After a month off Rachel Merrill returned as Gil Thorp artist for only two weeks before handing it off to Kit Mills again for an undetermined guest artist run. While Guest Jumbler week at Jumble keeps rolling along. Loose Parts this week brought back memories for old Marvelmaniacs. New GoComics Standards GoComics has published their […]
Super Power Sunday Seems we had some children exhibiting super powers in the Sunday comics. Clayton reveals his superpower to little sister Katy in Adam @ Home. While we may be witnessing the rise of the most powerful being in the Comics Kingdom universe. A couple months ago we saw Olive exhibit some kind of […]
Caulfield brings up something I wrote about back in the ’90s, when research began emerging that adolescents don’t wake up until mid-morning. I proposed a ten-to-five schoolday. The objections from kids largely dealt with sports practice, which I countered could be at noon as it is in several other countries where lunch is an hour […]
Future Funnies The Ghost Who Walks is back, this time, in a future that feels all too close. This week, Comics Kingdom launches Phantom 2040: A New Shadow—a brand-new webcomic that reimagines the world’s first costumed hero for the fractured year of 2040. If you know your comics history, you already know The Phantom’s pedigree: […]
Humberto Aguirre’s “Top Five in Comic Cats” A cat defeated by Mickey Mouse, a robot cat from the future, a thriller cat, a porn cat, and a transgender cat. The comic universe is a space populated by pornographic cats, robot cats, and sadistic and obscene cats that often opened the way for that species to […]
I used mostly funnies yesterday, but in a political context, and I still contend that nothing is funny unless it’s based on reality with a twist, which pretty well describes current politics. It’s not, however, always political. This Frazz, for instance, is philosophical. Instead of downright laughter, Frazz often provides wisdom with a smile. Both […]
Spotlight on Arlo and Janis; Luann; Crankshaft; Barney & Clyde; Reply All/Reply All Lite; Bottom Liners; Lio. Come July 29 Arlo and Janis will have been around for 40 years and cartoonist Jimmy Johnson, as is his wont, will be celebrating the anniversary this coming week, but with a twist as he “remasters” some classic […]
Back at the dawn of time, when I was in college, there was a mynah at the Kresge’s department store in South Bend with a fairly large vocabulary. In addition to saying “I’m a pretty bird,” and “I can talk. Can you fly?” he had absorbed a number of phrases from the customers who stopped […]
Let’s start with some highlights. Hard pressed to a better comic strip than Thursday’s Bok versus The Snowbeast’s battle in Flash Gordon Thursday making the jump from overture to aftermath. Absolutely wonderful was the “Bok draws the warm pelt tight around his shoulders” caption. Possibly only bettered by Rose’s authoritarian statement in Wednesday’s Wallace the […]
I like Bennett’s Mother’s Day cartoon, but I really hate the ongoing inspiration. Lalo Alcaraz had farmed the same concept for Mother’s Day in 2017, during the first Trump administration, and reposted it again this year, since the wall, and the issue, not only haven’t gone away, but have become more relevant as ICE begins […]
Friday on the comics page seemed to be a preview of National Cartoonists’ Day as a number of comic strips had guest appearances by other comic strip characters. Lio featured Snoopy, Over The Hedge guested Wednesday Addams, and Ziggy had Superman. Cartoonist Gary Varvel utilized a famed Charlie Brown image to represent the flurry of […]
Creative spelling, as seen in this Moderately Confused (AMS), is an editor’s nightmare, but one that fortunately has morphed out of control in tune with the technical revolution. I used to run honor role listings in the paper, and, for a while, I’d come across some ridiculous version of a common name and call the […]
Our impending political disaster is grim enough that Andertoons (AMS) manages to mine it not so much for an actual laugh but, more appropriately, for a grim smile and nod. And he’s right: Once we, or our children or their children, emerge from all this, there will be a rush of people explaining how bad […]
I promised Suzi I wouldn’t get into any political rants on her birthday. Though I’m not sure she’d hear any stronger language than if I were Edison Lee (KFS)‘s dad and had just spent an entire story arc building a shed just to find this. But I’m blaming the lawn mower, since doors are more […]
I sometimes feel that the kids in Baby Blues (AMS) have become a little too consistently bratty, but then I read Carolyn Hax’s advice column in the Washington Post and so realize that, indeed, there are bratty kids who grow up to be bratty adults. Hax is a lot more indulgent about it than I […]