Video: Ted Rall Talks About "Racist Cartoon" Accusation

Ted Rall appears on Newsmax TV's "The Steve Malmberg Show" to talk about his Obama cartoon that people on the left are calling racist. 

Richard Thompson Breaks Hip; Surgery Today

Richard Thompson fell and broke his hip. Surgery today.

Nick Galifianakis writes at "The Art of Richard Thompson" Facebook page:

Hello cartoon and comic fans. Nick Galifianakis here. 

I'm trying to generate a tsunami of good thoughts for the only actual genius I know (I'm apologize to whoever else I just insulted) Richard Thompson. 

RT's Parkinson's has made him less stable and he took quite a tumble yesterday - he broke his hip, which is being replaced at 3 pm today. 

A joint replacement will get Richard up on his feet very quickly -screwing in a pin, which was briefly considered, would mean a much much longer convalescence whereas the joint replacement means he's up and rehabbing very quickly, very important considering he's already starting out from a compromised physical position. 

Surgery will be followed by about 5 days in the hospital 

Please send good thoughts his way. Now. 

More later...

"The Art of Richard Thompson" Facebook page is here.

Exposure and No Credit

 Mike Peterson, over at Comic Strip of the Day, talks about Rachel Dukes. A cartoon of hers, which was freely available to view on her site, was taken, her name stripped off, and it was shared over a half a million times on other sites.

"The money isn’t the point. But this is a thing that’s happening. This isn’t just happening to me. It’s actively happening to the greater art community as a whole. (Especially the comics community. Recent artists effected by altered artwork/theft off the top of my head: Liz Prince, Luke Healy, Nation of Amanda, Melanie Gillman, etc.) Our work is being stolen and profited off of. Right this second."

In other words, if you saw her work and liked it, you would not be able to find her if her name was scrubbed off.

The only thing I'm confused about is the "the money isn't the point" comment along with the "our work is being stolen and profited off of" comment. How does that work? Click-thru ad revenue that would be hers?

Regardless, her point is correct: this is epidemic. And who is scrubbing off the cartoonist's name?

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Related: The Beat: The Cost of Art Theft: From Spike Lee to Rachel Dukes.

Ted Rall and the Daily Kos Web site

Ted posted a cartoon on the Daily Kos site's blog. He was invited to do so. FYI: Ted's been a recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award (twice) and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He's written fifteen books. He's no slouch.

The next day, he found the cartoon removed and a note posted to him, calling his depiction of Obama as "racist."

Ted has the entire account at his site here, including that note. The cartoon is there too. And Daily Kos reprinted Ted's article, "Censored by Daily Kos." The cartoon is not there, but, hey, you can use the Internet to find it.

Ted is not racist. But a lot of the comments disagree. They are not looking at his work and his record. They are quick to knee-jerk and agree that they hate his cartoon and his voice cannot be tolerated.

Most of the comments I read were 100% certain that Daily Kos did what was best: censor a cartoon.

The hate and quick race to get rid of the cartoon was stunning. Liberal America, facist Syria, extremist Muslims all have something in common now.

Related: Robert's Virtual Soapbox: Ted Rall is No Racist; the Obamabots on the Other Hand ….

Fred Gwynne Draws

There were a lot of actors who drew. Martin Landau worked at the New York Daily News before deciding he would abandon dreams of being a cartoonist to pursue an acting career. Jonathan Winters drew gag cartoons. And now this: Fred Gwynne drew cartoonists at the Harvard Lampoon when he was a student there. Here's a link to a great Nat Hiken's Car 54: Where Are You? site that has a number of cartoons drawn by Fred Gwynne.

Happy Thanksgiving

Video: Dan Wasserman

Boston Globe editorial cartoonist Dan Wasserman talks about his early days (and a mistake he made with simultaneous submissions), as well as his process.

The video was produced by Corinne Holroyd.

Jewish Museum Art Spiegelman Reception 11-07-13 Photos by Matthew Carasella

Photo copyright Matthew Carasella.

Who was at the reception for the Jewish Museum's Art Spiegelman retrospective? Here are 181 photos from photographer Matthew Carasella. 

Hat tip to Jay Lynch. Thanks, Jay!

Illustrator Jimmy Gownley draws Amelia from the AMELIA RULES! series

BATMAN: HOARDER by Kerry Callan

Kerry Callan posits the theory that Batman really, truly is a hoarder. 

Video: Brian Walker at the Opening of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum

Brian Walker talks about cartooning and his Dad, Mort Walker, in what looks like an impromptu presentation at the opening of Ohio State University's Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum:



And here are some samples of art from the Museum:



My thanks to Lost Art Student for this!

Video: GoldieBlox Toys Ad Empowers Girls with a Rube Goldberg Invention

Here's a fun commercial for a line of GoldieBlox "Toys for Future Inventors" in which three girls seek to scuttle the popular media notion that they want just to be pretty princesses.

How do they do this?

By building a honking big Rube Goldberg contraption.

It's a lot of fun. Look:

Chester Gould's Early Years of Struggle

Above: a sports feature by Chester Gould. The feature was rejected the same year that TRACY was accepted.


Chester Gould created DICK TRACY. Yeah, yeah, everyone knows that.

But, before that -- before TRACY -- Mr. Gould persisted, enduring rejection after rejection, for a decade, before he hit on what was then called PLAINCLOTHES TRACY.

Mr. Gould took a cartoon correspondence course when he was a teenager. He began submitting cartoons for possible syndication beginning in 1931, while in college.

He did get a job at Hearst's Chicago Tribune a year after graduating from Northwestern, in 1924, and he cranked out some early efforts, syndicated by Hearst's King Features. The efforts were "uninspired" (to quote Gould himself) with titles like FILUM FABLES (a spoof on the movies) and RADIO CATS. They did not last long.

Why is it some people are driven? Gould was working at the paper, making $100 a week by 1928. He had been married for two years by then. Not a bad living at all! But he was constantly putting new comic strip ideas in front of Hearst: strips with kids, strips with girls, sports strips, even a science strip.

Here are some of his 1920s rejected comic strips.

Above: like most of these strips, this domestic drama featuring a young girl names Sal, has no name. The debt to fellow-Chicago cartoonist Harold Gray is apparent in its layout and subject matter.


The above strip, drawn in a bigfoot style and starring a boastful fellow named Buzzy is static and wordy.

There's a lot o action in this rejected submission which stars a Mister Larkin and his man servant and glaring racial stereotype Halitosis.



Above is a non-fiction strip titled "The World's Notebook."


Why Gould persisted, he only knows. He was comfortable, but he wanted more.

Talent is cheap. Persistence is everything. Gould had talent -- talent enough to be making $100 a week. His persistence for a breakthrough concept paid off.

Mr. Gould would go on to win awards, including the coveted Reuben Award (twice!). The strip, under the creative team of Mike Curtis and Joe Staton, will had its 72nd anniversary this past October 4th.

These early strips have, so far as I know, only been reproduced once: in the program book for the 1978 "Dick Tracy: The Art of Chester Gould" exhibit, curated by Bill Crouch, Jr., at the old Museum of Cartoon Art in Port Chester, NY.

My thanks to Charles Green for his "Biographical Sketch" of Gould from that book, from which these samples are scanned.




Related:
DICK TRACY at GoComics.com
200 Characters from Dick Tracy 1931-1977
CIGARETTE SADIE by Chester Gould
DICK TRACY Cards
DICK TRACY Museum

-- The above is an edited version of a blog entry from March 30, 2011. Happy belated birthday to Mr. Gould,  who would have been 113 years old on November 20th.

Adrian Tomine Interview

GQ Magazine scribe Andy Morris interviews illustrator/cartoonist Adrian Tomine. A lot of the interview is asking him what he thinks about other illustrators, magazines, etc. Here's Adrian on New York City for tourists:

Question: What's the one thing anyone visiting New York should do that's not on the tourist trail? 

Adrian Tomine: Come to Brooklyn. I know a lot of tourists are intimidated by the idea of leaving Manhattan, but I think it's a really incomplete New York experience if you just stay around your midtown hotel. Even if you only have an afternoon to spare, come check out Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Heights promenade, the flea markets. Grab a meal at Frankies 457, Prime Meats, El Almacen, Nicky's Vietnamese Sandwiches, or any random pizza place. If nothing else, go to Bagel Hole and buy a dozen of the best bagels in the world.

Signe Wilkinson Mugged

What happens when a cartoonist is mugged? The cartoonist draws a cartoon about it.

Signe Wilkinson, editorial cartoonist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and a syndicated comic strip creator, was mugged in her Philly neighborhood on Sunday night. She was unharmed.

She writes:

Held up at gunpoint on Sunday evening AT 7 PM in my nice, safe neighborhood, the little perp made off with my 'purse' which was a canvas bag filled with pens, paper, and sketches for my comic strip, "Family Tree". It put my schedule back but warmed my heart that I've given him the tools that could change his life. Of course, learning to use the pens takes longer than learning to shoot a gun.

Mark Anderson: 2013 OSU Festival of Cartoon Art

Run, do not walk, to Mark Anderson's blog for a rundown of the OSU 2013 Festival of Cartoon Art.

Mark gives on-the-scene reactions to the presentations and who he met and what went on during this tri-yearly event. (The next one is in 2016.)

This Festival was historic since it was not only a bunch of great seminars and events about cartooning -- but also the grand opening of Sullivant Hall, The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.

Related: The OSU Cartoon Library has a new YouTube channel. First up: 44 seconds of raw video, just "minutes before the Billy Ireland a Cartoon Library & Museum grand opening ribbon cutting ceremony."

TINTIN Book Resonates Today's Politics

Dhaka Tribune writer Muhammed Eusha reviews THE BROKEN EAR, a Tintin book from 1937 -- and notes how

this fascinating comic is extraordinarily gripping, and it progresses with such celerity that it is clearly not a book meant only for children.

His point is how powerfully the plot resonates today with Iraq and, now, with Iran.

This extraordinary comic book, written and drawn over 70 years ago, reveals that the vile games of war played to decide who wins the rights over the oil fields are nothing new. The trend unfortunately continues today and the last casualty was Iraq. 

Alan Greenspan, in his memoir, has acknowledged solemnly that even though it is “politically inconvenient,” it is an open secret that the sanguinary war was fought for oil. General John Abizaid, an Iraq war veteran, showed a nonchalant audacity by saying that it was “of course for oil.”

A fascinating review -- and one that will make you scurry to go and read (or reread) THE BROKEN EAR.

Video: GOLGO 13 Marks 45th Anniversary

The action manga GOLGO 13, created by Takao Salto, is named after its lead character: an assassin.

The series was created in 1968, sold over 200 million copies, and has been adapted into four feature films (two live-action and two animated), a TV series, and five video games. It is the longest running continuously published manga series.

From Kyodo News, here is a celebration of GOLGO 13 with, I think, Mr. Salto and others. It's in Japanese, so I have to guess at some of this.

And just look at the wall of GOLGO 13 albums. Wow!



GOLGO 13 Wikipedia page here.

Video: Editorial Cartoonist "Hugh Haynie: The Art of Opinion" Gallery Show

Louisville, KY: The editorial cartoonist Hugh Haynie is honored with a gallery show at the Frazier History Museum. Here's WLKY News with a report:

BBC News Video: British Editorial Cartoon History, Aberdeen Gallery Show and Steve Bell Interview