Sunday, October 3, 2010

Sunday morning toons: This is not ironic

Irony, it has been said, will be the death of us all. If by irony we mean the about-face between what you expect and what you get, then perhaps.

This week:
  • Stealth donors are money-bombing midterm races (including OR 4th) under the New And Improved First AmendmentTM.
  • The GOP, once the party of voodoo economics, is cutting straight to the chase.
  • Rahm Emmanuel is pulling the orange ring.
  • The way is being prepared for a third generation to run what's left of North Korea into what's left of the ground.
  • Business and consumers continue to play chicken, while the recovery waits.
  • And "Don't ask, don't tell" don't fly. Still.

Let's kick things off with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for the week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Mike Lester, R. J. Matson, Mike Keefe, Jeff Parker, John Darkow, David Fitzsimmons, Michael Ramirez, Adam Zyglis, John Cole, Jimmy Margulies, Nate Beeler, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Pat Bagley.

p3 World Toon Review: Cameron Cardow (Canada), Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Teejerd Royaards (Netherlands), and Ingrid Rice (Canada).


Ann Telnaes gives us the latest DC weather report.


Mark Fiore says, if it was good enough for us then, it's better for us now!



Gasp! Moonbat, did I hear you correctly? This week, Tom Tomorrow brings us the continuing adventures of Conservative Jones, Boy Detective.


Keith Knight exposes the new (bio)terrorism.


Doonesbury investigates the continuing struggle to bring empathy to the cerebral White House.


The Comics Curmudgeon takes a moment out to praise one of my favorite strips when I was a kid (seriously): Mandrake the Magician, created by the artist who also created The Phantom. I had no idea it was still in business. I used to read it in the Lebanon (IN) Reporter, which I'm also pleasantly surprised to find is still around. The tag line, like "Popeye reaches for his spinach," or "Clark ducks into a phonebooth," was always "Mandrake gestures hypnotically." That's all he had to do. It used to crack me up.  Later the same gag became more widely known as the Jedi Mind Trick.


Memo to Slate.com's culture blogger: References to Superman as if he were a real person are not per se ironic. Please step away from your Alanis Morissette CDs at once.



Who speaks for the laid-off workers at the giant-typewriter factory?  Here's a helpful break down from Graph Jam of Gotham City employment by occupation.


The Trojan Tea Partier? Beware of Witches Bearing Gifts? Here's Barry Blitt's illustration of Christine O'Donnell, useful idiot, for Frank Rich's weekly NYTimes column.  If O'Donnell did not exist, would it be necessary for the fat-cats and string-pullers who are behind the Tea Party to invent her?


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman follows the trend of declining marriage: The groom wore black and the bride wore a look of gradually-increasing horror.


This cartoon is not ironic: It's "She-Sick Sailors," the 1945 Seymour Kneitel-directed semi-crossover between Paramount's two top animation properties, Popeye and Superman, although the latter doesn't actually appear in person.* The musical score by Sammy Timberg quotes the theme from the Superman animated theatrical series. I remember being vaguely freaked out by the machine-gun sequence when I was little, which struck me a little bit harsh even for Bluto (although the mayhem committed upon Olive's person must have seemed par for the course). (And while we're at it, why does Timberg go from Chopin's Funeral March to -- of all things -- "Love in Bloom" after Popeye falls?)




Continuity purists take note: After Bluto dives out of Olive's window, the S-insignia on his costume disappears and never returns.


p3 Bonus Toon: And Popeye's not the only one out there dodging bullets in the forest. Jesse Springer notes that it's open season.




Remember to bookmark the daily political toon features at Slate's Slate, Time, and About.com.

Test your toon-captioning skills at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)
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*Nope. Still not ironic. Sorry, Slate.

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