David Horsey leads today with a provocative cartoon, using “provocative” in its best sense: He accompanies it with a thoughtful essay on how we teach, and understand, our history that will, at worst, provoke you to think and, at best, provoke actual conversations on the topic.And I particularly like that he echoes a peeve of […]
There are a number of strips I’m going to be watching more closely for the next little while, and the easiest one to explain is the vintage Mandrake, a new adventure from 1944. There are so many, many ways a story arc called “Doctor Congo” about a witch doctor could go wrong that it’s not […]
Jack Ohman’s local cartoons are often more fun than his nationals, because he uses a multi-panel approach to eviscerate somebody on a topic his readers in Sacramento are familiar with.In this case, the topic is that a protestor smashed a pie into the face of Sacramento Mayor and former NBA star Kevin Johnson, and I […]
This is going to seem like a short post, but you’ll see at the end there is some required reading that should soak up any time you thought you were going to have.Pearls Before Swine made me laugh because, back in the ancient days, we’d get calls in the newsroom alerting us to various days […]
I’m not a huge fan of the Olympics, which somehow went from elitist shamateur exhibit under Avery Brundage to the commercial gigantism that followed, though I’m not sure when I switched from being a fan to being vaguely interested to dreading the event.However, Robert Airial captures a factor that has run through that process, which […]
The first point to ponder today came from Rip Kirby, who is being targeted by a rich, beautiful woman who has asked for his help with an extortion threat, but we know she’s setting him up, and now he has apparently tumbled to the scam, or, at least, he knows it’s not all kosher.What struck me this morning […]
“Libertarian!”In today’s “New Yorker Daily Cartoon,” Kim Warp raises a question that perplexes but only occasionally infuriates me. I understand why cats go leash-free, though I know people who walk their cats on leashes and good for them. But cats are only marginally domesticated and, while they are interesting companions in their own off-beat way, they’re […]
The “where to start?” question was answered this morning by Keith Knight, who nimbly addresses something I’d been pondering.I, too, had noticed that political diatribes have at least somewhat supplanted dumbass food postings on Facebook. And that the political diatribes are similarly dumbass, in that they have about as much relation to political reality as the recipes […]
In today’s Medium Large, Francesco Marciuliano speaks for many, I’m sure, though he has the advantage of a strip that is extremely meta, such that commenting on commenting is within his mission.Other cartoonists are in a position similar to 9/11, because they are required to say something at a moment when it’s hard to do […]
If you’ve visited here more than, oh, two or three times, you know I have an affection for gallows humor.The gallows, however, need to be somewhat metaphorical, and, as Matt Bors points out here, gags about what a “gift” the current campaign is for cartoonists aren’t particularly funny or insightful.Or original, for that matter. Every clownish […]
Frazz is my favorite educational comic: I didn’t know that “boutonnière” is French for the buttonhole you stick your boutonniere in.And that link taught me all sorts of other things I didn’t know, including that jackets not only used to have real buttonholes there (which I did know) but that there was a loop behind […]
Nick Anderson responds to Spotlight’s Best Picture win with this dour assessment, and, while there are certainly some political aspects to the commentary, it’s more of a societal observation than a partisan one, so I’m not going to wait until Sunday to talk about it.I haven’t seen the film in question, one disadvantage of semi-rural […]
Between Friends is right at the head of the line among strips that sometimes get it so right that the humor sort of fades into the background and the response is “yeah.”Not “Yeah” and certainly not “Yeah!” but just … yeah.Lovely timing, because not 24 hours ago, I unfollowed — not “unfriended,” but close enough […]
I’m not as moved by the topic of Joe Heller’s cartoon as I am by its excellence on a professional level. To start with, it was a quick turn-around on the one Super Bowl commercial that got significant chatter. Every ad agency works to create a Super Bowl one-and-done spot, to the point where the last several […]
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 […]