From Radio Free Europe: PEN America, along with a group of organizations that support cartoonists and artists, has condemned the violent arrest of Atena Farghadani, an Iranian cartoonist currently being held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison for attempting to hang one of her drawings on a wall near the presidential palace. Farghadani’s lawyer, Mohammad Moghimi, said she was violently arrested on April 12 by intelligence officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and sustained facial injuries that were visible during her arrest. From PEN America: On April 13, Farghadani was attempt ..read more

The National Cartoonists Society will have a booth at the Chicago Comic & Enterrtainment Expo on April 26 – 28. If you are in Chicago this weekend visit NCS member cartoonists at Booth 848. Several members of the NCS will be tabling over the weekend, including: Brian Gordon, George Gant, Harold Bucholz, Dee Fish, Johnny Sampson, Matthew Hansel, Tim Jones, Jim McGreal, Bob East, Richard Pietrzyk, and our very own president, Karen Evans! NCS member Tim Jones will be at our booth at C2E2! Tim is the creator, artist and writer of the widely popular, self-syndicated comic strip; “SOUR GRAP ..read more

We’ll start our search with Cathy Wilcox’s commentary on keeping young people off social media, in which she raises the question of how you would keep up with the world otherwise. She’s obviously not a big fan of Xitter, which is getting a harsh reassessment from the folks Down Under. Fiona Katauskas isn’t impressed with Musk’s efforts to support free speech, as he stuffs money into his pockets and rewards the world with a shower. And Matt Golding, who specializes in small, iconic cartoons, offers this small, iconic evaluation. This sudden attention to Xitter stems from a confrontation bet ..read more

Editorial cartoonist Bob Lynch has passed away. Robert Emery (Bob) Lynch April 1933 – April 6, 2024 From the obituary: He was eventually deployed to Korea and was a veteran of The Korean War. After his discharge, he attended The Cooper School of Art in Cleveland and spent the next ten years employed by various advertising agencies. He was eventually hired at The Chronicle Telegram in Elyria, Ohio as their Art Director. During his years with The Chronicle Telegram, he illustrated news stories, had a weekly cartoon strip, did sports drawings and courtroom sketches. After retiring in 1994 ..read more

Frazz (AMS) starts us with a reminder that some things can’t be purchased, except of course that they can. As it happens, the strip ran just after the Boston Marathon, as likely planned, but also after a local news story here mentioned that they used to put the medallions indicating that you finished on a table so racers could pick them up at the end. But they had to stop doing that because random people were taking them. Geez louise, at least Rosie Ruiz ran half a mile to establish herself as a fraud. But I didn’t have to look up her name, so I guess she accomplished something. The really sc ..read more

When Nancy Beiman was 65 and contemplating retirement from her job as a professor of animation, she had no clue as to how she would fill her days. “Many people take up an artistic hobby. But what was I, a professional artist, supposed to do? Take up accounting?” Before she could embark on a crash course in spreadsheets, she woke up one morning with the idea for a comic strip. The result was FurBabies, a series about a blended family of dogs, a cat and a child who can all speak the same language. Shawm, an Afghan hound, and Stella, a Francophile poodle fond of haute couture, act as stand-in ..read more

The current Mary Worth makes me wonder if June Brigman ever drew Angel and the Ape. “According to my research” – No. So Tom Batiuk has moved his Komix Korner format from Funky Winkerbean to Crankshaft. Cricked necks are in the forecast. Earth Day has been cancelled. Yesterday Alley Oop and company blew up the planet. But as the Liberty Meadows rerun shows, it’s happened before. The moral of the story… As long as we’re reading reruns Calvin and Hobbes has a lesson. As does Frank and Ernest (not rerun). Synchronicity Andy Capp yesterday and Andy Capp today. Mara Llave, Keeper of Time has ..read more

G. B. Trudeau has gone too far! From The Oregonian: … In our semi-free speech environment, Trudeau can say anything about Trump, which is fine. If you do not like what he writes, no one is forcing you to read his strip. However, in the April 7 Doonesbury strip, in which Trudeau equates Trump to Jesus Christ, Trudeau has crossed the line. The strip is titled “The last dinner party.” This is an offense – an outrage – to all Catholics and Christians. © G. B. Trudeau Another reader responds in The Oregonian letters section: A reader was offended by a recent Doonesbury cartoon in which Donald ..read more

Kal Kallaugher could run this anytime, but it’s particularly relevant at the moment, as we face the twin factors of emerging technologies that make forgery and fraud easier, and political operatives who are willing to lie in your face. There have always been kooks in the world, but in addition to the gullible who believe anything, and the sick people who start gossip for no discernible reason, we now hear that the Petrograd Troll Farm is getting competition from Beijing. Even if you try to avoid it, bullshit filters in, and the only positive aspect is to hope that truth also seeps in for peop ..read more

A program of nine restorations, titled Back From the Ink: Restored Animated Shorts, will premiere at the 2024 TCM Classic Film Festival on Saturday, April 20 at 6:30pm, with an in-person introduction by MacFarlane. Seven shorts directed by Dave Fleischer will be screened: Koko’s Tattoo (1928), Little Nobody (1935), The Little Stranger (1936), Greedy Humpty Dumpty (1936), Peeping Penguins (1937), The Fresh Vegetable Mystery (1939), and So Does An Automobile (1939). Also premiering are The Three Bears, a 1939 Terrytoon directed by Mannie Davis, and Two-Gun Rusty, a George Pal Puppetoon from 194 ..read more