Sunday, November 28, 2010

Sunday morning toons: The peculiar American tradition

America's a funny country: This week North and South Korea took pot-shots at each other, the GOP did its best to derail nuclear disarmament talks (out of spite), the economies of Ireland and Portugal cratered, and airport security reached new depths of intrusive paranoia -- but we insist on reserving the term "Black Friday" for the day of frantic shopping beginning before dawn. A funny country.

Today's selections have been carefully selected and packaged, like leftovers pulled from the Thanksgiving turkey carcass, from the week's political cartoon pages at Slate, Time, About.com, and MSNBC.com:

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, R. J. Matson, Mike Keefe, Adam Zyglis, Jeff Danziger, Tom Toles, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Lalo Alcaraz.

p3 World Toon Review: Cam Cardow (Canada), Petar Pismestrovic (Austria), Ingrid Rice (Canada), and Bill Leak (Australia).


Ann Telnaes reminds us: A sigh is just a sigh.


Mark Fiore presents Thanksgiving travel tips from Suzie Newsykins.


It's been a couple of years since we said farewell to Opus, but his creator Berke Breathed is back -- where you'd least expect him. (Have I ever mentioned my theory about movie trailers that tell you the whole plot?)


It's been locked in the vaults for 10 years, but Disney is coming back out with a Blu-ray edition of the love-it-or-hate-it 1940 classic "Fantasia." From the NYTimes review:
What’s genuinely daring about “Fantasia” is Disney’s decision to forgo an overall audience-grabbing narrative in favor of a discontinuous series of episodes, each operating in a different style. Rather than depend on linear, what-next storytelling and characters that invite audience identification, “Fantasia” shifts through a series of moods. It goes from the playful (“Dance of the Hours,” directed by the great character animators T. Hee and Norm Ferguson, and probably one of the greatest pieces of full-scale cel animation ever committed to film) to the diabolical (“Night on Bald Mountain,” directed by Wilfred Jackson with references including Universal horror movies and medieval woodcuts).

If you didn't know any Mark Trail plot points in the first place, how would you know if they've started repeating -- without The Comic Curmudgeon?


Tom Tomorrow reveals the awful secret behind stepped-up airport screening procedures. And trust me: Whatever you thought it was, it's worse!


The K Chronicles explores Team USA -- the dysfunctional football team.


Call it "The Persistence of Money:" This week's Barry Blitt illustration for Frank Rich's NYTimes column (about why our Congress is so dysfunctional) is also the winner of this week's p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium.


At Red Meat this week, Ted makes a fashion statement.


Taiwanese animation studio Next Media Animation is back, with coverage of a peculiar American tradition.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman compares first class and coach.


"Some of them are cogs on the wheel, while some are just plain nuts!" "Daffy Doodles" () is the first Warner Bros animated short directed by Robert McKimson, featuring not only great Daffy-Porky bedevilment, but lots of throwaway sight gags featuring famous advertising images of the time. (To get the final gag, you'll need to know who Jerry Colonna is.)




p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer says, there are cuts -- and then there are cuts.




Test your toon-captioning chops at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.) Bonus: This week you can pit your captioning skills against Roger Ebert.

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