I wasn't terribly surprised to see the
right-wing media, the Tea Party, and the militia enthusiasts fasten like lampreys onto a deadbeat rancher/squatter in Nevada .
And I wasn't completely caught unawares when the FCC, a totally captured pawn controlled by
the very industries it's supposed to be regulating, started making
noise about killing Net Neutrality.
But then, I found out just last night
that Warner Bros is going to do three more Harry Potter movies, on the
thinnest pretext imaginable. This is the kind of
naked, opportunistic greed that can make even major studio executives
look bad. "Ars gratia artis," my ass. Even Disney - even Disney! think about that! - wouldn't be making three more Star Wars movies if they couldn't hork up a better justification than this.
Today's toons were selected with no other thought in mind than art for art's sake, from 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 Picks of the week: Mike
Luckovich, Matt
Wuerker, Ben
Sargent, Drew
Sheneman, Tom
Toles, Tony
Auth, Clay
Bennett, Signe
Wilkinson, Steve
Kelley, Rick
McKee, Pat
Bagley, and Monte
Wolverton.
p3 Best of Show: Joel
Pett.
p3 "The Truth Shall Set You
Free" Medal: Darrin
Bell.
p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon
Convergence (special International Edition): Jens
Julius (Denmark), Tom
Janssen (Netherlands).
p3 Legion of Merit: Ted
Rall. (Note: Former Award recipients include G.
B. Trudeau.)
Ann Telnaes sees a sound reason
to do one's drinking someplace
other than Georgia.
Wait!
What's that? Does Mark Fiore hear a
discouraging word?
Taiwan's Next Media Animation
has a leaked
copy of footage from Star Wars VII. Spoiler alert: Once again,
Han fires first.
Tom Tomorrow says, It's
good to be Cliven Bundy's cows.
Keith Knight reminds
us that smart
only gets you so far in this world.
Tom the Dancing Bug brings
us the latest adventures of Lucky Ducky "the poor little duck
who's rich in luck!" (As always, the secret origin of "Lucky
Ducky," for those of you who still wonder, can be found here.
Hint: He isn't the sole survivor of the desruction of a distant
planet of supermen.)
Red Meat's Bug-eyed Earl is back
– and you know it was going to be bad, just from panel #1. Panel #2
only heightens the sense of dread. And panel
#3 delivers. So to speak.
The Comic Strip Curmudgeon
announces the winner of
the Most Disturbing Image in Today's Comics award.
Comic Strip of the Day pays
eye-candy tribute to the winner of 2014 Thomas Nast Award, given by
the Overseas Press Association, and it is a frequently dropped name
around here at the p3 toon review. Hint: CSOT calls him "one
of those cartoonists whom I always feel a tinge of guilt over using
so often, but who is so often right-on that it's hard to resist."
Mandrake the Magician was a
favorite of mine when I was a kid. It seems to have taken
an odd turn while I wasn't looking.
Quick! Can you name the only
original Marvin the Martian cartoon that didn't feature him pitted
against Bugs Bunny? Of course
you can, because it's the classic "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th
Century," directed by Chuck Jones in 1953 (I should have held up half
as well), with a wonderful score full of menace and mock heroics by
musical director Carl Stalling, and uncredited voice work by
Portland's own Mel Blanc. It's your typical story of great powers
duking it out over some third-world (or, in this case, twenty-fourth-world)
craphole for the sake of some strategically important mineral, the
strategic importance of which is quickly forgotten once the shootin'
starts. So it's left for Cadet Porky to be the voice of resistance
against the designs of Empire. (Perhaps your childhood Saturday
mornings were different than mine.) Other fun facts: Marvin wasn't
named Marvin until they needed a name for merchandising purposes in
the 1960s. He was either unnamed, or – as in a Bugs Bunny story the
previous year – he was Commander of Flying Saucer X-2. Also, the
Macguffin in this story is Illudium Phosdex, the shaving cream atom,
not to be confused with either Illudium Q-36 (or Illludium Pu-36),
the explosive that figured so unfortunately in a couple
Marvin-versus-Bugs stories.
The p3 Sunday Comics Read-Along:
Pearls
Before Swine, Doonesbury,
Rhymes with Orange, Zits,
Adam @ Home, Mutts,
Over the
Hedge, Get
Fuzzy, Prince
Valiant, Blondie,
Bizarro, Mother
Goose & Grimm, Rose
is Rose, Luann,
Hagar
the Horrible, Pickles,
Rubes, Grand
Avenue, Freshly
Squeezed, The Brilliant Mind
of Edison Lee, and Jumble.
The Big, And Getting Bigger Since We
Welcomed Back The Departed, Oregon Toon Block:
Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman applauds
the
priorities of those charged with our safety.
Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen looks
at that
whole tricky speech-money business.
Matt Bors looks
at the upward
path in American employment.
Jesse Springer wonders:
if they had a heterosexual judge in there, would gay couples be
getting married by now?
Test your toon captioning mojo at The
New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon
contest. (Rules here.)
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