Sunday, February 23, 2014

Sunday morning toons: One cable company to rule them all


Topics of the week: The Olympics are over and people are now noticing that something's going on in Kiev. Whatever the outcome of the Comcast merger, you couldn't find a subscriber who's looking forward to it if you had a magnifying glass and tweezers. And global warming is claimed to be a hoax again, because, you know, winter – unless you live in places like Australia or California. Even if it's paralyzing winter in Georgia, which ought to catch even the most cynical critic's attention.

Today's toons were delivered by the dogs who survived the Sochi Olympic Village purge, from the week's offerings at McClatchy DC, Cartoon Movement, Go Comics, Politico's Cartoon Gallery, Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoons, About.com, and other fine sources of toony goodness.


p3 Best of Show: Ben Sargent.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium (tie): Bob Englehart and John Darkow.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Taylor Jones and Randy Bish.

p3 World Toon Review: Chavez (Honduras), Arend Van Dam (Netherlands), Ingrid Rice (Canada)




Mark Fiore checks out those wonderful souls running the American Petroleum Institute.


Tom Tomorrow explains why the American economy is like "The Highlander:" In the end, there can only be one.


Keith Knight shares his gradual climb to cultural iconicity.


Tom the Dancing Bug brings you the further adventures of Nate the Wonder Pundit (and his peer-reviewed outlet).


Red Meat's Ted Johnson says, Ask your doctor!


The Comic Strip Curmudgeon has this reminder – if you need it – of how far Funky Winkerbean has spiralled away from the cute high-school version of Doonesbury it once was.


Comic Strip of the Day takes a cautionary look at the Comcast merger mess, and also makes me wonder if I've been wrong in ignoring The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee.  Will it get added to the p3 Sunday Comics Read-Along? Time will tell.


Paid for every dance, sellin' each romance: "Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo" was a 1928 German song about a fellow fallen on hard times in post-WWI Austria , and was given English lyrics and title  – "I'm Just a Gigolo" – the next year, with most of the historical specifics removed. (All this was not quite 30 years before an inspired Louis Prima combined it with "I Ain't Got Nobody," added a backbeat, and made it a standard of such durability that even David Lee Roth couldn't completely suck the oxygen out of it.) The 1932 Betty Boop cartoon of the same name captures some of the winners-and-losers flavor of the original. Direction by Dave Fleischer, with Mae Questel voicing La Boop, Broadway star Irene Goldoni as herself, and Sammy Timberg handling musical direction. The UM&M TV Corporation bought up most of the Fleischer-era Paramount cartoons in the mid-1950s for TV distribution, removing the original credits and replacing them with its own logo card. So this is not, alas, a pristine print. Also missing now is a live-action introduction by producer Max Fleischer himself.





The Big, But Could Be Bigger, And We're Not Giving Up, Oregon Toon Block:

Matt Bors drops us a line, but it ain't from Asbury Park.

Jesse Springer figures – and it's hard to disagree – that local bans on medical marijuana dispensaries in Oregon are going to get . . . well, see for yourself:



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


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