Sunday morning toons: Messing with their heads

We can either go with Obama's move toward normalizing relations with Cuba – and honestly, isn't he really just doing stuff like this to mess with Republicans' heads? – or we can go with North Korea declaring war on Hollywood's cultural hegemony. (Seriously, there are people out there who want the US to attack Pyongyang over a Seth Rogan vehicle? I'm still amazed that nukes weren't launched over "The Green Hornet.")

Or, I suppose, we could go with the unindicted war criminals that populated the Bush 43 administration, and who got a free ride all last week defending torture.

Oh yeah, and Congress just pleasured the banking industry again in the way they do best, but that only attracted a certain amount of cartoony notice. And there were a lot of Cuban cigar gags I just left there.

Today's toons were selected by a group of rogue hackers from the week's offerings at McClatchy DC, Cartoon Movement, Go Comics, Politico's Cartoon Gallery, Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoons, About.com, The Nib, and other fine sources of toony goodness.

p3 Picks of the week: Mike Luckovich, Signe Wilkinson, Jeff Danziger, Adam Zyglis, J. D. Crowe, Matt Wuerker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Mike Keefe.

p3 Legion of Merit: Dave Granlund.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence (Part 1): Rob Rogers, Marshall Ramsey, and Steve Breen

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence (Part 2): Signe Wilkinson and Gary Varvel.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: (Part 3): Lalo Alcaraz and Nate Beeler.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence (Part 4): Steve Benson and Joe Heller.

p3 World Toon Review: Andres Alvez (Argentina), Fadi Abu Hassan (Norway), and Amorim (Brazil).

Ann Telnaes discovers what's inside the Evil Old Bastard.

Mark Fiore brings the good news: 2008 was more than 100 years ago!

Tom Tomorrow looks at the many reasons torture isn't bad – it's exceptionally good. Featuring a cameo by Chuckles the Sensible Woodchuck.

Keith Knight tastes a little something nasty in the back of his mouth..

Tom the Dancing Bug has the greatest second panel in cartooning history, and it's all for the Dark One.

Red Meat's Milkman Dan brings it to Karen.

The Comic Strip Curmudgeon explores some weird neighbor dynamics.

Comic Strip of the Day starts with freedom of speech and artistic expression, cycles through "what the hell were they thinking?", and winds up reminding readers – and rightly so – which movie was an underappreciated gem and which one was an overblown embarrassment that sucked pond water through a straw.

Not even a mouse: "The Night Before Christmas" was directed by Joseph Hanna and Bill Barbera, and released the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Uncredited: Clarence Nash (as Tom, also known over at Disney as the voice of Donald Duck) and musical director Scott Bradley. This is one of the early T&J's, when Tom still looked like a cat (a Russian Blue, in fact, if you want to win some bar bets), rather than . . . well, what Hanna and Barbera did to him later.

Watch "The Night Before Christmas" on Vimeo.

The Big, And Getting Bigger Since We Threw Out The Rulebook and Welcomed Back The Departed, Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman calls up America's ace in the hole: The Levis war on Communism.

Likely But Not Certainly Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen offers a thought experiment.

Matt Bors shares some prison humor.

Jesse Springer marks the end of 2014 in verse:

Test your toon captioning skillz at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.) And you can browse The New Yorker's cartoon gallery here.

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.