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 […]

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 […]