Let’s start with Tom Toles’ latest, since it’s not only self-explanatory but a little over-explained. He didn’t have to drag Yogi along to show his source for a famous quote that perfectly mocks the false-logic of current attacks.If there is something encouraging in all this, it is that a constant drumbeat of misunderstanding, spin, exaggeration […]
Gonna start today’s short-takes with Hagar the Horrible because it sparks the best rant.To start with, I like the strip because the term “Viking meal” takes me back to my Year of Living on Campus, when someone would occasionally declare a Viking meal at the dininghall, meaning that we were expected to eat without implements […]
I’ve got a poster Darrin Bell did of Barack Obama’s inauguration in which he is surrounded, not by the current crowd of politicians and bigwigs, but by the iconic figures of black history.And yet here Bell depicts the president as scoring a touchdown by having moved the goal line.I find it compelling because it’s not […]
It’s pure happenstance that Classic Shirley & Son came around to one of my very favorite segments in one of my very favorite strips just as the term “conscious uncoupling” became a buzz word.When the phrase popped up in a pair of otherwise unrelated political cartoons, I Googled it and discovered that Gwyneth Paltrow had […]
Backgrounder for non-sports fans: The National Labor Relations Board ruled this past week that Northwestern’s scholarship football players are employees of the university and thus entitled to form a union if a majority chooses to.This does not mean that all college athletes can form unions. It doesn’t even mean that all scholarship athletes at all […]
I’ll admit there are some cartoonists on each edge of the two lunatic fringes that I don’t even bother to follow, but it is a small and clearly crackpot group. I still see plenty of off-target takes. So when an issue draws a raft of 7-out-of-10-star commentary, that in itself is a good thing.Plus, it […]
Retail is in a story arc that both amuses and appalls me, based on the Target security breach (Ouch. Nice timing!)Of course, Retail always both amuses and appalls me, which is why I like it so much, but, in this case, Norm Feuti has an opportunity to deal with both the damage and inconvenience done […]
Stuart Carlson offers a refreshing change from the Inkpot Generals who are inundating us with cartoons about how sanctions are for pantywaists and that real men send other people’s children out to die.There has been a thing floating around the Internet for a few years about how no two countries with McDonald’s have ever gone […]
Donna Lewis’s “Replay All” is a good place to go right after a discursion on New Yorker cartoons, because she has that same, “yep, that’s how it is” approach: Observational humor that doesn’t have a punchline so much as a wry acknowledgement. This particular arc has me laughing because, to start with, a once-noble paper, the […]
I’ve put Neil Degrasse Tyson’s reboot of “Cosmos” in the category of things I’m glad are happening but that I’m not actually going to watch. I did watch the first part long enough to get tired of whiz-bang special effects telling me things I already knew.But, if I still had little kids, I’d be making […]
“Personal time” is kind of a strange concept for writers and I would assume cartoonists as well, and perhaps for anybody who gets paid to do what they want to do anyway. I have a service dog, in that he exists simply to get me up and away from the computer twice a day for […]
Brace yourself for negativity. The flood of “Fred is Dead” cartoons is about to hit.But one of the first out of the gate was this refreshingly decent take by Joe Heller.”How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world,” Portia observed.Joe has it right, but, based on […]
Mike Thompson takes a poke at the chickenhawks who would like to see us take on a major nuclear power because, y’know, it would make us more macho and stuff.I’ve recently-and-often said that I don’t much like chickenhawks, and I like them even less since the draft ended, since now they aren’t even required to […]
As it happens, the first “oooh, I like that one!” of this morning’s trip through the funnies came at Rhymes With Orange. Little did I expect RWO to set the agenda for the day.Hilary Price specializes in wry, observational humor. This is not funny, but it’s a very good observation and needs to be said.Often. And […]
If you haven’t put the Nib on your regular diet … well, thanks, because it means you have to come here for clues of when you should go there.But you’re probably missing some comics that would tickle your fancy but don’t particularly tickle mine.Not to suggest that my fancy isn’t wonderfully ticklish, mind you. But […]