Sunday evening toons: And having once turned round walks on

And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

Coleridge wrote that, and Mary Shelly lifted it for the moment when Victor Frankenstein beheld his creation. We've featured a number of toons this spring that compared Trump to Frankenstein's creature, and the GOP establishment to its horrified creator. But now, as the Thunderdome that will be the GOP convention draws nearer, the party elite are realizing that, while Trump may be a dreadful nominee, there is another frightful fiend that doth tread close behind him as well. The thought that Ted Cruz would be their fallback guy if trump doesn't get the nomination doesn't seem to be making anyone but Cruz loyalists and Democratic oppo people happy. And the thought that his unfavorables are roughly the same as Clinton's and far better than Trump's doesn't seem to be providing much comfort. They still dislike the guy. Good.

Many people have used the phrase "the soundtrack of my life" to describe their sense of loss at Prince's death. I enjoyed his music, and certainly respected his creativity and the number of issues he came down on the right side of, but I just never had the connection. Different life, different times, different soundtrack. (It's why not many people want to hear what it was like to find out about John Lennon's assassination from Howard Cosell. I get it.) And I appreciate that, if Prince was your soundtrack, the pressure of deadline cartooning mixed with the difficulty of getting past the initial sense of shock and loss might not help you produce your best work. That being said, if you didn't get beyond rain that was purple or two doves that were white, you didn't make the cut today.

And congratulations to the GOP for elevating their fascination with the question of who pees where to a national issue. LGBTQ advocates couldn't have caught a luckier break from a more unsympathetic group of opponents.

Today's toons were selected 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, Brian McFadden, Jeff Danziger, Joel Pett, Drew Sheneman, Tom Toles, Dan Wasserman, Nick Anderson, and Matt Wuerker.

p3 Best of Show: Rob Rogers.

p3 Legion of Merit: Signe Wilkinson.

p3 "Perspective: Use It Or Lose It" Award: Darren Bell.

Ann Telnaes looks at Earth Day as a poltical football. Or beach ball. Or whatever. And as long as we're celebrating Earth Day this week, time to bring back this gem.

Mark Fiore flies the (un)friendly skies.

Delicate sensibilities! Trial by followers! Unrealized goals! Tom Tomorrow has all that, and more, including a brief yet welcome cameo by Sparky the Penguin and Chuckles the Sensible Woodchuck. And a shocking twist ending! (I had a conversation a couple of days ago with a friend who'd never watched the original Twilight Zone and, with perhaps a little nudging from me, was working her way through them. She was so excited to see "To Serve Man" for the first time – and it was such a delight listening to her explain the story. The passing of the TZ torch is a wonderful thing to see.)

Keith Knight has one word for you. Just one word. Are you listening?

Reuben Bolling presents God-Man vs Human-Man: Dawn of Justice.

Comic Strip of the Day goes on a tear: Facts cannot be "good" or "bad." In a bit of irony (I decline to call it a juxtaposition), not that long after his post I stumbled across this item from an otherwise-sensible site, which sets nearly the opposite challenge for itself: debating the facticity of something that everyone concedes up-front was made up. (Yes, it's a word. You can look it up.)

A rabbit's woik is never done! "Hare Conditioned," directed in 1945 by Chuck Jones from a story by Tedd Pierce, was the short feature before "Rocky Horror" at a campus theater back in the day, so there was a patch when I saw it every Friday night for a now-embarrassing length of time. Watch "Hare Conditioned" at eBaum's World.

The Right-Sized Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman – who as it happens just won a Pulitzer – pays tribute to Donald Trump, who as it happens is a very smart guy. Just ask him.

Documented Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen knows a frightful fiend when she sees one.

Matt Bors captures a feeling I've had ever since I got out of the classroom biz.

Jesse Springer asks: What have you hit when marijuana sales in the first two months of legalization doubles the projected annual revenue from the program? Well . . .

Test your toon-captioning magic 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.

Sunday morning toons: The week of the non-story

Ted Cruz is indeed legally qualified to run for president (His mother was an American citizen. End of story.), although a lot of people had fun suggesting this was somehow evidence of hypocrisy or double-dealing on his part.

Ted Cruz gave a speech at Liberty University, where the student body was required (under penalty of a fine, if I have the story right) to attend. This makes it a little like the kid that was so ugly the parents tied a pork chop around his neck so the family dog would play with him, which is a funny image but not much of a story.

And in a Cruz hat-trick, the Senator signed up for health insurance under the PPACA. This was widely seen as an unwilling admission that the PPACA is successful when the far more likely explanation is that Cruz (who certainly has multiple options for coverage, unlike most of the newly-insured on Obamacare's rolls) is simply trolling for first-hand evidence that Obamacare is an unconstitutional failure.

Indiana, the state where I was born but not the state I'm from, recently passed a law that makes it legal (pending the SCOTUS hearing) to discriminate against gays again like the good old days, and people responded reasonably enough with protests, demonstrations, and boycotts. Lost in the shuffle is the fact that several other states have passed similar religious-right-to-discriminate laws, and several more are contemplating it. Although, as Darrin Bell documents, California is currently several lengths ahead in this race.

And Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is not going to run for re-election, but he'll still be in office for almost two years, and now with very little to lose by sticking it to McConnell at every single opportunity.

Today's toons were selected by a somewhat more arbitrary than usual process 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, Ted Rall, Rebecca Hendin, Rob Rogers, Drew Sheneman, Signe Wilkinson, Darrin Bell, Kevin Kallaugher, Steve Kelley, Chan Lowe, Jim Morin, John Darkow, David Fitzsimmons, Matt Wuerker, and Monte Wolverton (marking one of the rare cases where Godwin's Law deserves its recognition).

p3 Best of Show: Joel Pett.

p3 Legion of Merit: Steve Benson.

p3 Croiz de Guerre de Cruz: Tim Eagan.

p3 "Really Futile And Stupid Gesture" Medal (with clusters): Jeff Danziger.

p3 World Toon Review: Ingrid Rice (Canada), Christo Komarnitski (Bulgaria), Enrico Bertuccioli (Italy), and Pavel Constantin (Romania)

Ann Telnaes notes that Utah is running out of bad ideas.

Mark Fiore has mixed feelings about a likely Ted Cruz flame-out.

Tom Tomorrow gives us a peek at the future, through the miracle of Tomorrow Vision. He also comes this close to sharing a p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence with Marshall Ramsey.

Congrats to 2015 NAACP History Maker Keith Knight. Here's the kind of thing that helped get him there.

Tom the Dancing Bug brings the long-awaited (Although, really, why should that be? Shouldn't we have known?) return of Percival Dunwoody, idiot time-traveler from1909, plus other Super-Fun-Pak Comix goodies.

Red Meat's Ted Johnson supposes that Mrs. Johnson is right.

The Comic Strip Curmudgeon, for reasons I can't fathom, gives the punchline to the beetles, not to the paranoid-yet-fraternal beavers.

Comic Strip of the Day brings good news from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, followed by an inspired Clark 'n' Jimmy panel.

I'll deliver the Technicolor hen-fruit for ya! And there, in a nutshell (eggshell?), is the somewhat-garbled summary of the plot to "Easter Yeggs," directed in 1947 by Robert McKimson from a story by Warren Foster. Credited: Portland's own Mel Blanc (Bugs Bunny, the Easter Bunny, and the Dead-End Kid), and musical director Carl Stalling. Uncredited, uber-voice Arthur Q. Bryant (Elmer Fudd) and orchestrator Milt Franklyn. Here's the Easter Rabbit, hooray! Watch "Easter Yeggs" at Trilulilu.

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 spots those two little words.

Could-Be Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen has some ideas for a conversation, including a word that, if you're lucky, you didn't even know existed!

Matt Bors reveals Ted Cruz's hope for 2016!

Jesse Springer looks at some likely consequences of Democratic control of both houses of the Oregon legislature and the governor's mansion. All it needs is Dame Maggie.

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

Sunday morning toons: A tough week for frogs

It's been quite a week for all of us. You can't find work (unless you work inside the beltway or in lower Manhattan). If you're gay, you can get married in California now (unless you want to get married right now, in which case you can't -- it's complicated). The US stands for peace (unless you're worried about cluster bombs, which the US seems okay with). Newt Gingrich is Osama bin Laden's enemy (unless the topic is a mosque anywhere near Ground Zero). And it hasn't shaped up to be a good week for frogs, either.

(Why frogs? Stay tooned.)

Let's begin, as always, with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for the week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Nate Beeler, Pat Bagley, Bill Schorr, Joe Heller, Jeff Parker, Jimmy Margulies, Henry Payne, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Cam Cardow.

p3 Bitter Truth Award: Dave Granlund. (Is it me, or is this becoming a tough week for frogs?)

p3 p3 Good For the Goose Certificate: Steve Sack.

p3 World Toon Review: Stephane Peray (Thailand), Ingrid Rice (Canada),
Pavel Constantin (Romania), and Victor Ndula (Kenya).


Ann Telnaes unveils Sharron Angle's media strategy. It's so . . . simple.


Wingnuts of the past: This week, Mark Fiore asks: What if Andrew Breitbart had been around in 1863?


There is only one true Yogi Bear movie. And it ain't this. It's this. (Hat/tip to Michael Cavna of Comic Riffs, who notes the utterly pointless use of 3-D for this movie. Hell, Hanna-Barbera barely managed to exploit 2-D for the cheaply animated original Yogi Bear cartoons.)


Do we get enough Zippy the Pinhead here at p3 Sunday toons? No, we do not.


Wingnuts of the future: Don't wait for the next faked scandal to seep up through the ground; Tom Tomorrow's already on it.


You're on the road, and things . . . you know . . . happen: Wrapping up his Comics-Con victory lap, Keith Knight does right by someone with whom he shared something very, very special.


Hint: The jumbled letters are SYBEEERANL. This is gratifying: The Comics Curmudgeon had the same problem with Friday's Jumble and Luann that I did.


Tom the Dancing Bug makes a good point: Who better to decide how to memorialize the 9/11 attack on a multicultural eastern city than white, western right-wingers?


Here's this week's Barry Blitt illustration to go with today's Frank Rich NYTimes column.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman had us with the title: Backroom Rangelling.


Missing in action: Olive, Bluto, and the spinach: But "Me Musical Nephews" (one of the best of the otherwise-dreary 1942 releases) remains one of my favorite Popeye cartoons. Directed by Seymour Kneitel (who was also directing the beautifully rotoscoped Superman animated toons at about the same time), and with great musical direction -- no one's mentioned in the credits but I'm betting it was Fleischer/Famous Studio's stalwart Sammy Timberg. I was reminded by  Wikipedia that the final break-the-third-wall gag originally featured Popeye seeking sanctuary on the Paramount mountain-top logo (the Popeye theatricals were released by Paramount), but that bit was cut when they were re-released by a.a.p. Here it is, in glorious black-and-white and state of the art 2-D:

p3 Bonus Toon: So what if Oregon GOP gubernatorial candidate Dudley had the worst free throw record in the history of organized sports when he was in the NBA? Jesse Springer says he's not having trouble hitting the basket now:

Remember to bookmark the daily political toon features at Slate's Slate, Time, and About.com.

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