Sunday, March 18, 2012

Sunday morning toons: Life without Doonesbury (A recap)


Mike Cavna at Comic Riffs (who will get a lot of link love from p3 before the morning's over) presents The Great Doonesbury Abortion-Strip Roundup. Do not miss the parody that Salt Lake Tribune artist (and p3 Sunday toons regular) Pat Bagley contributed when his paper lost its nerve on Thursday!

(Also, am I the only one who finds it funny, in a Lenny Bruce way, that the O replaced the too-dangerous-to-show-its-readers transvaginal sonogram story strips with some reruns about some lovable CIA-linked contractors in Afghanistan going off the reservation? Good call, Oregonian -- as Pat Bagley suggests, at least you didn't publish anything morally troubling.)

Today's toons have been carefully selected (after all the snakes were driven out) from the week's pages at Attytood, GoComics, Slate, Time, About.com, and Daryl Cagle:

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Signe Wilkinson, Tony Auth, Steve Breen, Nick Anderson, Michael Ramirez, Jim Morin, Lisa Benson, Steve Sack, Bill Day, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Championship Ring: Gary Varvel.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Jack Ohman, Joel Pett, Bob Gorrell, and Tom Toles.

p3 World Toon Review: Kevin Kallaugher (London), Cam Cardow (Canada), Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), and Ingrid Rice (Canada),


”. . . And this empty area here? That's where the brain would go.” It's nicer than he deserves, but Ann Telnaes take a shot at PA Governor “Close-Your-Eyes.” Remember when they used to tell women to “think of England?” Who votes for these people, anyway?


Mark Fiore brings us Suzie Newsykins, who steps back from slacktivism. Not one of his better entries, but the whole episode hasn't been very edifying.


Taiwan's Next Media Animation gives its own one-in-a-million take on the Doonesbury Debacle. And yes, The Oregonian gets mentioned. Couldn't be prouder.


Superman Mystery #1: Nicolas Cage is known for, among other things, some serious pop-Americana obsessions. One is Elvis. Another is Superman. A third is comic books and comic book art. The first mystery is: Who stole Cage's copy of Action Comics #1, the first Superman story?


Superman Mystery #2: A graphic designer looks at the art in a 1942 Superman novel. The novel isn't written by Superman co-createer Jerry Siegel, and only some of the art is by Superman co-creator Joe Schuster. There are these wonderful, brush-and-ink splash pages that are just eye candy -- but they're way ahead of the comic art style of the time, and the artist's unknown.


Why is Wonder Woman the only one shown moving right-to-left? Indeed. BikePortland.org features the clever Icons-On-Bikes art of Mike Joos.


The continuing story of the previous film life of John Carter of Mars: A few weeks ago, we looked at test footage from a never-produced idea for an animated “John Carter of Mars,” pitched by golden era Warner Bros. animator Bob Clampett to MGM in 1936. Eleven years later, Walt Disney animators brought some of Edgar Rice Burroughs' characters to the screen, in a piece very much of its time (for better or worse).


Good news and bad news for the City of Brotherly Love: Here's an update on two Philadelphia regulars on the p3 Sunday morning toon review: The Philadelphia Inquirer, facing serious retrenchment, has already lost Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Tony Auth, effective end of this month, to a cost-curbing buy-out. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Daily News, in no better fiscal shape and seeking a buyer, has managed to hang on to Pulitzer Prize-winner Signe Wilkinson.


Tom Tomorrow features Sparky and one of my favorite TMW bit players, Chuckles the Sensible Woodchuck, in a dialog about trust.


Keith Knight really wants to believe “it gets better.”


Tom the Dancing Bug presents the presidential greetings you do not want to get.


Red Meat's Bug-Eyed Earl contemplates the unspoken terrors of childhood.


The Comic Curmudgeon detects a trend in Popeye strips, although this is not the first time that the strip has entered the uncharted waters of human sexuality.


“The scientist was beside himself.” Heh. Last week we featured a great animation brought to you by the Film Board of Canada. It made me realize that they've got a great motherlode of animation up there that I've been ignoring. Shame on me. So here's “To Be,” written, directed, and animated in 1990 by Montreal artist John Weldon. It's a funny, charming film that you probably shouldn't show to small children unless you want them to be in therapy until they're in their thirties. (Notice to the producers of “The Prestige:” you should probably put your intellectual property lawyers on standby.) (Notice to anyone who hasn't seen “The Prestige:” Spoiler alert!)


If your browser won't display the embedded version, click here.


More John Weldon next week.


The p3 Big Oregon Toon Block:

Jack Ohman ponders how to fill the OPB programming gap left after Mitt Romney announced he had nothing to say to Oregonians.

Matt Bors finds the “Kony 2012” outrage to be a little . . . selective. (And congrats to Matt for winning the Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning!)

Jesse Springer considers life for the group of Oregonians who are cashing in on PERS mismanagement in previous years:




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

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