Sunday morning toons: Don't look for Doonesbury in the Oregonian this week

In the grand tradition of protecting the children (refresh my memory: isn't that how they got Socrates?), The Oregonian won't be showing this week's Doonesbury strips, on the grounds that if what Republican legislators in Virginia attempt to make public law is somehow unfit for the comics page of a daily newspaper, the problem must reside with the comics.

Starting Monday, Doonesbury will skewer the politicians who have pushed for vaginal ultrasounds — a weeklong satiric approach that has prompted at least one newspaper not to run the abortion strips. At The Oregonian in Portland, Features Editor JoLene Krawczak tells Comic Riffs that her paper “has decided to pull the week’s strips and will direct readers online if they want to read them.”

The irony, of course, is that online is where a lot of former Oregonian subscribers have been going to read Doonesbury for quite some time now, anyway. (It's here, by the way. Bonus points if you remember that bumper sticker from the Bob Packwood scandal era: If It Matters to Oregonians, It's in the Washington Post.)

Today's toons have been scientifically selected from the week's pages at Slate, Time, About.com, and Daryl Cagle:

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Steve Sack, Tom Toles, Mike Weurker, R. J. Matson, Adam Zyglis, Matt Davies, Jim Morin, Lisa Benson, Pat Bagley, Joe Heller, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Legion of Extreme Merit: John Cole.

p3 Best of Show: Mike Luckovich.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium (tie): Marshall Ramsey and Nate Beeler. (Congratulations to Nate Beeler on his new gig.)

p3 World Toon Review: Cam Cardow (Canada), Rachel Gold (Austria), Jianping Fan (China), and Victor Ndula (Kenya).

Ann Telnaes asks: Whose fingerprints are all over the state laws restricting women's right to control their own bodies? (Warning to Oregonian readers: The answer may disturb you.)

Mark Fiore says nuclear regime change begins at home.

On the 30th anniversary of the Falkands War, Taiwan's Next Media Animation asks, Who would win the re-match?

Before Mad Magazine changed its format in the early 1950s from comic book to magazine (thereby dodging the newly-instituted Comics Code Authority, which even Archie doesn't give a crap about now), one of the artists who defined its style was Wally Wood. After a difficult life that ended by suicide in 1981, and decades of relative obscurity since then, Wood's work is enjoying a well-earned revival.

Somewhere in China, a butterfly beats its wings at a slightly different rate, and in America, as Tom Tomorrow shows us, we get an alternate-universe GOP primary.

Keith Knight looks at the cross-fertilization of reality shows and that other “R-word.”

Tom the Dancing Bug visits the lost tales of the Lorax.

Red Meat's Ted Johnson has limits on how far he'll go in the name of justice, and can you blame him?

The Comic Curmudgeon detects needless cruelty in “Hi and Lois.” (Not to be confused with the purposeful cruelty you often find in the strip.)

They thought he was a goner! Produced in 1988, the award-winning “The Cat Came Back” seems so new the ink's still damp, compared to the usual golden-age animated fare here at p3 Sunday morning toons. Produced by Richard Condie and Cordell Barker, and directed by Barker, “The Cat Came Back” landed at #32 on the The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals. (Hat-tip to Alex.)

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The p3 Big Oregon Toon Block:

Jack Ohman takes you to a very scary place you probably don't want to go.

Matt Bors imagines a happy ending.

Jesse Springer shows why a governor needs a steady hand: