Lucky us. This week the toon world was
heavily into the status of health in America. Not that Obamacare thing: Suddenly the right-wing media is all crickets chirping and the distant tinkle of glassware somewhere near Omaha on that subject.
For openers, it looks like the run-up to Memorial
Day is going to be all about the VA's service performance, which is
fitting.
Having raised a fortune in 2012
superPAC money with almost nothing to show for it except his own fees, Karl Rove is
exploring his new career a TV doctor (he looks at Hillary Clinton and
sees possible brain damage, as opposed to Bill Frist who looked at
Terri Schaivo and saw the exact opposite! Tricky business!)
And House Republicans have the fever –
and the cure is More #Benghazi!
At least it's all pushed Cliven Bundy
and Donald Sterling farther down the news feed for a little while.
Plus, it was the occasion for a couple of good penguin sight-gags.
And as loyal p3 readers know, we're all
about the penguins here.
Today's toons were selected by a select
House panel charged with establishing the scandalous link between
political cartooning during the Obama administration and threats to
national security 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 toon goodness.
p3 Picks of the week: Mike
Luckovich, Chris
Bennett, Matt
Davies, Walt
Handlesman, Jim
Morin, Pat
Oliphant, Joel
Pett, Marshall
Ramsay, Ben
Sargent, Pat
Bagley, Mike
Keefe, Matt Wuerker, and Monte
Wolverton.
p3 Best of Show: Paul
Szep.
p3 Legion of Merit: Keith
Knight.
p3 Medal of Valor (with Hashtags):
Eric
Alley.
p3 Award for Best Adaptation from
Another Medium (tie): Jeff
Stahler and Chan
Lowe, with extra credit to Matt
Wuerker. (I honestly expected this award to be given out to at
least half a dozen variations on "Abbie Normal," but no
such luck.)
p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon
Convergence: J.
D. Crowe and Scott
Stantis.
p3 World Toon Review: Silviano
Mello (Brazil), Petar
Pismestrovic (Austria), and Ingrid
Rice (Canada).
How did this get by us? On
April 29, Al
Feldstein died at age 88. For three decades he was the editor of
Mad Magazine, and created the magazine that every generation
thinks of when they hear the name. (And, for the record, I still
think this Mort Drucker gag is still the funniest single panel from my glory days.* I
can't explain it.)
*And therefore the funniest single panel in all of human history, since as MAD's current editor says in the link above, “For each reader, MAD was funniest
when they first discovered it.”
It's like imagining Damon without
Pythias. Or Lewis without
Martin. Or Rowan without Martin. Or, more to the point,
Bugs without Elmer. Here at p3 we've often mentioned Portland's
own Mel Blanc, the man of a thousand voices, but we haven't
mentioned Arthur Q. Bryant – who made the voice of Elmer Fudd the
voice that imitators always hoped for but never achieved. Here he is,
in something
wholly non-Fudd. And the really cool thing is that he looks
exactly like you would have imagined he looks.
Ann Telnaes celebrates the
return of Mister Warmth.
Mark Fiore introduces the
universal language. (It's like Esperanto, except that William
Shatner never made a movie in it. How 'bout that – the Shatman
gets two plugs this week!)
Taiwan's Next Media Animation
has good news and bad news: It could mean that TASERs and pepper
sprays might get phased out by police. The bad news, it's more
powerful by an order of magnitude, it's laser-sighted, and it looks
so sexy you know they'll
want to whip it out a lot more often.
Tom Tomorrow sings a chorus of
"They'll
never forget you 'til somebody new comes along."
Keith Knight gives
a shoutout to something
he could get nostalgic about.
Tom the Dancing Bug continues
the olde,
olde story. (Part 1 was featured last
week.) We can look forward to Part 3 next week, if the troll will
sanction it.
Red Meat's Johnny Lemonhead
faces a
true story of the 2014 job market.
The Comic Strip Curmudgeon
considers the importance of
setting reasonable goals, via The Family Circus.
Comic Strip of the Day says:
When
the going gets tough, the tough go dada-ist.
Chase me: It's pretty damned rare for the Golden-Age snobs here at Team p3 to include any animation produced after about 1957 (unless it's Canadian, of course). And I doubt if the long history of the feature has ever included the words "direct-to-video." But that's what we're featuring today, and it's a beaut. Directed by Curt Geda, with a great jazz score by Lolita Ritmanis, "Chase Me" was a little somethin' extra on the 2003 DVD Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman. This time I won't over explain. Just enjoy. (Hat-tip to Oliver Mannion.)
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.
And, while the big O has kept its
comics pages alive – and has even moved them to color – things are
looking a little ominous back east. Jim Romanesko writes: New
York Post Drops Its Comics Section (And Few People Notice).
The Big, And Getting Bigger Since We
Welcomed Back The Departed, Oregon Toon Block:
Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman gives us
a
bird's eye view of GOP Presidential primary sweepstakes.
Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen (who
may not be an ex-Oregonian at all, and we're looking into it, but not
in a creepy stalker way) shares gift
ideas for the unvaccinated.
Matt Bors explores
the many
useful possibilities of hashtag activism.
Jesse Springer gets
a little teary-eyed as the moment nears when the couple stands in
front of the judge and says those magic words. (Look for the
announcement on Monday at noon. It's BYOH – Bring Your Own Hankie.)
Test your toon captioning mojo at The
New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon
contest. (Rules here.)
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