Baby Blues is well-poised to touch off a barn-burner — but not a book-burner — of a rant today, which may be more about my day job than this extensive sideline as a comics fan. I’ve worked with kids and reading and writing for nearly a quarter of a century, and the issue of “age appropriate” […]
I think school is out most places now. Both “School’s Out” and “Back to School” cartoons have a problem of timing, since the actual events can vary by about a month depending on location. But they also have a problem of “same old same old,” and Deflocked sidesteps that today with a gag that goes beyond the […]
Chris Britt makes a simple point that I’ve been mulling over.The idea that mass shootings occur so often that we seem to always be mourning one or the other is nothing he came up with alone.Rob Rogers, for instance, offers this commentary on the futility, though using Obama’s repeated calls for action leaves open the […]
Matt Wuerker got caught up in a bit of irrelevantly inaccurate reporting the other day.As a comment or two on his cartoon gleefully pointed out, the weapon used in the Orlando shootings was not, as originally reported, an AR-15. It was a Sig Sauer MCX.Which, as that linked article suggests, raises the important question: “So what?”Another […]
Chan Lowe dropped this cartoon 24 hours before Bernie Sanders made his address to his followers, which was some very good timing.If True Believers could be chilled out by such things, Bernie’s speech would disabuse them of the ideas that (A) he’s going to run a third-party campaign or (B) they should boycott the election […]
Getting off the political merry-go-round for a moment to salute the silly, in which category Soup to Nutz is certainly included.Today’s is a good example of the logical twists this strip delivers, “so dumb it’s smart” exchanges that work particularly well with the cast Rick Stromoski has assembled.It’s hard to do “time bomb humor” in a […]
Start with a bit of news that — thankfully — has nothing to do with Orlando or Muslims or Trump: Microsoft is acquiring LinkedIn for an astonishing amount of money that, as Alex points out, seems to have very little toehold in logic or reality.As for “Many a truth is spoken in jest,” I did […]
After yesterday’s rant about cartoonists who don’t leap into action, Clay Bennett nails one that reminds me that some things are worth waiting for. This doesn’t erase my impatience with a system in which the response is “But I don’t do a national cartoon until Wednesday.” I continue to believe that political cartoonists need to be […]
In recapping D-Day coverage last week, I mentioned that, while afternoon papers had same-day coverage of the invasion, the morning papers, too late to cover the event on their regular schedules, published “Extras” on June 6.I’ve found over the years that, while everyone is familiar with the image of the newsboy shouting “Extra! Extra!” few […]
If Terri Libenson hadn’t just won a Reuben for best newspaper strip, today’s Pajama Diaries would have been a great argument in favor of it.As it is, it certainly confirms the votes of her peers, because Pajama Diaries is a top contender in a niche I wish were less of a niche and more of […]
I don’t know if there is a Comics Convention season, but there do seem to be a lot of them going on over the summer, and, at the moment, there is an eruption of talk over copyright infringements at Cons, specifically the people in Artist Alleys who sell artwork the rights to which they do […]
Our topic today: Where do cartoonists get their ideas?Or, more specifically, when?I’m not ignoring politics today. Just waiting for more editorial cartoonists to catch up with the news, because the “when” factor there is apparently “not right away.”Bernie ruined a lot of cartoons yesterday by promising to work with Hillary and asking only that the […]
(Ann Telnaes, 2016)(Pat Oliphant, 2012)For the past week, I’ve been sitting on an article in the Columbia Journalism Review by Ann Telnaes on the topic of Pat Oliphant in part because I didn’t want to just toss it in with other things and in part because it wouldn’t simply slip into place like the final […]
I welcome the chance to do a “Short Takes” posting, and today’s Pros & Cons pretty much tells why. Yes, there are some big important questions out there.But how ’bout those Mets?Or, more specifically, how ’bout those Tigers, because that’s what I was watching last night, and this was absolutely awesome, and I don’t mean […]
Let’s start the day with Pajama Diaries, which is funny but not funny. It’s part of an arc about a friend of Jill’s trying to find out what’s up with her child, and, while the Jenny McCarthy punchline is specific to that particular issue, the concept is universal for anyone with health issues and an Internet […]