Sunday, June 6, 2010

Sunday morning toons: "I'm wich! I'm wich!"

It's been a puzzling and disconcerting week:

The GOP opponent of South Carolina's Tea Party gubernatorial candidate exposed her as plant by the International Sikh Conspiracy. Turns out that Israel and BP get their PR advice from the same people. North Korea tried to start a war while you weren't looking. And don't even get people started on the fix that's in at first base.

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

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Pat Bagley, R. J. Matson, Bob Englehart, David Fitzsimmons, Jimmy Margulies, Jerry Holbert, Gary McCoy, Joe Heller, Jeff Stahler, Bill Day, Jeff Darcy, Jeff Grondahl, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Legion of Honor, with clusters: Milt Priggee.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Jeff Parker.

p3 Gold Star at the Top of His Report Card: Larry Wright.

p3 Authentication Certificate for Harmonic Toon Convergence: Mike Keefe and Nate Beeler.

p3 World Toon Review: Manny Francisco (Philipines), Ingrid Rice (Canada), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Tjeerd Royaards (Netherlands), Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), and Cam Cardow (Canada).


Ann Telnaes salutes of the policy insights of the GOP 2012 hopeful who communicates exclusively via Facebook.


Because sometimes you have to do exactly what you're trying not to do! This week, Mark Fiore brings us the trailer for this summer's disaster blockbuster.


Tom the Dancing Bug exposes anti-American elements in the U.S. Government!


And yet, strangely, the nation survives: Socialist plots: a retrospective.


Images of the undead? We looked back fondly at the week that Garfield died. And we brought an open mind to the question of what the strip would be like without him. Now comes this ghostly image suggesting Garfield may still be alive, but not because of any wildly creative process behind the strip. (Hat-tip to rhyzome.)


The funniest 140-character parody site out there says, You're Welcome: If you're on Twitter, BP -- with its delicate, hairlike tendrils of PR sensibility -- would prefer that you don't get to see BPGlobalPR, one of the most wickedly funny and on-target responses to the oil giant's destruction of the Gulf. (Update: The article, written last week, noted that @BPGlobalPR had 46,000 followers on Twitter; as of yesterday afternoon it had over 120,000.) One of their funniest tweets from last week caused this parody comic book cover to go viral in pretty short order.


Tickle me pink: A little over a year ago, p3 Sunday Toons featured one of my favorite post-Silver Age toons, the very first Pink Panther short. The whole series, most produced for Saturday morning TV, is now available on Hulu. (Shameless Merchandising Watch: How many of you remembered that they spun off a Pink Panther breakfast cereal?)


So you think you can make a featureless drawing funny? At their online site, the New Yorker hosts a weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. You can match wits with, among others, Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert, who plays it regularly. (Rules here.)


The generation so appalling, historians had to coin an entirely new adjective just to describe them: This week, Tom Tomorrow looks ahead at the future and sees them looking back at us.


The flip side of outsourcing? The K Chronicles has a look. Good to know there are some jobs going unfilled, I suppose.


Plugging the holes: Around here at p3 international headquarters, we like to call the NYTimes's Frank Rich "the guy who writes the padding around each week's Barry Blitt illustration."


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman chronicles a story of forbidden love, cast against the wreckage and desolation of the Gulf coast.


"Oh, boy! I'm wich! I'm wich!" This early Bugs Bunny toon, "The Wabbit Who Came to Dinner," directed by Fritz Freleng in 1942, has a different vibe than most Bugs/Elmer stories: Rather than the shrewd customer who can get out of any jam but who never starts trouble himself, this Bugs is more the victim who sees a chance to turn the tables. In fact, he's more like Jerry to Elmer Fudd's Tom. (Want proof? Check out "Million Dollar Cat," the Tom and Jerry version of the same story -- even down to the telegram! -- filmed two years later in 1944 by Hanna and Barbera at MGM, with Tom the cat in the Elmer role. The T&J version had a much better ending, too.)




p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer looks at Oregon's budgetary options, and it ain't pretty.




Remember to bookmark Slate's political cartoon for the day, Time's cartoons of the week, and Political cartoons at About.com.

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