No heavy lifting today. Tank McNamara on the topic of college sports and amateurism. I’m not sure where Bill Hinds is taking this, but it’s a worthwhile issue, particularly as we prepare for a round of (yawn) Winter Olympics.The Olympics once had an elitist, often racist, amateurism requirement that needed to go. But the combination […]
I said before that the Danny-Goes-To-University theme at Between Friends was going to be a rich vein for Sandra Bell Lundy, and it is proving to be just that.I also said then that she had set Kim up well, since Kim is not overly neurotic as a parent and so the issue can unfold on […]
Between Friends is dealing with Kim’s son heading for college, which, by the way and not at all by coincidence, is happening in cartoonist Sandra Bell-Lundy’s life as well, though not — as in Kim’s case — for the first time. Yet they both face the empty nest.There are so many ways I’m already enjoying […]
Between Friends eases into a storyline that reminds us that the term “helicopter parent” came into vogue through its use by college administrators.I say “eases into” because, while the strip does have well-defined story arcs, it also has a type of continuity that absorbs these stories into the overall setting. Sandra Bell Lundy works in […]
Lio has been skewering the selection of strips in newspapers this week, and it’s been funny, pointed stuff. Mark Tatulli is in a good position to rant on the topic, not just because he’s funny about it, but because, between Lio and Heart of the City, he’s got a pair of successful strips.So it’s not […]
This was a really good day for comics, starting with the latest installment of a Doonesbury arc about Walden College becoming a for-profit school. The fact that there already is a for-profit Walden University is, well, something for someone else to sort out, because Trudeau had the name first, though, granted, not by much.But I like the idea of for-profit […]
With all the election stuff going on, the current Edge City arc has gone longer without my flagging it than it might otherwise have, but, then again, it was shaping up as merely something about competitive sports. Now, with this strip, I’m not so sure they’re not drilling a little deeper. They’ve been known to […]
Speed Bump offers a heapin’ helpin’ of food for thought.It’s well-timed. Though “back to school” for most colleges was several weeks ago, and cutting the check was quite a bit earlier than that, the economy remains center stage. And this is a nice riff on the quickly-becoming-tiresome gags about recent graduates living at home.The last […]
Oh, that liberal Doonesbury!This is an unusual strip, not because Doonesbury doesn’t regularly target liberal foibles — of course it does, and always has — but because Trudeau is generally pretty specific in assigning them, and Walden (this professor’s claim to be the exception not withstanding) has always seemed to epitomize the kind of school […]
Pros & Cons is always worthwhile and often laugh-out-loud funny, either because Kieran Meehan has found a new spot to tickle or because he’s gone back to one of his best and hit it yet again, sharply. (I’ve mentioned both Jack Benny and the old, classic Bob Newhart Show enough that readers should recognize by […]
I’m becoming a fan of Vladimir Kazanevsky, who I featured here just a month ago with another cartoon published on the Cartoon Movement site, of which I am also a fan.That cartoon had a great metaphor, but employed it in terms of a specific situation in his native Ukraine. This one, by contrast, is sadly […]
The blurb in the rail includes “made me think” as one of the criteria for being here, and Jeff Stahler’s cartoon did make me think.I’ve got a rather large bone to pick with him, however, in that, while this is a spectacularly bad time to be in the job market, there is nothing particularly special […]
Doonesbury continues to explore the gap between the privileged kids who head off to private, four-year colleges after high school, and the working class stiffs who end up in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and trailer parks.Alex should be embarrassed over her lack of empathy for Leo when it comes to goals, but I wouldn’t be […]