(Piranha Club) (Non Sequitur)Leading off the day, and the week, with a pair of starts to story arcs that could prove fun.If you follow Piranha Club, you probably have a taste for the silly, and there are times when Bud Grace doesn’t even try to hide his own flair for same. This appears to be […]
Start with the one that’s simply here because it made me laugh, as Dog Eat Doug often does.My only commentary is that it scared me a little, since the day Doug talks, the strip’s appeal ends, because it’s based on he and Sophie being at the same level.Doug must never speak, except to Sophie.Beside, in […]
While I’m adjusting to apolitical weekdays, here are a pair of worthy publications I’ve been meaning to review.Ed Stein’s Sleeper Avenue is a sometimes sweet, sometimes slightly biting, memoir of growing up a half century ago, and he’s gathered his stories into a book format.I was looking back in my archives for a sample from a […]
I doubt anyone but Clay Jones would have had a Scalia cartoon ready by this morning. Not sure when he sleeps, but it doesn’t seem to be in any particular pattern.The GOP took the lead in demanding respect for the dead and simultaneously using it as one more political ploy, and their announced plan to […]
Okay, I’m not this cynical about Valentine’s Day, and it’s not an entirely made-up holiday like Mother’s Day, or Father’s Day, though all three are based on marketing and guilt.But saying you’re not as cynical as Rat still leaves you with a fair amount of wiggle room, and it makes no difference how you feel […]
On the Fastrack is a syndicated comic with a pretty lively on-line presence, and Dethany, who began as an odd little goth admin ass’t has emerged, as minor characters sometimes do, into a dominant part of the strip, complete with her avian sidekick, Lenore.Today’s strip is a nice meld of the geek-basics of Fastrack with […]
I start each day here with a relatively clean slate, but it’s impossible not to anticipate things a bit.Sometimes it’s as direct as a cartoon posted late in the day to which my response is, “Well, it’s gonna take a lot tomorrow morning to push THAT one off the page.”And sometimes it’s less specific.I came out […]
Yes, Anne. Yes, indeed.Last spring, I gave up political cartoons for Lent and it was very pleasant, but in times of crisis, you can’t just sit around pretending not to know what’s happening.On the other hand, there is still pie in the world and you shouldn’t neglect that, either. So I have no idea what sort […]
This began as a rumor, expanded into a tease and then was finally confirmed.Pearls Before Swine had an arc this week in which a guest artist provided much more stylistically finished artwork than PBS creator Stephan Pastis could have, in an arc in which the premise is that a second grader has taken over the […]
Edison Lee takes on a nearly impossible challenge: Coming up with a toy that is more ridiculous and tasteless than what’s already out there.I’m so old. (How old are you?)I’m so old that I can remember when Children’s Television Workshop was about education. Well, I guess it still is.Behold Elmo’s Cell Phone, doing for real […]
There are a lot of cartoons about climate-change deniers around at the moment, but I’m more pleased to see Keith Knight go after the race-problem deniers, and do it in a way that is pointed and unambiguous, but also funny.Not everyone can pull that combination off.There was a story on an NPR blog the other […]
Dave Kellett on what may be the most annoying feature of an increasingly annoying Internet. As it happens, I ranted about LinkedIn almost exactly a year ago. I signed up because everyone said you had to sign up, then realized there was no real point in it and tried to escape, but, like Sheldon’s grandfather, I […]
Let me warm up before going into full rant:Red and Rover is always enjoyable, a pleasant nostalgia piece about being a kid and having a dog, but the past week has been particularly sweet, as Brian Basset made it a daily reflection on why Red is thankful for his dog. This bravura Sunday is above and […]
For the most part, an “interesting” strip that doesn’t make me chuckle is unlikely to get top billing here, but Candorville is often a fairly straightforward piece of social commentary and since — other than his grammar-nazi issues — Darrin Bell generally mirrors my thoughts, well, here we are.(Holy Serendipity, Batman! What an opportunity to point […]
Start with the easy one: Brian Anderson’s Dog Eat Doug, starring Sophie the Chocolate Lab and Doug the Be-diapered Pre-Toddler.I’m a cynical and hard-nosed critic, but, despite that, I really love this strip. Which is okay, because Brian also does this kind of thing and so neither of us is as simple in outlook as […]