I always appreciate it when a cartoonist allows me to vent about something without violating the Prime Directive. Thank you, Mr. Fitz, for allowing me to be positive about this insider take, rather than give in to the temptation to run, and then rip down, a bad cartoon on the topic.Here’s the deal: First of […]
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 […]
Ah, Edge City evokes such memories!I think it’s well established that one of the joys of being a grandparent is watching your kids go through what you went through. Parents’ Night ranks right up there. I don’t remember much from Parents’ Night in elementary school except that we had to prepare special packets of our […]
Big Nate hits the mark with this one.There are many cartoons based on kids, but Big Nate stands out as being, on the one hand, ridiculous and yet, on the other, pretty accurate. This week’s arc, in which Nate has been attempting to break into the school paper’s lineup as a critic, has been particularly […]
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 feel bad for my landlords, who were told by their insurance company that it wouldn’t cover the house unless they upgraded its ancient wiring. (They’re in the main section, I have the apartment at the back.)Obviously, I feel better about the new wiring, because I’ve made a few trips to the basement to reset circuit […]
Mr. Fitz doesn’t quite get out of the “insider” niche enough for wide appeal, but I get the sense that it has a good following among teachers, and that’s the advantage of a webcomic: It doesn’t rely on geographic distribution but can pick up a widely scattered audience. I really liked Mark Pett’s Mr. Lowe, […]
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. […]
If you are American, you can probably guess most of what’s going on in this Africartoons contribution by Rico Schacherl: Demands made on schools but no resources provided.Specifically, the African National Congress, South Africa’s ruling party, wants to declare teaching an essential service with the goal of ending teacher strikes. As with all such moves, […]
Terri Libenson certainly isn’t the first cartoonist to riff on how much school curriculum has changed since she was a kid, but today’s Pajama Diaries is different than ninety percent of the “new math” gags of old in that it isn’t just “they always have to change everything” but, rather, “wow, kids are learning some complex […]
I don’t know much about Adam Huber, who does “Bug,” except that he seems to overthink everything and thus provide a lot of laughs for his fan base.But I gather he is in his early-to-mid-thirties, which means that, even if he is Catholic, he’s not old enough to have been put through the kinds of […]
One of the things Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman always hear is that Zits opens conversations between parents and adolescents, whether that day’s strip features Jeremy or his folks as the butt of the joke. That’s probably why Zits is one of the top strips in terms of the number of papers that feature it, […]
Sometimes a gag is so insanely inventive that you just have to pause a moment in admiration.Open House as a sting operation to nab unwary dropouts. Ladies and gentlemen, Keith Knight.Today’s Knight Life works with more elements than the “You’ve Won A Ticket To The Super Bowl” sting operations that periodically nail fugitives, but […]
Scott Stantis marks the start of another school year.Staples will soon begin running their iconic “It’s the most wonderful time of the year” commercials, which not only celebrate the fact that we hate having our children around, but also that stores can count on a nice boost this time of year.I was out of the […]
And you thought Richard Thompson only dredged up long-suppressed memories of pre-school!Today’s Cul-de-Sac explores the last day of big-kid school by bringing back tortured memories of the locker bay, with comicdom’s favorite neurotic kid epitomizing the neurotic kid we all become when we think too hard about lockers. It’s a salute to Petey’s limited savoire […]