Here's children's book creator Ed Emberley’s son, Michael, talking about, among other things, what it was like growing up with Ed Emberley working in the house. This is from the Fruitful Life podcast series. Welcome to the Fruitful Life where we discuss the business of creativity. Michael Emberley has been an author and award winning illustrator of children's books for over 40 years. He is known for his humorous and sensitive picture books, such as Ruby, Welcome Back Sun, and I Did It!, as well as works of non fiction such as, The Message, The Extraordinary Journey of an Ordinary ..read more

Dick Buchanan celebrates the coming of summer with (What else?) a visit to his world renowned cartoon clip file. So, take off your shoes, run through the green grass and enjoy some twenty hand-picked specially curated, artisanal single panel gag cartoons. Thank you, Mr. Buchanan, for sharing these! --- GAG CARTOONS (1944 – 1963) Summer is here and soon many tourists will flock to the Old Joke Cemetery, just around the corner from Dick Buchanan’s Cartoon Clip File located somewhere in New York’s scenic Greenwich Village. As always, the Gag Cartoon section is of interest to many. The FAQ plaq ..read more

The garden as of early June. Not much to see. It’s been raining, raining, raining and while those beautiful lupines are happy, the tomatoes and peppers are longing for sun. You can see a couple of the raised beds still haven’t been planted. That’ll change. Let me know if you have suggestions about what other vegetables should be planted.    ..read more

Dick Buchanan has a twist. Here are some of the great, classic New Yorker cartoonists with some gag cartoons that you never saw. Well, to be more to the point, these were NEVER seen in The New Yorker, despite these cartoonists' association with the magazine. If all of these cartoonists were under contract to The New Yorker at this time (Some may have been, some not, but I'm guessing most were.), then one of the caveats in the contract is that the Magazine gets "first look" at their cartoons. So, these were looked at by The New Yorker, but then rejected. No Sale. So, the cartoonist was free to ..read more

 Via MSNBC: "The first ever graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize, Art Spiegelman’s 'Maus' is a frank and visceral look at the Holocaust through his father’s eyes. When the schools board of the McMinn County School District in Tennessee banned the classic from the 8th grade curriculum, it was thrust back into the spotlight for a new generation of readers that badly needed it. Spiegelman famously depicts his characters in ‘Maus’ as animals – Jewish mice, Nazi cats, Polish pigs, French frogs, and American dogs -- subverting common Nazi propaganda portraying Jewish people as 'rats,' 've ..read more

I think it's the first time in maybe 17 years since I took about ten days off from the blog here in the early part of this month. Sorry about that. Here's why. It helped me to go full speed ahead in my studio and complete the final push for a new project. The project, an historical comic book, is now ready to go to press. It's been a fascinating series of illustrations and I had just the greatest editor as well. My part is done now. I'll let you know more about it when it's printed. I thought I'd show a fraction of the sketches I did. On some of them, you can see my thumb in the photo -- so yo ..read more

The New York Review of Books has published a collection of political cartoons by Syd Hoff, best known now as the author/illustrator of the children's book Danny and the Dinosaur. The Ruling Clawss; The Socialist Cartoons of Syd Hoff shows his pre-children's book days as a political gag cartoonist.          Philip Nel provides the background: During his career as a New Yorker cartoonist, and before he wrote Danny and the Dinosaur, Syd Hoff wrote under a different name. He was A. Redfield, a cartoonist for the communist newspaper the Daily Worker, and a scourge of t ..read more

From the Associated Press archives, here's an interview with Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb that dates from 2011. Some of this looks like raw footage, perhaps unseen until now.  Associated Press journalists Ted Shaffrey, Richard Drew and Matt Moore interviewed Robert Crumb and his wife and collaborator, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, at the Society of Illustrators in New York City on March 24, 2011. Crumb had an exhibit on display through April 30, 2011.      ..read more

  Terence Dollard interviews Bill Mauldin biographer Todd DePastino ..read more