Sunday, January 31, 2010

Sunday morning toons: Special "Forgot to Subtitle It" edition

[Update: Missing Betty Boop is back!]

Is it a new rule that Obama gets heckled every time he speaks to Congress? Are Americans starting to notice congressional GOP intransigence? Is there anything left that corporations don't own? Will Sarah Palin end up giving her $100K speech to an empty auditorium where the national Tea Party convention was originally scheduled?

And what's the one development here in America this week that seems to be shaking the world?

The answers are here, starting with this week's Daryl Cagle's toon round-up.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Nate Beeler, R. J. Matson, R. J. Matson, Larry Wright, Milt Priggee, Pat Bagley, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: John Trevor.

p3 "Exporting Democracy" Award: Jimmy Margulies.

p3 "Money Changes Everything" Award: Steve Sack.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Adam Zyglis.

Meanwhile, see if you can detect the subtle pattern in this week's p3 World Toon Review: Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Paresh Nath (India), Martyn Turner, (Ireland) and Cam Cardow (Canada).


Ann Telnaes suspects that some soapboxes are more equal than others.


Mark Fiore describes the State of the Union Address he'd like to see. I particularly like the idea of National Irony Day.


Can Supreme Court Justices still utter the phrase "framers' intent" without giggling? The answer, says Chan Lowe, could blow you away.


Ever find yourself wondering why "The Family Circus" just isn't very interesting? The Comics Curmudgeon has a thought: You could be reading it out of sequence.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman notes that what you learned in your high school civics book may be void where prohibited.

Laughs: It comes somewhere between Giggles and Hysterics: "Ha! Ha! Ha!" is a 1934 Betty Boop toon directed by Dave Fleischer that paired her with another popular Fleischer Studios character, Koko the Clown (whose popularity didn't endure like our Betty's). There are several claims online that the film was at some point banned--the plot involves a trip to the dentist where everyone's overcome by laughing gas--although it's hard to picture that as a ban-worthy offense, then or now, and I haven't been able to document anything of the sort. (Given that a Popeye cartoon from 1946, "Rodeo Romeo," showing Popeye and Bluto bombed out of their gourds on "locoweed," got regular TV play up into the 1960s, laughing gas seems like it deserves a ticket at most, not the death penalty. And of course there the whole Betty and cocaine thing.) The fumes soon spread over the city, resulting in a hallucinatory mix of animation and live-action footage--the typewriter and mailboxes seem like they're straight out of David Cronenberg.




p3 Bonus Toon: Following the pulling-away victories of Measures 66 and 67 this week, Jesse Springer sends along this message of appreciation, "from the 97% of us who won't be affected by the tax increase to the other 3%:"




Remember to bookmark:

Slate's political cartoon for the day.

And Time's cartoons of the week.

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