“Between Friends” is more a “chuckle of recognition” than “burst of laughter” strip, a genre which takes a certain touch of insight if it’s going to rise above “guys always leave the toilet seat up” observational so-whatness. Sandra Bell-Lundy, fortunately, has that touch.Which is to say, sometimes it’s more of a sigh than a chuckle. […]
I’m purposely choosing to ignore one aspect of today’s The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee to focus on the other.The issue of Facebook privacy gets a bit of a shrug from me because, well, in the language of the law, I have no reasonable expectation of privacy. And there are ways to insulate yourself to […]
Arctic Circle points out a certain degree of imprecision in the risk assessment capabilities of our food and drug safety regulators.Though, actually, they’re quite accurate in assessing who swings a big bat and who doesn’t, which is what truly matters.Regulation of food safety (and making sure it is what it claims to be) became part […]
Nick Anderson with a beautiful fit between symbol and trend. The ah-ha moment must have nearly knocked him off his stool.Save this one for the Pulitzer portfolio, Nick.The upcoming Supreme Court decisions are not going to be so much a test of gay marriage as of the Supreme Court itself. They have a choice between […]
Tom Toles with a hopeful take on the wavering loyalty of the wage slave. In Wiley’s world, the victims of the new economy are fully aware of their status. Does that mean they are going to revolt? The notion is a non sequitur.There’s a gap between wising up and rising up.The other day, I ran into […]
Drew Sheneman with a commentary that matters, but seems a generation or so too late. That teacher, and the parents of those kids, grew up with corporations already well-entrenched in the classrooms. Sheneman himself, who graduated from college in 1998, might have seen the tentacles stretching in, if he’d been in the right school district […]
It’s an appropriate time of year to ask the question, “Quo vadis?” In Scott Stantis, the Chicago Tribune at long last found the right cartoonist to replace the late Jeff MacNelly: Stantis not only proves that a conservative can be funny, but that you can be thoughtful, even reflective, without having to give up your […]
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 […]
Boswell: “So, sir, you laugh at schemes of political improvement?”Johnson: “Why, sir, most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things.” The Republican Party got a large dose of bad news this week, and Mike Luckovich is one of several cartoonists to comment on it.The GOP actually got a large dose of bad news in […]
Real Life Adventures, on Hollywood’s tendency to wring every last nickel out of any concept that seems to work.As someone who assigns book reviews to young writers, I’m very much aware of how book publishers pile on a successful theme to attract the teen and preteen market. It’s as though they send dump trucks to […]
It seems like a good time to note the 10 year anniversary of our invasion of Iraq. These cartoons are from my presentation to high schools, back in those days, and so were often printed directly onto transparencies for overheads, making them quite lo-res. They also were often copied without dates, since they were being used […]
A few weeks ago, I featured some papal cartoons and observed that the new pope was going to be elected by the same people who had elected the old pope (yes, yes, under the guidance of God, but the same God who had guided the election of the old pope.)And further that this isn’t a […]
The Flying McCoys call out the Flaming Eejdits. Good on yez.I can’t tell you how much I hate St. Patrick’s Day. But I can tell you that Patrick’s official color is blue, not green, and that, until fairly recent years, his feast day was kept in rather subdued terms in Ireland. They’ve since learned from the […]
The word came across on Twitter yesterday and spread from there: The Chicago Public School system was banning Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir, Persepolis, and had ordered all copies hunted down and confiscated.I passed an early link along to my granddaughter, a high school junior whom I have been corrupting with comics for several years now. […]
Tom the Dancing Bug, with such a complete takedown of Scalia’s comments during arguments for the Voting Rights Act case that I’ve got little to add, except that I hope we get a couple of SC resignations after the current session, or at least before we get a change in the White House.Early would be […]