

 The book drops today, and if you love me you’ll order it here but that’s not what I wanted to say about it.Jack Ohman comes close to what I wanted to say about it, because it’s a portrait of chaos and paranoia that would be funny if it weren’t actually happening in our actual government.I’ve […]

There was never a time when I didn’t enjoy my boys or wished they had stayed young or wished they would get over a particular stage.But today’s Dog Eats Doug brings back what may be my favorite parenting period: When they were old enough to sit up in the grocery cart and take notice, but […]

I keep hoping for things to lighten up enough that we can just share some giggles. However, the rant is necessary because we’ve got a coalition of maniacs and morons to deal with.Drew Sheneman offers an insightful comment on the street protests in Iran: A moderate (note the street clothes) Iranian attempting to confront a […]

Rudy Park scores the only “Last Jedi” mention here for a couple of reasons, starting with my only caring about the film as a social factor and not as a motion picture.I have not seen it and almost certainly won’t, not because I’m the kind of snob who avoids popular films but because of the […]

It’s always fun and instructive, on New Year’s Day, to look back at how cartoonists have dealt with similar times in the past, and I chose New Year’s 1969 because it followed a year that was about as bad as any we’ve had since the Civil War.Here’s a quick summary of what we’d just been […]

I’ve been kind of sitting on this Steve Breen cartoon for a few days because I didn’t know quite what to say about it.Beyond, “What is the matter with you people?”The complicated part is that, while everyone seems to either be ignoring the threat or appears untroubled by it, that could be part of the […]

Sally Forth is hardly the only comic strip riffing on middle-aged people trying to stay up for New Year’s, but it may be the only one riffing on the pointlessness of even bothering. The last time I made midnight I was in my 50s and it was only by happenstance: I’d been working on something and […]