Tom the Dancing Bug starts the year off with a heartfelt plea for cooperation from Big Brother.My growing anger over the violation of the Fourth Amendment and the social contract in general, and my growing distrust over the Official Story, is beginning to overcome my indifference to the spying itself, which means the timing for […]
Another tax cut for the wealthy Tom the Dancing Bug echoes my thoughts on lotteries.In fact, as I was pulling it out of the vaults, I just realized that, a week from today, this Runyonesque commentary on the topic will be a quarter century old. Two observations: (A) It was a relatively fresh take on […]
Ruben Bolling riffs on one of the more puzzling and ultimately depressing aspects of “those darned kids” — the way 18-to-20s are treated as half-citizens. And he’s right in his “what if it were any other demographic?” reductio.My question is, is this a call to arms for the 18-to-20s, or is he asking everyone to […]
Couple of quickies before we get to the hard core issue of the day:Two minds with but a single thought: This pairing ranks as one of the more odd coincidences I’ve seen on the comics page lately, since I haven’t seen anything about bananas in the news or rocketing around social media. I’m kind of […]
Brian Basset’s Red and Rover is rarely a fall-on-the-floor laugh fest, but its nostalgic portrayal of a boy and his dog in a recent but unspecified past is always a nice stop on the comic highway.Today, he outdoes himself with a back-to-school strip that rises far above the glut of predictable back-to-school strips.I wrote the […]
I like to keep a mix here, and having just devoted two posts to some sublime, insightful strips, we’ll just take that single step over to the ridiculous, with a few samples of what made me laff today, starting with the Lockhorns with a quick workshop on how to make a basically silly idea work.To […]
I could probably rant forever on this topic, but, first of all, Tom the Dancing Bug has covered enough bases that I don’t have to (Seriously, check it out: Seven of the Top 15 grossing Broadway shows are live versions of movies), and second of all … Okay, there’s no “second of all,” except maybe […]
An encouraging strip from xkcd.The strip isn’t explicitly autobiographical, but it isn’t not-autobiographical, either, which is a facet of modern cartooning that matters. Some artists are explicitly autobiographical, like Keith Knight, others are implicitly autobiographical, like Adam Huber, and some put the comic on its own footing but are very open about the creative process, […]
Tom the Dancing Bug does a nice takedown on Bill O’Reilly’s transparent outing of the real objections to Obama’s re-election: That it signifies the end of the “white establishment” (his words) as the guardians of “traditional America.”And Bolling only had to use the tool that O’Reilly had handed him, which was an allusion to the […]
I’ve got nothing to add to today’s “Sherman’s Lagoon” except that I really enjoy the repeated assault upon suspension of disbelief, as well as Toomey’s ability to promote ecological awareness while keeping the strip constantly silly. I’ve mentioned the Bob Newhart timing factor in this strip often enough that I won’t do it again. Whoops.Note […]
Pickles nails one.I like conversations about language, and there are some nails-on-chalk mistakes that bother me. One thing I edit out of reporters’ stories is use of the word “that” when it is referencing people. “John Smith is someone that …” becomes “John Smith is someone who …” under my pen.Howsoever.This does not make me smarter […]
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 […]
(David Fitzsimmons) As it happens, I’m in Denver, where I just did two journalism workshops at the Post for young writers, one which is an annual event for kids who want to learn about reporting, photography, etc., and the second a more focused training session for the young reporters (roughly 8 to 14) at the weekly […]
Bug, as usual, cuts through the veil of maturity. The best Fourth of July stories involve at least chaos, if not mayhem. But chaos plus mayhem will vault a particular year to the top of the memory pile, for sure.It’s been awhile since I was at the chaos and/or mayhem stage of life.My last chaos/mayhem […]
I usually find rants about Big Government Conspiracies tiresome, paranoid and self-important. Last night, I was watching an excellent documentary about OWS on Current TV, and someone being interviewed linked the movement to the Arab Spring, declaring that she and her fellow protesters were putting their lives on the line.No. You’re not. Comparing OWS with […]