I always appreciate it when a cartoonist allows me to vent about something without violating the Prime Directive. Thank you, Mr. Fitz, for allowing me to be positive about this insider take, rather than give in to the temptation to run, and then rip down, a bad cartoon on the topic.Here’s the deal: First of […]

Shia LaBeouf, who has admitted to using dialog and direct adaptation from a Daniel Clowes comic written in 2007, has taken to the skies above Los Angeles yesterday to apologize to the artist. The skywriting (see photo above) was commissioned and tweeted by LaBeouf. The Guardian notes that Daniel lives in San Francisco Bay Area […]

I had the chance to talk to Scott before the holiday hiatus. I’m still working on getting our conversation transcribed – but we talked about systems vs goals. Using systems rather than goals might not be for everyone – some people are just goal driven (and that’s a good thing), but others may not have […]

Hat tip: Mike Lynch

 Tom the Dancing Bug starts the year off with a heartfelt plea for cooperation from Big Brother.My growing anger over the violation of the Fourth Amendment and the social contract in general, and my growing distrust over the Official Story, is beginning to overcome my indifference to the spying itself, which means the timing for […]

Let’s join the New Year’s Eve 1913 party, already in progress over at Bud Fisher’s. (There will be lots of clicking to get larger versions today, by the way. On my computer, Chrome allows scrolling down on those pull-outs, Firefox does not.)Nice of him to apply labels. A lot of familiar faces, but not all […]

I’m using this cartoon because, in it, my little pal Edison Lee sums up my feelings about New Year’s Eve.Also because I think it’s the only syndicated cartoon in the universe that didn’t do a New Year’s Eve gag about falling asleep early. Reading cartoons about falling asleep on New Year’s Eve is kind of […]

Let’s start with stupid today and work our way up.Gags about saggy blue jeans and other teen fashions are the stuff of lame, burned-out old hacks, but today’s Bizarro is more incisive, probing beyond Andy Rooney and getting into more dangerous Bill Cosby territory.I was a huge Bill Cosby fan in my early teen years. But […]

Interesting cartoon by Steve Kelley, for several reasons.Kelley skews right of center, but he’s not out at the edge. The true right-wingers, by contrast, have been parading Obama’s low approval ratings but absolutely silent about the abysmal numbers the GOP has been getting in polls.The “approval ratings” story is that voters are angry with everyone, […]

At the risk of dwelling too much on my ever-present anxiety over whether I’m just old or actually stupid (scroll down to yesterday’s post), I was really pleased to see the new Scenes from a Multiverse today, below which Jon Rosenberg comments, “If you’re interested in keeping your money in a form that can drop […]

Today’s Dilbert doesn’t exactly give me hope, but it at least reassures me that I’m not alone.I can’t always tell when I’m just being an old fart and when the young punks are actually running wild, but we’re nearly two months past the point where Google killed off the iGoogle homepage so they could push […]

Let’s start today’s mixture of reality checks with thankyouthankyouthankyou Wiley Miller, the only cartoonist, it seems, willing to pull back the curtain rather than to reflexively accept “delivery drones” as something non-ludicrous.It seems bizarre that the flood of tiresome, repetitive drone cartoons have all been predicated on the idea that the pipe dream Jeff Bezos […]

I’ve seen a couple of cartoons that riffed on the wall dividing Bethlehem, and then saw a report on Al Jazeera America about the stress the town is under. It reminded me of when I used to do a weekly educational feature on political cartoons, and, specifically, of this piece from December 28, 2005.Normally, I’d […]

I’m starting off with Paolo Lombardi’s obituary cartoon for Mikhael Kalashnihov because it’s exceptional in the true meaning of the word: It’s the exception to the rule that Pearly Gates cartoons are crap.This is actually brilliant, including the fact that he simply shows the closed gates and the sign. No Saint Peter, no God, no […]

As I usually do, I’m taking the last week of the year off for the holidays. I’ll be back at the helm January 2. To each of you, I wish you happy holidays and new year!–Alan