Sunday, December 9, 2012

Sunday morning toons: Notice to patrons

1. Effective immediately, if you're Roman Catholic and you use social media, you're no longer the Holy Father's flock. You're his tweeps.

2. Effective immediately, all funeral dirges will be played in 5/4 time.

3. There are 16 shopping days until Christmas.

4. There are 12 days left until the long-ago prophesied end of the world. Take whatever action, regarding #3, above, that seems appropriate.

5. If there is a war on Christmas, Christmas is winning. (Props to Mike Luckovich, below.)

6. Effective immediately, all news coverage of war, famine, economic collapse, and similar second-tier topics yeild to coverage of the Kate and William pregnancy.

7. Effective January 1, 2013, the junior senator from South Carolina will be just as much of a right-wing obstructionist whackjob as ever; he'll just be doing it for six or seven times his old salary as a Senator.

8. Effective immediately, if you're a disabled American veteran, the Senate Republicans don't even want to know you.

9. Effective immediately, the Tea Party will replace the Democratic Party as the group that can't make it through an election cycle without holding a circular firing squad.

All this and more, on today's p3 toon review.

Today's toons were selected by means of a multi-scale profiling instrument that determines who's been naughty and who's been nice, with an average 96.2% accuracy rate, from the week's pages at GoComics, McClatchyDC.com, Slate, Time, About.com, Daryl Cagle, and other fine sources.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Bob Englehart, Tom Toles, Jeff Danziger, Bill Day, Nate Beeler, Mike Keefe, Matt Wuerker, Jen Sorenson, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Kevin Siers.

p3 Legion of Extreme Merit: Pat Bagley.

p3 Papal Bull of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Rob Rogers and Lee Judge.

p3 World Toon Review: Cam Cardow (Canada), Petar Pismestrovic (Austria), Deng Coy Miel (Singapore), and Ingrid Rice (Canada),


As Ann Telnaes sees it, the GOP's problem is less of a cliff, and more of a bog.


Mark Fiore shares that timeless (or is it endless?) holiday classic: The Twelve Days of Cliffmas.


Taiwan's Next Media Animation gives the NMA treatment to the third NHL lockout in 20 years.


And I thought the whole matter was settled with the invention of Underoos. As it turns out, there is quite an argument going on out there about Superman's underpants (actually, if they really were “underpants,” we wouldn't be having this discussion). This is probably the most thoughtful treatment of the topic I've seen. (The author is pro-underpants, by the way.)


Tom Tomorrow's Sparky the penguin and Chuckles the sensible woodchuck discuss one of my long-time convictions:Bad metaphors make bad policy.


Keith Knight explains what bacon and tequila have in common.


Tom the Dancing Bug presents a face-off between a dubious super-hero and the least evil-seeming nemesis ever known.


Red Meat's Ted Johnson and his son are making a list and checking it twice.


The Spinach Overture (1935) was directed by Dave Fleischer and animated by Seymour Kneitel and Roland Crandal, with uncredited voice work by Jack Mercer, Mae Questel, and Gus Wickie, and uncredited arrangement and incidental music by Sammy Timberg (most of the music is fractured classical or traditional). Note that, in the height of the depression, the only office building in town that managed to stay occupied was the one that (like the legendary Brill Building) rented performance space to musicians. Otherwise, it all seems pretty straight-forward to me: Concertmaster Bluto and his orchestra are much better than Popeye's by any objective measure. Bluto humiliates him, Popeye's “friends” abandon him, then Popeye discovers jazz through the ingestion of a green, leafy substance he keeps in a stash, and everything's cool after that.

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The p3 Big Oregon Toon Block:

Jack Ohman (still grandfathered in at this feature even though he took his buyout at the Oregonian and now works for the Sacramento Bee) celebrates that quintessential, even Capra-esque American moment when a citizen comes to talk things over with his elected representative.

Matt Bors dials the Metaphor Abuse Hotline, and not a moment too soon.

Jesse Springer notes Oregon's cutting-edge advances in recycling: Fifty-five minutes after an inmate was released from the Lane County jail because budget cuts decreased jail capacity, he was arrested for robbing a bank. (Note: Of course he was arrested! He's dressed like one of the Penguin's henchmen on the old “Batman” TV series.)




Test your toon-captioning superpowers at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)

2 comments:

Samuel John Klein said...

I like the coinage "Kate and William" pregnancy. Because it sounds like both of them are carrying one.

Nothstine said...

SJK: Well, she couldn't have done it alone, after all.

I dislike the celebrity of the royal Brits, but what are you gonna do?