Dave Whamond’s “Reality Check” cracked me up today, and the bit of dialogue at the bottom is more of an enhancement than is usual for marginalia.And, once you know who they are, it gets funnier: A roomful of workaholics with their Smartphones out is as funny as an AA meeting with everyone clutching a glass […]

Susie Cagle, the only embedded comic journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street movement, was arrested early this morning in Oakland after police fired teargas and flash bang grenades to clear a downtown street after protestors lit a large bonfire. According to CBS News at least 30 people were arrested and Susie reports through Twitter that […]

Charlie Hebdo, The French satirical magazine, was petro bombed last night. The BBC reports that the offices were destroyed a day after the magazine announced the Prophet Muhammad would be its editor-in-chief in the next issue and ran a caricature of the Prophet. The issue was supposed to celebrate the victory of the recent Tunisian […]

As promised by the Urban Tulsa publisher, Keith Skrzypczak, today’s edition contains the formal response from the paper regarding the accusations of plagiarism by its cartoonist David Simpson. Noted is the news that Simpson has stated that he is retiring from editorial cartooning.Dave Simpson, an award-winning, nationally syndicated former editorial cartoonist with the erstwhile afternoon […]

Susie MacNelly, Jeff’s widow, has written the following which I’m sharing with her permission: Mike Peters so accurately described David Simpson as a cartoon kleptomaniac. Tulsa must be in a black hole with different journalistic ethics because neither Simpson nor his editor/publisher seem repentant. His editor wanted me to write the retraction….I declined. Mr. Simpson’s […]

Pros & Cons dabbles in a bit of politics today, if only because “serving on the board” is a phrase so widely misunderstood by the public at large.I served on the board of the local United Way for a time, and on the board of the local chapter of Literacy Volunteers, as well as on […]

Jeff MacNelly’s widow, Susie MacNelly, received an apology letter from the now former Urban Tulsa editorial cartoonist David Simpson admitting he “stole” Jeff’s Jimmy Carter cartoon that was brought to light last week. With her permission, I’m sharing that letter.Here is the original letter:Dear Susan: I’m very sorry that I stole Jeff’s Carter cartoon from […]

ABTech profiles one of their alum, Chris Sparks, who is leading the Team Cul de Sac project to raise money for Parkinsons Disease research. The Cul de Sac project solicited original art from notable cartoonists to be auctioned off as well as sell a book collection of the art that is due out next spring.In […]

According to Poynter David Simpson has resigned from his contract position at the Urban Tulsa. According to the paper’s creative director, the second plagiarized cartoon went to press before the issue of originality came to light. In a separate post on Poynter, the paper’s publisher plans to respond to the accusations of plagiarism in the […]

John Sherffius, the editorial cartoonist for the Boulder Camera, has announced that he’s retiring from editorial cartooning. In an email sent to the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists email list group, he writes:“I wanted to let you, and the AAEC, know that this will be my last week at the Boulder Camera, as I am […]

If you’ll remember Robert Crumb was supposed to be the headlining appearance at the Graphic arts festival in Sydney Australia in August, but cancelled his trip after The Sunday Telegraph described him as a “self-confessed sex pervert” and a “very warped human being.” Part of his appearance was a sit down interview on stage with […]

In light of the recent cases of David Simpson’s plagiarism in the Urban Tulsa, the Toy & Action Figure Museum has retracted Simpson’s 2005 induction into the Oklahoma Cartoonists Hall of Fame. Here is the statement in full by Musuem Director Lisa Driskill:Due to the recent revelation of another apparent incidence of plagiarism on the […]

International political cartoons tend to be highly metaphorical. I don’t know how much the change of language over comparatively smaller geographic areas has to do with this and how much it simply is how political cartoons have evolved overseas, but it remains a fact of cartooning.The net effect for me, as someone raised on the […]

This morning I asked jokingly if today’s new David Simpson cartoon was an original. Turns out it’s not. A Daily Cartoonist reader who wished to remain anonymous found the source of the cartoon in the Jeff MacNelly official archives (last cartoon on the page). He tells me it took him about five minutes to find […]

From MSNBC:Competing against Halloween parties and contending with an unseasonal blizzard in the Northeast, DreamWorks Animation?s “Puss in Boots,” distributed by Paramount, purred its way to the top spot at the North American box office with an estimated $34 million. That amounted to a new Halloween weekend record, leaping over the $33.6 million that “Saw […]