After nearly a week of odd isolation — five days with no company beyond some of the most brilliant editorial cartoonists in the country — Ann Telnaes and Mo come home to find something strange rolling down the street.I don’t know about the other attendees, but I had enough of a superficial view of the […]
Dick Tracy has always been a straight shooter, but his dialogue in the last panel knocked me out of my chair.One of the best parts of comics is when a character says something you agree with but would never actually say out loud.I don’t dignify my preference for staying home by calling it a phobia, […]
I was, at first glance, a little surprised that Randall Munroe took this personal view of time, since his geeky genius approach to xkcd often includes exquisitely detailed plays upon How Things Work or insider jokes that require you to understand the same.Then I realized he’d taken an Angry Old Man rant — traditionally based […]
This is a single panel from Bob Eckstein’s “A Sketchbook of the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference,” in the current New Yorker, and you should go read that if you want the rest of this to make sense. (Your choice, of course.)Eckstein’s piece is about fiction writing and book publishing, but it applies to a wider […]
It is both Easter and April Fool’s Day, and it was interesting how few cartoonists took advantage of this coincidence, which won’t happen again until 2029. There were a couple of jokes involving fake Easter eggs, but maybe they saw it, as Caulfield does in today’s Frazz, as a combination of one of the most […]
When Mr. Hiram B. Otis, the American Minister, bought Canterville Chase, every one told him he was doing a very foolish thing, as there was no doubt at all that the place was haunted. Indeed, Lord Canterville himself, who was a man of the most punctilious honour, had felt it his duty to mention the […]
I recently shelled out good money for a very disappointing book, but I’m not going to say which one, only that it falls within the category I wish publishers would use for that non-fiction edumacational stuff: “Graphic Lecture.”It’s not like just that particular one was boring.I keep getting fooled into buying “graphic novels” that don’t […]
Back in the early-mid-80s, I did an interview with a TV station manager noted for his three-minute editorials on the news, who pointed out that he had a lot more viewers than the station across town that had a weekly, 30-minute public service Sunday morning program called “Involvement.””Involvement?” he said. “Have you seen the ratings […]
The best part about that classic Geico commercial — aside from the number of times the camel says my name — is that, however annoying he may be, the people trying to ignore him are apparently locked into work they don’t enjoy. It’s not like he’s distracting them from something they want to be doing. Which means I […]
I’m going to start with something serious, but stick around anyway.Marvel Comics has recently pulled an issue of X-Men because an artist snuck some anti-Semitic, anti-Christian messages into it. Here’s Michael Cavna’s Cleve Wootson’s article on it, and Tom Spurgeon’s write-up, which mirrors my response: “If you play a prank and get caught, embrace the consequences.”And […]
If you thought 2016 was unpleasant for you, be glad you’re not a parishioner of First Baptist Church, because they’ve just gone from a church that serves the homeless to a homeless church.This was the view from my front yard at about 1:30 last night, and as I write this, I’m parked outside the library […]
Just for fun, we’ll go in order of dumbness today, and, when it comes to dumb jokes, Wayno often leads the pack.Don’t get me wrong: I like dumb jokes, but I like them done well, and there are a million ways this joke could have been done badly.Instead, by not actually telling the joke, he […]
Saturdays being often a bit slack on the comics page, I decided to anticipate Monday’s anniversary date and do some looking back to the comics you’d have seen then, if the news weren’t a bit more on your mind.I really expected that it would be the June 7, 1944 newspapers that would cover D-Day, but the […]
You can read this, Watson. No spoilers, except that, as my 14-year-old critic wrote, “Everyone will go see it regardless of whether it’s any good. Happily, it really is good.”In fact, I was struck by the similarities between his review and the one Tom Racine and Lucas Turnbloom did at Tall Tales Radio, both spoiler free. We’ll […]
Marla’s right. It’s a holiday and we should all be closed.Well, what we really should be doing is having Thanksgiving dinner Matt Wuerker style.*sigh*But having worked alternate holidays in the newsroom, I’m still of the opinion that the show must go on, so what I’m going to do is give you the comics and let […]