I don’t remember how I stumbled across Fowl Language, but I’ve enjoyed the addition to my daily rotation, even though I see it as a grandparent and not a parent.Or maybe “because.”Brian Gordon has been cartooning long enough that he could be drawing from memory, but, then again, he’s still young enough to be one […]
I’m not sure when crossovers in comics became “a thing,” though likely with the Comic Strip Switcheroo of April Fool’s Day, 1997. But two years earlier, apparently Zippy popped up in Family Circus, inspiring this Tom the Dancing Bug that is today’s Classic at GoComics.Crossovers generally pose the challenge that readers need to be familiar with […]
Today’s Brewster Rockitt touches on a fallacy I work very hard to not try to explain, because it is certainly among the most circuitous and fruitless.Let me explain:It’s a two-parter, with Macro- and Micro- aspects, but they are really one, because we only argue about history and politics to avoid talking about our own personal […]
Nick Anderson responds to Spotlight’s Best Picture win with this dour assessment, and, while there are certainly some political aspects to the commentary, it’s more of a societal observation than a partisan one, so I’m not going to wait until Sunday to talk about it.I haven’t seen the film in question, one disadvantage of semi-rural […]
Several cartoonists took up the topic of this being February 29, with Retail taking the prize for pointing out how utterly insignificant the phenomenon is in the long run. Or even the short.It would be great if Leap Year Day were an actual universal holiday, if we really said “This day doesn’t count!” and everything […]
Glenn McCoy leads off the weekly foray into politics with a plain statement about where we’re at.People who bridle at having to vote for the lesser of two evils might be tempted to stay home in November, except that the Republicans are providing two strong motivations for voting: Hatred or fear of one of the likely […]
One of the small frustrations I face on this blog is trying to figure out when to point out a promising arc, and Piranha Club is one of a handful of strips that repeatedly triggers it by having “suck you in” pacing, such that you don’t realize how good a story arc is until you’re […]
My trip back a half century the other day sparked some curiosity, and when I did a little poking around this morning, it turns out that a quarter century ago today, papers were covering the news that Saddam Hussein had announced his withdrawal from Kuwait. So here are some cartoons from that date, and let me […]
Between Friends is right at the head of the line among strips that sometimes get it so right that the humor sort of fades into the background and the response is “yeah.”Not “Yeah” and certainly not “Yeah!” but just … yeah.Lovely timing, because not 24 hours ago, I unfollowed — not “unfriended,” but close enough […]
Today’s comics provided a cascade of health-related juxtapositions to write about, starting with Candorville (which happens to be a rerun, but it’s a really good rerun) and, yes, exactly, Lemont.And this is a good argument for having kids before you’re too old to get down on the floor with them and disappear into their world, […]
I’m not feeling blabby today, so here are some strips from a half century ago. I’ve cleaned them up a bit but, of course, there are limits to what you can do. There are also limits to what you can figure out about a strip when you drop in on a random date for a […]
The other day, I belittled comic book collecting and other speculative bubbles, and now comes the Blabbing Baboon to make the excellent point that, as long as buyers believe in the value, value exists. As it happens, when I went through my (mercifully shorter) period of unemployment seven years ago, I sold off the bulk […]
I think the place to start this foray back into politics is with Prickly City, because the biggest issue facing the country is not who’s right or who’s wrong but the incredible divisions growing between us.And we shouldn’t pass it off with a shrug and “they all do it.””They’re trying to kill me,” Yossarian told […]
The joke here is that, if I had used pen-and-ink instead of doing this on the computer, the results, given my artistic skills, would be pretty much the same.The point is more serious, though only my opinion and perhaps more of a kvetch than a critique. The old guys in the backshop at one of my […]
Since Jim Horwitz posted Watson’s tribute to the Phantom yesterday afternoon, I’ve been on a nostalgia trip almost as directionless and disjointed as the strip itself.I’m not even clear on whether “directionless and disjointed” is criticism or simply an accurate description of Lee Falk’s strip, which not only pioneered the costumed superhero genre — appearing before […]