I’ve mentioned this before, but GoComics is now featuring “Origins of the Sunday Comics,” selections from a history of the same being compiled by Peter Maresca and, as GoComics says, available in “all of their full, broadsheet-sized glory in the new book from Sunday Press: Society is Nix, Gleeful Anarchy at the Dawn of the […]
Brian Basset’s Red and Rover is rarely a fall-on-the-floor laugh fest, but its nostalgic portrayal of a boy and his dog in a recent but unspecified past is always a nice stop on the comic highway.Today, he outdoes himself with a back-to-school strip that rises far above the glut of predictable back-to-school strips.I wrote the […]
Reruns (even ones featuring Rerun) shouldn’t take up valuable real estate on the print comics page, but they’re a lot of fun on the seemingly infinite Web. Especially when they are reruns of things you didn’t see the first time, like this Richard’s Poor Almanac entry, kindly presented a few days early so we can […]
I like this Mark Fiore piece a lot, but I don’t think it’s a comic. (You’ll have to go watch it there, since he has disabled embedding. We’ll talk about that another day. Go.)So I don’t know that it fits the mission of the blog, but I do know that it’s a very clever takeoff, […]
Dave Coverly does a sort of metagag, in which he takes an exceptionally lame old joke, puts a somewhat ghastly spin on it, and turns it into comedy.The great thing about this panel is that the joke works on two levels: Vulture gifts are a pretty funny idea to begin with, and even funnier with the […]
Looks like we’re going to have to send the Comix Police out to round up a few scofflaws: Jef Mallett is not simply a repeat offender but verges on being declared a career criminal.It’s not enough that, in today’s Frazz, he violates one law of comic humor by offering up a pun without a final […]
Pat Bagley on the current economic standoff.I like his graphic invocation of “The American People Are On Our Side.” Yes, they are, except for the majority who voted in favor of the Other Guy last November. The whole idea of sequestration was that it proposed a solution so horrendous that cooler heads would prevail before it […]
As I was going through this morning’s strips, I was struck by the number of cartoonists who did really good work, not by “showing up” in the sense of turning something in on time, but in the sense of simply working well within their established mode.That is, in the sense of having a good “groove” […]
And Don Asmussen makes the choosing easy today by executing a flawless triple-play.I’ve mentioned this before, but Bad Reporter sets up a tough challenge for itself, and there are many days when I read it and two are good and then, like watching a long field goal drift to the right, there’s that “doink” as […]
Arctic Circle sometimes riffs on snow-and-ice jokes and sometimes features non-arctic humor. Sometimes it’s silly and sometimes it’s got some bite. Which is to say, it’s a mix of igloo jokes and humor based on the very real threat of global warming. With occasional forays to the coffee bar.What I like about it is that […]
Amidst the predictable jokes about leftovers, and the equally predictable tee-hee-hee’s over Black Friday shopping (Anyone going for the Trudy Trifecta? “Out at midnight, overdrew the checking account, crumpled the fender pulling into the garage afterwards”? Nobody? Maybe next year!) , some cartoonists have serious comments to make. Like a lot of newspaper-based editorial cartoonists, Derf […]
Pickles nails one.I like conversations about language, and there are some nails-on-chalk mistakes that bother me. One thing I edit out of reporters’ stories is use of the word “that” when it is referencing people. “John Smith is someone that …” becomes “John Smith is someone who …” under my pen.Howsoever.This does not make me smarter […]
Arlo and Janis once more taps into my life.While I sit here praying that, as the newspaper industry implodes around me, my skill set will get me through just a couple of more years until Social Security kicks in, Arlo notes that, yeah, most of what we know seems to be fading into oblivion.Fortunately, our generation […]
One of my long-time favorite strips is taking advantage of that long-time factor. Here’s yesterday’s Arlo & Janis:We’ll all see, and be happy to do so. I hope it goes for more than a week.On the other hand, it’s possible to get a flashback fix even when he’s not providing one in the current strip. […]
With the best cartoons, you really don’t know where things are going. Arlo & Janis is often a reflection on mortality, but the current arc appears to be heading into a harsher place than even Jimmy Johnson generally ventures.Arlo is painting the garage, and, Monday, Janis was on the phone with their son, Gene, and […]