Sunday, February 24, 2013

Sunday morning toons: Good news and bad news


Good news: Obama has taken the initiative on immigration reform.

Bad news: The only thing congressional Republicans will vote for that has Obama's name on it anywhere is a list of articles of impeachment.

Good news: The United States created the information infrastructure known as the internet.

Bad news: All our base are belong to Chinese hackers.

Good news: Thanks to congressional Republicans, the USPS has been forced to prefund its pension fund for three or four generations into the future.

Bad news: Because of that congressionally-imposed debt, the USPS is going to stop Saturday deliveries, which will probably throw more workers onto the pension plan this year.

Good news: Only one 10,000-ton meteor hit the earth last week.

Bad news: It landed in Russia, not on Capitol Hill.

Good news: Senator Ted Cruz has a list of the Marxists in the Harvard Law School.

Bad news: He got the exact number from the label on a Heinz 57 catsup bottle.

Good news: One Alabama state legislator doesn't believe that fetuses are persons.

Bad news: She believes that they're the largest organ in a woman's body.

Today's toons were selected by rigorous scientific method 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, Jack Ohman, Lee Judge, Lisa Benson, Clay Bennett, David Fitzsimmons, Daryl Cagle, Bob Englehart, J. D. Crowe, Mike Wuerker, Jen Sorenson, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Steve Sack.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence (Part 1): Jim Morin and Joel Pett.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence (Part 2): Clay Bennet and Adam Zyglis.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium (tie): Ingrid Rice and David Fitzsimmons.

p3 World Toon Review: Peter Schrank (Switzerland), Petar Pismestrovic (Austria), Christo Komarnitski (Bulgaria), and Paresh Nath (India),


Ann Telnaes looks at both sides of President's Day.


Mark Fiore looks at the options for the next heir of St. Peter. (Nope. Not that one.)


Taiwan's Next Media Animation reports on a narrowly-averted disaster. (Nope. Not that one.) (Also, if you're going to try the funnel trick yourself, please sign the attached waiver below.)


Spoiler alert: Joe Chill killed Bruce Wayne's parents (unless it's the first Tim Burton movie, in which case it was Frank Napier). But what would have become of Bruce if that wasn't how they died? What then?


Tom Tomorrow brings up an important point: Horticulture isn't the right hobby for everyone.


Keith Knight has a love-hate relationship. And you'll learn more from the last panel than you ever learned from p3 Sunday morning toons.


Tom the Dancing Bug brings is reassuring thought: Even superheroes with omnipotent powers still need someone to have their backs.


Red Meat's Bug-eyed Earl shares an enduring childhood memory.


At The Comics Curmudgeon the word is: The Scarlet Letter meets Welcome to the Monkey House.. Go ahead: Try to ignore that. Try.


Well, blow me down! A baby puppy! Not exactly: The character Eugene the Jeep had been in Thimble Theatre comics since 1936, and appeared in an earlier Fleischer Studios short in 1938. Today's feature, “Popeye presents Eugene the Jeep” (1940) was his third and final appearance on the big screen. It was directed by Dave Fleischer, from a story by Joseph E. Stultz, with animation by Grim Natwick and Irv Spector. (Uncredited: Jack Mercer as Popeye, Pinto Colvig -- who usually voiced Bluto and appears here for the last time in the series -- as the delivery man [with the same voice he used at Disney for Goofy!], Eugene the Jeep as himself, and musical direction by Sammy Timberg). In a 1936 strip, a character named Professor Brainstine explains Eugene's powers to Popeye this way:
A Jeep is an animal living in a three dimensional world—in this case our world—but really belonging to a fourth dimensional world.
So there you go.

The schmaltzy trombone tune heard as Popeye gets ready for bed, and picked up frequently throughout, is the old nursery song “Go to Sleep, My Baby.” Alert p3 readers may remember the two-headed giant singing a version of the same song in "Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor" last week.


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


The p3 Big Oregon Toon Block:

Matt Bors fears for those who are stranded, cut off from reality.

And for the final Good news/Bad news item this week: Jesse Springer notes the Good news:  Oregon's economy is coming off life-support.




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

1 comment:

Ron Beasley said...

"Good news: Only one 10,000-ton meteor hit the earth last week.

Bad news: It landed in Russia, not on Capitol Hill."
So True!!!