Judge Parker is my favorite continuity strip precisely for the type of surprise that kick-starts the week today.Storylines here unfold in soap-opera slo-mo, which is understandable given the four-panel format, and for nearly two years, we’ve been following Neddy’s attempt to start up a domestic clothing manufacturing company, with the combined backing of her own […]
(Darrin Bell) (Tayo Fatunla)There are two ways of looking at obituary cartoons:1. They are a necessary marker of the public consciousness and it is incumbent upon cartoonists to say something at such moments.2. They are a wretched, cliche-filled, lazy excuse to take a day off from responsible commentary.If you contemplate the life of one of the […]
Saturdays being often a bit slack on the comics page, I decided to anticipate Monday’s anniversary date and do some looking back to the comics you’d have seen then, if the news weren’t a bit more on your mind.I really expected that it would be the June 7, 1944 newspapers that would cover D-Day, but the […]
Let’s start with an exceptional cartoon from Don Asmussen, and, when I say “exceptional,” I mean it’s an exception to yesterday’s weary, categorical denunciation of all cartoons riffing on Trump as the Cincinnati gorilla. Any idea, no matter how lame, can be done well, but the format of Bad Reporter requires that a joke be done three […]
Joe Heller gets top spot today for not over-reaching with his commentary on the Cincinnati gorilla story. Sometimes the simple statement is the best, and there’s no need to go beyond the basic observation that the Internet allows for people to be more openly vicious, judgmental and unfair than they might be in person.A lot […]
(Hotel Fred) (Blabbing Baboon)An interesting juxtaposition this week as Roger Landgridge shuts down Hotel Fred, a daily project he explains in this final installment, while Richard Marcej re-starts “The Blabbing Baboon,” his daily graphic journal, which had gone dormant while (spoiler alert) he took on a temporary position that involved a killer commute.On a superficial level, the […]
Start with the fun stuff today, though I’m putting a lot of reverse English on Baby Blues, because I think the “battle of the sexes” thing, while a predictable laff line, is backwards here: The kids should be happily oblivious while the parents wonder what happened.Or, really, the grandparents, because, back in 1972, when we were […]
The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should […]
The shortest take of all: Rhymes With Orange demonstrates Hilary Price’s ability to be silly.There’s probably a way to elaborate on this idea and it’s good she didn’t. At the other end of the simplicity scale, The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee takes a leisurely cruise around the bay before getting to the gag, and a […]
I could almost run that headline over today’s xkcd and be done, but I’ll expand on it a little.As part of a sort of Peter Pan Generation, the idea of being “old” is greeted with a lot of denial, but, while there’s no need to grow old in the sense of withdrawing from life, there’s […]
Today’s first “I told you so” is simply a matter of coincidence: Someone asked the other day what LinkedIn was for, and the response was almost uniform that it is a site for people who want to be spammed and pestered incessantly. And if Benita Epstein’s day in the Six Chix rotation had been yesterday, […]
Walt Handelsman reminds us of a couple of things.One is that, in a political contest, the candidates try to out-do each other. There is nothing inherently disloyal in trying to gain more votes than your opponent and doing so does not make you a demon.The other related point is that, in commenting upon same, you […]
A couple of weeks ago, I dug out my copy of Classic Theater to re-read “Servant of Two Masters,” the play I was in as a college junior back in the spring of 1970, and found this Miss Peach tucked inside, acting as a bookmark.My apartment that year had a wall with various things attached, the only specific […]
Today’s Pros and Cons brings up something I was thinking the other day, when I stumbled across a hearing on CSPAN by the Full House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.Which I always get confused with the Different Strokes Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, but I digress.Anyway, the hearing made me think about how much patience it takes […]
Thursday, I was feeling lousy enough to take a rare sick day, which in the world of the self-employed means turning on the TV before 6 pm and, rather than having it as background while you work, actually watching it.Gaah. Don’t ever do that.It helped shift my nausea from the personal to a more universal […]