I had to move most of what I own last week so that the electricians could rewire the apartment. There were some inconveniences, but also some benefits, chief among them being finding things I hadn’t seen in quite awhile, and high on that list was a collection of Charles Addams cartoons which my father gave […]
I’ve said that I approach each morning as a blank slate, waiting to see what topic the day’s cartoons will prompt me to riff on, but I’ll admit I have been hoping for a good “Papal retirement” cartoon, and with some increasing impatience.Apparently, judging from the cartoons, there appears to have been some sort of […]
Today’s “Buckles” reminds me of a column I wrote back in 1987, based on something I’d seen on, of all places, Kenneth Copeland’s TV ministry.Copeland told the story of taking his little boy to the store and having the kid ask for something, to which Copeland snapped “No, you can’t have that!” And then, he said, […]
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal puts a fairly common theme in a new package and makes it new. Our perceptions of the world change, and young folks tend to be awfully cock-sure about the nature of reality and how easy it would be to create the perfect society. And then they gain a little more experience. As Twain […]
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 […]
Edge City, with a phenomenon to which I can attest.When I was in Maine, I covered two school districts, one in town, where, between the university and the hospital, there was an often-depressing abundance of helicopter parents, and the other up in the woods where most of the people were either loggers or farmers, tremendously […]
On the Sunday when three-quarters of the cartoons are about New Year’s, there’s a fair amount of similar themes, but I particularly liked this contrast:Sinfest is often thoughtful to the point of being enigmatic, but I don’t think this piece is particularly hard to appreciate: It’s kind of nice that it’s a webcomic and thus […]
In Big Nate, Nate’s soccer team has just lost 1-0 to a team that, up until this week, had lost 60 games in a row. He’s not taking it well. He’s got a legitimate gripe. The only goal came on an uncalled hand-ball into the net. His net, that is. Nate is a ‘keeper.But, still, he […]
A bit of well-timed subtlety from Sandra Bell Lundy at Between Friends. Subtle in that you may have to look twice to get the point and I suspect a lot of readers will be scratching their heads over this one. “Subtle” is not much prized in mass media, especially when the artwork is shrunken down to […]
I’ve been meaning to point out the current Sherman’s Lagoon arc, which stands out not simply for being funny but for suggesting that Jim Toomey actually has some idea what “The Hunger Games” is about. (The arc starts here, and then you can use the “next cartoon” buttons to follow it forward. Yes, I know […]
You can count on Richard Thompson to take a look at a common element of parenting and come up with an answer that’s half absurdity and half sly insight.The humor in Cul de Sac comes with a bit of bite to it, bringing forth a response of “HAHAHAHA … oh …” which is why the […]
Betty and Alex have spent the week at a coffeeshop fussing over this zen garden. You rarely know how much real-time time is being depicted in a story arc, but I’d say finding enlightenment in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee is about par for the course.Any deep moral teachings that […]
Dog Eat Doug is at its best when it offers up a small slice of semi-realistic kid-and-dog solidarity.Don’t get me wrong: I like it all the time. But these moments rise above.When I was growing up, we had this Rube Goldberg-style wooden highchair that, if you swapped it around this way and that, would become […]
I’m currently working on a series for kids about Theodore Roosevelt and conservation, and, as part of that, was going through political cartoons of the era.This two page spread by Puck cartoonist L.M. Glackens ran in that publication in 1906, when William Randolph Hearst was a candidate for governor of New York (click on it […]