Tom Tomorrow provides a roundup of the current political circus, and, while I’m still burned out on “bland restatement” cartoons, in this case, bland restatement is probably the best way to sum it all up, because we’re in a cycle of same-old-same-old.And then, in that last panel, he breaks mood, and that non-bland shift neatly […]

Notice to Political Cartoonists: A few of you have not yet posted your “Flint Michigan Jim Crow-era Dual Water Fountain” cartoons. Please draw them immediately. Thanks to all who cooperated and got their versions of the metaphor in on time.  The Quixote Syndrome reminds us that tonight is Robbie Burns Night which, if you are not familiar […]

Some encouraging news from Heidi MacDonald, who reports that in-store sales of graphic novels were up 22 percent in 2015.She adds a couple of qualifiers to this cheerful announcement, beginning with some question about the accuracy of the measurement and the fact that juvenile fiction doesn’t break out graphic novels separately, but the overall report is good […]

Sometimes you see a cartoon that is so clearly too smart for the room that you have to assume the cartoonist knew it but was so tickled by the concept that he did it anyway. Such, Dear Reader, is the case with today’s Bliss.Hint: Don’t focus on the conversation. The joke is in the caption. […]

 Let’s start today with the upcoming storm. Of all the predications I’ve been monitoring, Clay Bennett’s seems the most accurate.I don’t know why summer heat doesn’t bring countervailing cartoons about “Well, I guess there is such a thing after all,” except that I know exactly why.There is a whole category of political cartoons that are only political in […]

(The Blabbing Baboon) (Bug Martini)Here’s an interesting juxtaposition for creative types in the current economy, and I can relate to both of them. If Blabbing Baboon were fiction, I’d tell Richard John Marcej to end the unemployment story arc, because it’s been going on awhile and it’s becoming kind of tiresome. Unfortunately, it’s a journal and I’m pretty […]

There have been many, many jokes made about editorial cartoonists praying for a Trump victory because of the endless cartooning possibilities, but if I’d known Monday that Sarah Palin was going to endorse him yesterday, I’d have bought stock in a company that make India ink.Cartoonists who hadn’t put nib to board since before the […]

There was a quick flurry of Sean Penn gags in the political cartooning sector, and I emphasize “gags” because none of them made a coherent point beyond “Hollywood celebrities sure are flaky liberals.”Which ignores the massive number of flaky conservative Hollywood celebrities, but never mind. Signe Wilkinson cuts through that burst of pointlessness to the main […]

Dammit, they’re called “The Funny Pages,” not the “Make You Think Pages.” Which warning I offer to the cartoonists who read this blog, because your future in print is dependent on your ability to draw funny pitchers of teenagers with saggy pants staring into their phones, bearded men on tiny desert islands and women in disheveled […]

Here’s a picture of me that Jim Morin drew, though he got one part of it wrong: Now that I’m semi-retired, I no longer have a 401k but an IRA, the difference being that I draw money out of it now, for things like the $3,000 dental crown I’m adding next month. However, after I post […]

I could probably do a Juxtaposition of the Day using Mr. Fitz and Dilbert five or six days a week if I didn’t mind an occasional stretch. It would be a waffer-theen stretch, I promise you. Specifically, old timers will remember when Dilbert had a “mission statement generator” on its site that would crank out vapid, […]

“Rudy” itself ended up on the losing side of that fine line. You can read more about it here at Stripper’s Guide, where Allan Holtz sums it up: How do you doom a comic strip to a short run? Well, in the case of Rudy by William Overgard, you make the humor smart and character driven. You […]

Former Anchorage Daily News editorial cartoonist Peter Dunlap-Shohl has published a new graphic novel entitled “My Degeneration: A Journey Through Parkinson’s.”From the Anchorage Daily News:When Peter Dunlap-Shohl, the former editorial cartoonist for the Anchorage Daily News, received a diagnosis of Parkinson?s disease at age 43, he saw his whole world collapsing. Thirteen years later, he has […]

Rhymes with Orange creator Hilary Price will be teaching a class on cartooning in April.The description from the course website:What are the components of a caption cartoon? (Plot, setting, characters, surprise… all in a snapshot.) Each day’s lecture will focus on a different element of panel cartooning and I’ll assign exercises to strengthen that cartooning muscle. […]

(David Horsey) (Clay Jones)Today’s lead-off juxtaposition is a meditation on a house divided not between Republicans and Democrats so much as between those with faith in democracy and those with a paranoid fear of both authority and of “intruders” in their Mythological America.As Horsey points out in the cartoon and, more pointedly, in the essay accompanying it, […]