Sunday morning toons: A lot of Americans died unexpectedly this week

Some – too many – one is too many – died from a lethal cocktail of rage and lax gun laws.

Maya Angelou died surrounded by her family at age 86, after a full and productive and inspiring life, and following a period of failing health.

Only one of those should be a source of pride.

Today's toons were selected from among 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 Davies, Clay Jones, Drew Litton, Jim Morin, Pat Oliphant, Tom Toles, Signe Wilkinson, Steve Sack, Dave Fitzsimmons, Rick McKee, Matt Wuerker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Joel Pett.

p3 Legion of Extreme Honor: J. D. Crowe.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Bill Day, Nate Beeler, Rick McKee, John Darkow, Taylor Jones, and Jeff Stahler. And probably others I didn't find.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Adam Zyglis.

p3 Mixed Metaphor Medal: Clay Bennett.

p3 World Toon Review: Kevin Kallaugher (England), Grahame Arnould (Canada), Michel Kichka (Israel), Martyn Turner (Ireland), and Makhmud Eshonkulov (Uzbekistan).

Ann Telnaes takes another look at American exceptionalism.

Mark Fiore updates the VA Hotline menu.

Taiwan's Next Media Animation blah

Tom Tomorrow presents the further adventures of Conservative Jones, Boy Detective. Oh, Moonbat . . . !

Keith Knight has a pop quiz. (And before you freak, they aren't drawn to the same scale!) And you know what, I like this one too, so I'm officially declaring this a Keef Two-fer.

Tom the Dancing Bug sez: You know the answer. And it isn't the one you wish it would be.

Red Meat's Bug-eyed Earl has an insight about the modern world.

The Comic Strip Curmudgeon calls – nay, prays – for the Rise of the Machines. (Actually I didn't realize at first that it was a machine. I thought it was a reel of 16mm film, or maybe the lid of of a big bucket of blue paint.)

Comic Strip of the Day looks at those things that don't kill people.

Kaamran Hafeez knows the secret to getting space on the p3 toon review. One word: Penguins.

Weekly animation: As the story goes, following the success of "Falling Hare," directed by Bob Clampett in 1943 and pitting Bugs Bunny against a gremlin (a little green imp who causes bombs to detonate prematurely and planes to crash), Clampett thought it might be fun to revive the gremlins. Thus, the following year, WB released "Gremlins in the Kremlin," also directed by Clampett. But his producer stepped in with a name change after it came to light that Disney was also producing a wartime film about gremlins. So the title was changed to "Russian Rhapsody," presumably on the grounds that confusion with a musical composition two pianos by Sergei Rachmaninoff would create less trouble for Warner Bros than confusion with a Disney film. Speaking of music, Portland's own Mel Blanc has a grand old time voicing Hitler and musical director Carl Stalling gives Blanc a chance to sing "We Are Gremlins in the Kremlin" to the music of two Russian pieces: "Dark Eyes," and "Song of the Volga Boatmen." The manic animation was handled by Robert Scribner and Robert McKinson – the big, sweeping, fill-the-screen movements of Hitler on the podium would return a few years later in the larger-than-life person of Foghorn Leghorn, whose cartoons were directed by McKimson.

You can watch the toon (and learn more about the background) at Dangerous Minds, since Blogger (owned by Google) doesn't make it easy to embed videos from anywhere but YouTube (also owned by Google).

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 Bent the Rules and Welcomed Back The Departed, Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman acknowledges the latest epidemic.

Probable Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen invites you to pick your own doomsday scenario.

Matt Bors updates Margaret Atwood. Sadly, it's only a small update because things haven't really changed that much.

Jesse Springer forecasts another extreme weather event headed our way:

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