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 […]
Start with the dumbest joke of the day and work your way up, that’s my motto. Today’s Argyle Sweater is really dumb, but it’s seasonally dumb, which adds a certain Jenny C. Kwan.I remember Christmas cards where the front was the alphabet, or appeared to be, but when you opened it, it said, “No L,” and […]
It’s fitting, I think, that “Between Friends” would feature the first fruitcake joke to make me laugh in more or less forever.I consider fruitcake jokes to be lazy, one of a number of comic kneejerk gags that kind of straddle the ho-hum of Santa caught in the chimney and gags about animals without opposable thumbs. […]
I would so eat at this place! So, sure, have a laugh at the cartoon, but now — come on, folks — how can we get today’s La Cucaracha into the hands of some restaurant moguls and marketing executives?Because, if I drove past a burger joint and saw on the big plastic sign, “We pay […]
So the Benghazi-of-the-Week is that Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty expressed some neolithic views of sexuality and some jaw-dropping observations about pre-Civil Rights America and A&E exercised their right to not feature him on their channel.Jonathan Rosenberg makes about the only necessary comment on the “scandal” itself. What makes it a “Benghazi” is the tortuous inconsistencies […]
I ran into Steve Artley at the Billy Ireland last month and told him I wished he hadn’t quit doing political cartoons about a year earlier, to which he responded that I was in luck, because he was starting back up again. And so he has.A boatload of cartoonists have done Scrooge cartoons this holiday […]
It’s not that I’m in a non-ranting mood. I’m always in the mood for a rant.But there were a lot of cartoons that I really liked today but none that triggered a rant. Or, at least, not a full-length rant. So treasure the brevity. Let’s start with some football. The Flying McCoys today isn’t about football, but I […]
My day begins around 4:30 with a dive into the day’s cartoons, during which I pull out, on average, a half dozen nominees. Then I go back and sort through them to come up with some sort of coherent overall theme or, at least, a sensible order in which to discuss them.So today I had […]
Today’s Argyle Sweater may provoke cheering as well as laughter from an apparently growing group that despises the “Elf on the Shelf,” a relatively new, manipulative way to drive home the message that love is dependent on your behavior.That’s always been part of the non-religious aspect of Christmas: He knows if you’ve been bad or good, […]
Today’s headline is a tribute to my favorite journalistic weasel-word.However, it fits. The Christmas cartoons are starting, which will, for the next two weeks, mean the comics page will be an eclectic mix of good stuff and really lame stuff. We’ll celebrate the good. Some of which is political, of course. Steve Sack isn’t the first […]
I have always had a visceral dislike for prolonged, outward mourning. In recent years, it has come from seeing how often a “commemorative issue” is no more than a cynical mask for piling up some single copy sales, but even as a 13-year-old nearing 14, I went outside and ran around the yard during JFK’s […]
Yesterday I laid out a pretty good rant in anticipation of cartoons rather than reaction to them. As it turns out, the first to land was this Nick Anderson piece, which reflects a slapdown seen at least on my corner of Facebook and presumably his adjacent one.It’s particularly brilliant because of the convergence of the […]
Exquisite timing — I spotted Pat Oliphant’s take while my Facebook feed was filling with commentary from SA friends watching the funeral. I disagree only with the universal sense of unpreparedness he suggests, but I’m going to interpret it as a combination of shock and grief rather than a genuine expression of incapacity.There was a […]
I’ve stopped watching the talking head shows on Sunday, but, if I ever feel the urge to start up again, I’m going to consult this Matt Bors cartoon first.For two or three years, I wrote for a magazine that was distributed to Realtors in the Colorado Springs market and basically existed for the sake of […]
Garry Trudeau has become one of the more eloquent and straightforward advocates for military personnel, and if there is a joke to be made today, it is that his willingness to stand up for them is yet another example of his knee-jerk instinct to buck whoever happens to hold power on the Hill and in […]