Sunday morning toons: Get out of jail free

The news just came out (I'm prepping this on Saturday night), so only the fleet of pen – like Daryl Cagle – will have anything on the top story of the week to come: George “Stand Your Ground Even If the Police Tell You to Stay In Your Car” Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting of Trayvon Martin for the crime of being in a neighborhood that Zimmerman didn't think he belonged in while carrying iced tea and Skittles. (Thanks to Daryl Cagle for permission to use.)

Meanwhile, this (you'll have to click through to the link to get the bitter joke):

A Florida woman who fired warning shots against her allegedly abusive husband has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Marissa Alexander of Jacksonville had said the state's "Stand Your Ground" law should apply to her because she was defending herself against her allegedly abusive husband when she fired warning shots inside her home in August 2010. She told police it was to escape a brutal beating by her husband, against whom she had already taken out a protective order.

The conservative majority on the Supreme Court is right, you see: We live in post-racism America.

Today's toons were selected from the week's pages at Cartoon Movement, GoComics, McClatchyDC.com, About.com, Daryl Cagle, Comic Strip of the Day, and other fine sources.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Jack Ohman, Jim Morin, Joel Pett, Nate Beeler, Taylor Jones, Matt Wuerker, Jen Sorenson, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Nick Anderson.

p3 Summa Cum Award: Monte Wolverton.

p3 World Toon Review: Eray Osbek (Turkey), Rainer Ehrt (Germany), and O. Cuellar (Colombia).


An Ann Telnaes twofer: we've got something stuck in our throat, and we're sticking something in someone else's throat.


Mark Fiore struggles for the right word: Overlord uprising? Top-down rebellion? Revolt of the elite?.


Taiwan's Next Media Animation presents Our Man In Havana: The Sequel.


Comic Strip of the Day surveys the history of the Harmonic Toon Convergence (scroll down).


Tom Tomorrow explains why the news media occupy such an important role in our system of government.


Keith Knight salutes the end and the beginning.


Tom the Dancing Bug draws attention to a problem Doctor Who faces all the damned time.


Red Meat's Mister Wally and Ted Johnson discuss the finer points of men's grooming.


The Comics Curmudgeon celebrates The Big Nine.


We ran all suspects' names through R & I – and came up with The Bat. “Under the Counter Spy” (1954) is the fifth Woody Woodpecker short. Directed by Don Patterson, story by Hugh Harmon (a name that goes 'way back in animation history, but that's for another time), and voice work by Gracie Lantz (Woody) and Dal McKennon (everybody else). Musical direction by Clarence Wheeler and Raymond Turner – note the clever play-off of Wagner's “Lohengrin” theme against the trumpets playing Woody's signature laugh during the first transformation. And the framing story: The deadpan investigator named after days of the week, plus the mallet-and-stamp at the end, are hat-tips to “Dragnet,” which in 1954 was still a popular show and not the Dan Aykroyd/Tom Hanks spoof it would become thirty years ago.

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

The p3 Big Oregon Toon Block:

Matt Bors invites you to step inside Mike Huckabee's nightmare.

Jesse Springer offers his modest contribution to the ultra-folksy PSAs (here's one, and here's the other), for which the State of Oregon coughed up almost $10 million, to raise awareness of Cover Oregon, the soon-to-come medical insurance exchange:

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