Berryman award named for DC cartoonists goes to Breen

Clifford Berryman, the dean of Washington cartoonists, and his son and fellow cartoonist Jim, are largely forgotten, but there's still a national cartooning award named for them and it's just been award to Steve Breen. See "National award for U-T's Breen," By Michael Stetz, San Diego UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER, December 6, 2007.

Bits from the DC papers

In the Onion, we have Rabin, Nathan. 2007. Score one more: Futurama is back, in disappointingly familar form. Onion (December 6).
online at http://www.avclub.com/content/dvds/futurama_benders_big_score

Dale Rawlings and I have letters on Rob Ullman's dismissal in Savages!
Washington City Paper (December 7, 2007): 11

and finally in the Express, there's a wire story on the resurrection of the stop-motion puppets from Rankin-Bass's animation Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, and their triumphant US tour.

December 8: 'Princess of Manga' Rumiko Takahashi films

The DC Anime Club is showing a marathon of Takahashi films including Maison Ikkoku, Ranma 1/2 and InuYasha (the manga of which I'm reading now). Martin Luther King Jr. Library on 9th and G Sts, NW, noon to 5 pm, free.

OT: Nick Thorkelson & Harvey Pekar in NYC

Nick (who did the cover to the Interplanetary J... below) wrote in to say:

CUNY is hosting a promotion Monday night for SDS: A Graphic History, which has a story by me in it, that I will be presenting. Harvey Pekar, who wrote most of the book, will be there too. Here's the link, if you know anybody that might be interested: http://www.gothamcenter.org/forums/current.shtml (and if you want to see the comic I wrote for this, it's online at Http://nickthorkelson.com/hazardfinal01.htm ).

Wash Post cancels Tom the Dancing Bug UPDATED

Ruben Bolling just sent me this press release:

PRESS RELEASE
December 5, 2007

The Washington Post to cancel “Tom the Dancing Bug”

The Washington Post’s Weekend section has decided to drop Ruben Bolling’s weekly comic strip “Tom the Dancing Bug,” as of the end of the year. The Weekend section has a new editor, Tracy Grant, who said that it was canceled for space reasons, and that her staffers did not object.

Ruben Bolling is extremely disappointed: “I feel that the strip has a special relationship with the readers in DC. The Washington Post is one of my earliest clients, and when they took on the comic strip, no other daily newspaper was running it. They took a big chance on me, and I hope that it continues to pay off. I get tons of emails from Post readers, and at my last appearance at a DC bookstore, there was a line out the door.”

However, Bolling said that the decision to drop the strip is not irreversible. “Tracy Grant did say that the cancelation is not written in stone. If she comes to feel that it was a mistake, she would reinstate the comic.”

“Tom the Dancing Bug” is distributed by Universal Press Syndicate to about 50 newspapers, and also appears in Salon.com. See www.tomthedancingbug.com

---------

Boy, how much more can the Post do for (rather to) us this week? Sunday they announced a shrunken Sunday comics section with smaller strips and Wizard of Id dropped, and now this. It makes me reconsider being a subscriber, I must say.

Ms. Grant's contact information should be grantt@washpost.com. Again, the Post is attempting to shrink to be interesting, and it's not working - literally half the reason I bother looking at the Weekend section is Tom the Dancing Bug (the other half is the museum review page since they dropped the stamps column years ago. Actually I read Eve Zibart's restaurant reviews too - and I really stopped paying attention to Weekend a year ago when they dropped their independent movie reviews in favor of rehashed Style section ones).

I was talking about this last night - why do newspapers offer their readers less and less and then act surprised when they lose readers? Why not offer more? Say an annual compilation of Cul de Sac Sunday strips in a collectible booklet? Or a full-spread cartoon map of DC? Make the comics section into a collectible comic book (and not reprint 1960s Spider-Man stories like the Examiner and Marvel did)? Or make it bigger and pay a cartoonist to stretch his imagination? Put some manga in the comics - something only available in the Post? Do something that people would like to have and keep and buy the paper for?

Danny Hellman illo from Sunday's Post's Source

He's got a nice, clear style.

INTERPLANETARY JOURNAL OF COMIC ART: A Festschrift in Honor of John Lent repost

INTERPLANETARY JOURNAL OF COMIC ART: A Festschrift in Honor of John Lent is now available.

Editor's note - The first issue of the new InterPlanetary Journal of Comic Art (or IPJOCA as we call it around the virtual office) is now available. We are proud to invite you to the 43rd indispensable academic organ published by JOHN LENT MULTIMEDIA ENTERPRISES. All are personally hand-edited by our founder and publisher JOHN LENT, and we remind you that any suggestions of forced labor or involuntary servitude were completely dismissed in Temple University grad students v. JOHN LENT FAMILY CONGLOMERATE. This issue is slightly late, and we apologize for that. Editor JOHN LENT was traveling widely with stops on Pluto, Venus, Charon, Deimos and Phobos, Antarctica, Cyprus, Monte Carlo and the French Riviera, interviewing aging cartoonists and presenting learned discourses on the history of comic art. LENT's presentation on Pluto, "Which came first? The planet or the dog?" was particularly well-received and will appear in a future issue of IPJOCA. IPJOCA is a proud successor to the Colonial Journal of Comic Art, the Union Journal of Comic Art, the Confederate Journal of Comic Art, and the Imperial Journal of Comic Art, as well as the continuing flagship International Journal of Comic Art.

Actually, IPJOCA is a work of satire and parody, published on the occasion of John's seventieth birthday in 2006, give or take a few months. Since 1960, John has published, taught, and lectured widely on comic art, and since 1999 has been the publisher and editor-in-chief of the academic International Journal of Comic Art. In March of this year, John served on the Pulitzer Prize Nominating Juries in Journalism. John has published over 70 books and 800 articles on comic art, mass communication and Asian studies.

John's colleagues in the comic world have come together to create a tribute book, and to present it to him on April 6th at the Popular Culture Association meeting in Boston. The fully-illustrated book features a front cover by cartoonist Nick Thorkelson, and a back cover by Ralph Steadman as well as 100 pages of witty articles.

To order your copy for $10, go to http://www.lulu.com/content/679026; to subscribe to the International Journal of Comic Art, go to
http://www.ijoca.com and follow the instructions.

Table of Contents

Lent Knows – cover by Nick Thorkelson

Seqart Scholarship across the United Planets: A Brief Survey - Josty Ketew (Randy Duncan)

ICAF Times – comic strip by Roger Sabin & C. Hill

"Domus inferna Sancti Guthlaci": A Rediscovery of the twelfth-century narrative of "The Saint and the Money Pit" - K. A. Laity

ICAF Round-table: 'The Contribution of John Lent' - Rogerius Sabinis

Give It Up For Lent! – cartoons by E.C. Lockett, from ideas by Sabin & Rhode

The Exegesis of John Lent's Exegesis: A Postmodest Explalicinalysis of John Lent's Comicological Scholarship - Dr. Solomon Davidoff

Cartooning on Venus: A Problematic Field - Michael Rhode

Cheroots of the Gods: Ancient Contact with Talking Animals from the Stars - Er'q Vondan Iken (Steve Thompson)

Letters - Fusami Ogi

From the X-JOCA Family Archives - K.A. Laity

Men's Comics are from Mars, Women's Comics are from Venus: A Visual Exploration - M.O.D.O.C.A. (Barbara Postema)

A Dozen True Facts about Fredric Wertham That I Will Only Reveal For John Lent - Bart Beaty

Japanese Comic Art History's Mystery Bearded Figure - Ronarudo Suchuwaato (Ron Stewart)

Battle of the Titans: The Great National Geographic - New Yorker Cartoon Rivalry - Cathy Hunter and Michael Rhode

Out of this World (…and back again…) – autobiographical comix by Craig Fischer

Animated Yoga - Cathy Hunter

News - Fantagraphics Books Searches for Saints - Ana Merino

Obituaries - Therian Blackenshort, Theban political cartoonist - Mark C. Rogers

Faded Star Column - Rad Signal by Weary'in Ellis -Michael Rhode

Book Reviews
Leonardo da Vinci, The da Vinci Codex - Trina Robbins

Purty Pitchers All In A Row: A Review of The Interplanetary Comic Art Bibliographies of JOHN LENT Comprehensive Companion Series - Dr. Solomon Davidoff

Martianorum Mangorum Universalis Historia - Marcus Titus Pellitterius (Marco Pellitteri)

Exhibition and Media Reviews
The McDuck Collection: World's Greatest Collection of Rarities, Duckburg Museum - Michael Rhode

Disney Planet Amusement Facility, the dwarf planet formerly known as Pluto, Sol system - Gene Kannenberg, Jr.

Corrections - Leonard Rifas

Anticipatory Errata - Charles Hatfield

Comic Art Bibliography - New Resources in the Field - Michael Rhode

So Who is JOHN LENT really? - Xu Ying

Contributors' Self-Serving Biographic Blurbs

The Serious Art of Laughter – back cover by Ralph Steadman

Cartoons in Hay-Adams Hotel's Off the Record bar

Last night I had dinner with Alan Gardner of the Daily Cartoonist blog, Post relationship cartoonist Nick Galifianakis, Politico cartoonist Matt Wuerker and, oh yeah, Richard Thompson. A good time was had by all, I think and Alan will be posting pictures on his blog (link to the right) at some point. But perhaps of interest to local readers is the cartoons hung in the Off the Record bar in the Hay-Adams hotel on 16th St, NW just off of Lafayette Square. Ed Vallaton's late-1960s caricatures were in a David Levine vein, and were the most numerous. I don't know anything about Vallaton, but the people were recognizable even 30 years later. It was a bit weird seeing a bunch of dead politicians and still recognizing them. Also on display were caricatures by Ron Coddington - these may have been slightly better drawn, albeit in the big-head manner, but I recognized less of them.

A few random pieces were scattered around - two of Richard's color cartoons, dedicated to Art Wood, and what appears to be some pages from Puck or Judge. But of the most interest are 15 color caricatures of presidential candidates and politicians that the bar has rented from Richard. There's John Edwards, Hilary Clinton, George Bush, Karl Rove, Barack Obama, and others, all framed next to each other in a 5 x 3 grid. Very cool. Again, watch Alan's blog.

In this picture from the bar's website, we're looking into the room from about where Richard's cartoons are. The ones directly ahead on either side of the fireplace are Coddington's and they're flanked by Vallaton's.

Gerald Scarfe interviewed; Matt Wuerker linked

The Politico's cartoonist Matt Wuerker pointed me to this last night in a bar. Riz Khan of Al-Jazeera based here in DC interviewed Gerald Scarfe in September. The 17-minute interview is really quite interesting. Check out Matt's cartoons as well - I apologize for not linking to him earlier, but I didn't realize he had a page on the Politico website. Matt appears on Al-Jazeera too, but I haven't found any of those links yet.

Thompson's back on track for Post domination

Richard's got an illo in Tuesday's health section of a racketball match - the first in a couple weeks, I think. So he's back up to appearing three times a week, although Cul De Sac is STILL not in the daily paper.

BTW, I had dinner with him - check the Daily Cartoonist blog.

One of those Benoit ads was in Tuesday's Post...

...at the bottom of the front page of the business section. It shows an elegant couple preparing to hand over the keys to a valet who's dressed as a race car driver.

Nick Anderson on front page of Post recently

I got a bit behind in my newspaper reading and missed the fact that Houston editorial cartoonist Nick Anderson appeared on the front page of the Post lately, and in fact, had more cartoons in the paper than Toles.

Of course that was because one of his animated editorial cartoons asked a question at the Republican debate and the Post repro'd a screen shot - see "Republicans Get Own Mixed Bag of Questions, Sans Snowman" By Jose Antonio Vargas, Washington Post Staff Writer, Thursday, November 29, 2007; A06.

Onion recommends Cul de Sac

See "Strip-Off: Girls & Sports vs. Cul De Sac," posted by: Noel Murray on the Onion's blog December 3, 2007.

Go Richard!
Sling that ink!
Go for 100 papers!
So financially you'll be in the pink!

Shawn Belschwender also out at City Paper

December 30, 2005 City Paper.

The editor confirmed this in a comment under the Rob Ullman post. Shawn's been illustrating News of the Weird for about twenty years now - he was the George Washington University's Hatchet comic strip artist around 1987. I don't know if he does any other cartooning anymore.

Ted Benoit ads

This is late, but Capgemini has been having Ted Benoit art in their ads that run in the Post business section; they've also been running far larger in the NY Times biz section. I think there are 5 pieces of illustration alternating - a lumberjack, a moonscape, a racing scene... their website has a pdf press release about the ad campaign with one of the images embedded in it.

Manga for the foodies

Lisa Cherkasky, whose hand is seen most often in the Washington Post's Food section, has turned said hand to looking at manga when she takes a quick look at Kitchen Princess.

OT: Barry Blitt's Fantastic Four parody in NY Times

This is off-topic, but it's an amusing caricature of the self-declared presidential candidates.

Junot Diaz wants to be the Sub-Mariner

In "Imagining the Holidays," Washington Post Sunday, December 2, 2007; Page BW08, the Book World asked Junot Diaz, "IF YOU COULD SPEND A HOLIDAY WEEK AS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER , WHICH WOULD YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?"

He picked Sub-Mariner, King of Atlantis, a Marvel Comics character. Click on the link to read why.

Post's Source section has list of best comics AND Danny Hellman

See "The A List: Titles That Earned the Top Grade From Our Reviewers This Year," Washington Post Sunday, December 2, 2007; Page N03.

Also, did I mention that Danny Hellman's illustrating the Source's advice column? He had a good one today which I think was the third he'd done. I think I mentioned this already.

Feiffer covers Blume

I noticed in Aladdin's Lamp bookstore, the children's bookstore in Arlington, that Jules Feiffer has done a cover for a Judy Blume book. So I got a shot of the standup and also one of the graphic novel shelf in the bookstore. There was some atypical stuff there including Boyd's Chester the Crab's Comix with Content and a couple of manga Shakespeare books which I bought.

I'm going to call this one a Secret History of Comics as I doubt that most Feiffer collectors know about it.