CSotD: Topics well handled
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We'll start with the least significant but most fun piece, Joe Heller's reminder that next Wednesday in the early early you can catch a Super Blue Blood-Moon Eclipse.
He left off the "blood-moon" part because it's kind of silly: The moon gets coppery red in a total eclipse so that "blood-moon eclipse" is an overly dramatic way of saying "total eclipse."
Though at least it avoids a phrase that makes some of us giggle.
Here's what I wrote for my gang out in Colorado.
So now you know. Adjust to your time zone. Those on the other side of the International Date Line won't get a blue moon because it will be February.
The death of Hugh Masakela inspired a lot of the usual obituary tributes among cartoonists, including at least one of him showing up with his trumpet at the Pearly Gates, but Victor Ndula stepped forward with a simple, eloquent thank-you to a man who harnessed his incredible talent as a powerful tool in the fight against apartheid.
Also in the category of excellence from overseas, Greek cartoonist Spiros Derveniotis offers this explanation of how gentrification works.
There it is, and I have nothing to add.
More technique notes:
Terri Libenson pauses in a Pajama Diaries story arc to offer this fourth-wall-shattering obituary for Jill's grandmother-in-law.
Libenson maintains an unusual lack of distance between herself and her cartoon protagonist, enough to establish that she's exaggerating for comedic effect, but not so much that her readers don't realize that she is riffing on her own experience.
I've seen her speak twice (here and also here), and, while it would be bizarre for most strip cartoonists to drop in a note from the creator like this, her readers seem quite clear that Pajama Diaries is, in fact, a sort of fictionalized diary.
It's tricky to try to draw distinctions between her work and that of Lynn Johnston, and it's not a matter of heirarchy, but simply a reflection of the times and certainly a case where, without FBOFW, there would be no Pajama Diaries.
But, first of all, FBOFW was about a housewife, drawn by a cartoonist. Pajama Diaries is about a commercial artist and is drawn by a commercial artist, albeit one turned cartoonist.
Second, Johnston put a gap of a few years between her life and her strip, partially for her kids' privacy, but also to let events mellow into a more well-considered narrative.
Pajama Diaries is hot off the lives of the Libenson family and there is a rawness to the reactions that makes a difference in how readers relate to her.
Johnston is the wise counselor who assures you that others have been there. Libenson is the pal you moan and groan and cuss with.
Which means that she can step out of character to offer a reflection on having killed off a continuing character in her strip without it seeming to be jolting.
Speaking of friends-of-the-blog …
… and how they do what they do, Ann Telnaes's "Trump's ABC" has hit the bookstores, and Michael Cavna sat down with her for an interesting article about how the whole thing came about.
I'm used to seeing artists post videos of how they draw, but that seems mostly of interest to other artists. This insider look is more about concepts, and is less insiderish than discussions of nibs and paper and such.
Go have a look.
Juxtaposition of the Day(Jimmy Margulies)
(Two very different commentaries on the latest (yawn) school shooting.
Margulies makes more of a joke, because the NRA already has the solution to this problem: Bigger magazines.
Though as lack of funding forces schools to increase class sizes, there's a kind of race going on there.
It would be nice if, a half century from now, young adults would giggle over their grandparents' memories of lock-down drills the way the young folks snark at our duck-and-cover drills.
The difference being that sometimes today's kids get to put their training to use and we never did, which is why today's kids even exist. But I have heard people in my generation talk about how scared they were by those drills and how the possibility of nuclear war hung over their childhood.
The only time I was particularly worried was during the Cuban Missile Crisis and that passed. Still, what must it be doing to our kids to have these regular reminders, emphasized by, yeah, this could happen in your school tomorrow?
Meanwhile, as Luckovich's cartoon notes, instead of solving that real problem, our leadership gins up non-existent threats based on the fact that we've always been at war with Shitholia.
I like the lack of specificity in his depiction: They are some place different, but no place in particular. It's their "differentness," after all, that makes them the target of the racist chickenhawks who lead our government.
Plus this:
Rob Rogers knocks one over the wall with this melding of the insane conspiracy that inspired the movie "I, Tonya," and the insane criminal conspiracy currently unfolding among Dear Leader's promoters and enablers.
I haven't seen the movie, but it's had good reviews despite a few people on my Facebook feed wondering if Nancy Kerrigan considers the event comic. Well, maybe one day we'll find all this FBI bashing funny, too, but right now it feels like part of the conspiracy to keep the Deplorables from ever accepting the facts of the case.
Meanwhile, what I remember is that the affair caused Newsday to produce one of the first blatantly faked photos on a tabloid not sold in grocery store checkout lanes, while Rogers' metaphor gains strength by the fact the Harding finished not first or second but eighth at Lillehammer, after interrupting her program in tears, complaining of a loose boot lace and begging the judges to be allowed to start over.
Times change, but cheaters cheat and whiners whine.
And we let them.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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