Sunday morning toons: Giving up on 2015 – too soon?

I visited family in Indiana last month, and the one of the first topics of conversation in the 6am ride home from the airport – after "How was the flight?" but before "Where shall we have breakfast?" – was how was the price of gas here in Oregon? I used to follow that weekly and report on it at the blog Loaded Orygun, although now that blog has been extinct for about as long as I've been without an automobile, so I had no good answer. (It's here.) Several cartoonists picked up on that question this week. (Here's an interesting theory about what that may or may not mean for Obama's popularity.)

Most cartoons about Louisiana Rep. (and House Majority Whip apparent) Steve Scalise got an editorial pass this week, because they went for the too-easy jokes about white hoods. (Although Scalise certainly didn't make it hard for them.)

And, as you'll see, only two or three toons about the recent (or ongoing) behavior of the NYPD made the cut. Key word: Authoritah! Again, you'll see.

And I pretty much stayed away to done-to-death Aged 2014/Infant 2015 toons, although Lalo Alcaraz and Steve Kelley had takes I liked. And I thought Henry Payne did capture the spirit of the season rather neatly.

Which means that today's toons were selected by placing all the week's toons, via 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, on a podium and then turning my back on them.

p3 Picks of the week: Mike Luckovich, Steve Benson, Stuart Carlson, Kevin Kallaugher, Chan Lowe, Brian McFadden, Joel Pett, Signe Wilkinson, Matt Wuerker, Clay Bennett, Adam Zyglis, Dave Fitzgerald, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Ted Rall.

p3 Legion of Merit: Jeff Danziger.

p3 Legacy Award: Drew Sheneman.

p3 Short American Attention Span/Zeitgeist Medal: Marshall Ramsey.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Nick Anderson and Matt Wuerker.

p3 World Toon Review: Tayo Fatunia (Nigeria), and Ingrid Rice (Canada). I need to work on this feature. Before Daryl Cagle's web site was restructured, it was much, much easier to follow cartoonists from other nations. Time to cowboy up, as we Americans say.

Ann Telnaes says goodbye to all that.

Mark Fiore presents 2014: The Year in Crazy. Everything must go! (Couldn't agree more, except for the part about the "nationwide conversation." This must be some new use of the word "conversation" I wasn't previously familiar with.)

Tom Tomorrow unveils the long-awaited 2014 In Review, Part Two. A lot of people might think – and can you blame them? – that the year could simply have ended just before July 19th with no one the worse.

Keith Knight demonstrates the grand unified theory of everything (that Americans don't know or can't remember)..

Tom the Dancing Bug actually mentions Lake Oswego, Oregon! Woo-hoo! Too bad about poor baby Samantha, though.

Red Meat's Bug-Eyed Earl recaptures the good old days.

The Comic Strip Curmudgeon marks Christmas on the comics page (and reminds Mitchum of the fundamentals of crime).

Comic Strip of the Day took me down a memory lane paved with the sugared treats once featured in program-length commercials, and for good measure tosses in a Mark Anderson cartoon that reminds me of this line from Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul: "So in effect you are in the business of giving scholarships to people with particularly gifted diseases?

I twied, and I twied, but I just can't seem to catch that old wabbit! Elmer seems to be having his own dark night of the soul, too, at the opening of "The Old Grey Hare," directed in 1944 by Bob Clampett, with animation by Robert McKimson (and six others, uncredited), musical direction by Carl Stalling (and orchestration by Milt Franklyn, also uncredited), with similarly uncredited voice work by Portland's own Mel Blanc (Bugs) and Arthur Q. Bryan (Elmer). We proudly present this to our readers as a New Year's treat. You can watch it here.

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

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman took the week off.

Possibly Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen has a quiz.

Matt Bors wonders where the line is drawn.

Jesse Springer also has taken the week off.

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.