Arlo & Janis set the mood as I celebrate nine years of cartoon blogging with a collection of strips that predate CSotD, only a few of which I’ve slipped in over the years.Arlo isn’t so much morbid as realistic with a tendency to brood, and there are any number of strips I might have chosen […]
It’s odd — not funny, mostly just odd — that this Thimble Theater from August, 1935, happens to turn up on the Comics Kingdom Vintage page at the same time Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s med school yearbook page happened to turn up, showing that he had chosen a photo showing a person in blackface and […]
Graeme Keyes finds a way to freshen the stale old “kids play in the box” gag.There’s no gag so moldy that it can’t be made new again, but sometimes it requires turning it completely upside down.Strict analysis of this raises the question of whether those are “kids” and whether they were the recipients of the […]
I curate my social media enough that I miss some things, but if anybody is mourning the retirement of Paul Ryan, it hasn’t come across my feed. The most sympathetic take I’m seeing is along the lines of this simple Ann Telnaes commentary, which I don’t think is intended to be sympathetic.But there he is, […]
Let’s set a bit of a holiday mood with Barney & Clyde, which has always had a bit of a Frank Capra tone. The difference is that the cartoon strip appears every day and Capra worked in an era in which most movies were self-contained and had finite endings.There was no “It’s Still A Wonderful […]
Non Sequitur lays it out, and I have no argument with Wiley’s analysis.Because, yeah, I have a lot of arguments. Nick Anderson says much the same as Wiley, though in a slightly different tone: Trump never got his wall on the southern border, but he’s managed to build one through the heart of the country.I’ve said […]
Paul Fell notes the futility of “Moments of Silence” followed by “Months of Inaction,” which puts his piece head-and-shoulders above the multitude of “We’re So Sad” cartoons currently out there.There are times when all you can say is “We’re So Sad,” and editorial cartoonists have an obligation to mirror those moments for the nation or, […]
(Tom Toles)(Ann Telnaes)Let’s start the day with an all-WashPo Juxtaposition.I will confess, I gave up on Bob Woodward’s “Fear” about a third of the way through. As noted here before, it felt rushed, with a lot of incidents but without a unifying thread, which doesn’t make for engrossing reading.But it does start with the Hidden […]
Ann Telnaes gets it absolutely right on a level that hits me personally, and perhaps it’s a chance to talk about the system, because I’m sure tired of talking about the issue.For about a year and a half, I edited a small, twice-weekly community paper in western Maine.Back in 2006-8, Maine had two Senators noted […]
(Arlo and Janis)(Real Life Adventures)So, yes, it’s autumn, as Arlo notes, though, as Real Life Adventures counters, not so’s you’d notice.The important thing around here is that we want a spectacular autumn and it’s a crap shoot each year.Sometimes, it’s just kind of blah. Sometimes, just as it’s looking really good, there’s a storm that […]
Let’s start with the obvious, because sometimes pointing out the obvious is the best you can do. Dave Granlund points out that Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination is getting different treatment from the Republican majority than Merritt Garland’s nomination received. Ditto with Matt Wuerker‘s commentary, which does not break any new ground or display any unexpected insight but […]
Ann Telnaes scores with her weekly strip, Mo, which began in May at GoComics, updating each Monday.Aside from the speed at which she works — this is the first “Truth isn’t truth” piece I’ve seen — she’s also hitting stride with the strip. Every new strip needs to find its legs, and the combination of […]
So simple an eight-year-old could do it.Actually, I’m not sure how old Edison Lee is, but I suspect that he could do taxes because he hasn’t yet been steeped in April 15 Fear, which is found in the cartooning bible somewhere between all those slippery banana peels and the pies cooling off on open windowsills.Mind […]
Pajama Diaries is one of the strips that I probably feature too often: Either you’ve figured out that you should be reading it on your own or you never will, and if you’ve decided you don’t like it, you’re likely sick of seeing it here. However, Terri Libenson approaches topics that other cartoonists have also […]
Zits Baby Blues Off the Mark Rhymes With OrangeI’ve been frustrated lately that political issues seem so compelling and we are at such a flash point that I have not been balancing my coverage of editorial cartoons with the attention that comic strips deserve.So here are four cartoons from this morning’s funny pages.Apparently, I’m not […]