Best of DC 2008 - Richard Thompson is Best Cartoonist!

From Washington City Paper's 2008 Best of DC (April 18, 2008)...

Best Cartoonist - Richard Thompson!

...and the crowd goes wild!

Mark Athitakis has a nice writeup of Richard's virtues. The WCP also selected this site as...

Best (Comic) Art Blogger - ComicsDC

Thank you very much! That's very kind, especially after I beat up on the WCP so much this past year about their comics losses. I now feel a very teensy bit guilty. Teensy though.


Both of these were spotted by my friend and houseguest Nick "The System of Comics" Nguyen.

Eisner's PS Magazine scanned and online at VCU Library

Virginia Commonwealth University of Richmond has scanned and posted 162 issues of PS Magazine, Will Eisner's military training comic book.

Bob Andelman will be interviewing the librarian in charge of the project Cindy Jackson, as well as the author of the upcoming book, Will Eisner & PS Magazine, Paul Fitzgerald, on FRIDAY, APRIL 18 at 1 p.m. The URL is: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/mrmedia/2008/04/18/Cindy-Jackson-and-Paul-Fitzgerald-WILL-EISNER-PS-MAGAZINE-VCU-librarian-and-author-Mr-Media and you can participate in a simultaneous web chat or call in and ask the experts your own questions at (646) 595-3135.

VCU's library is also the home of Tom Inge's comic book collection.

April 25: Tony Rubino on Washington Post chat

Join Washington Post Comics page editor Suzanne Tobin on Friday, April 18 at 1 p.m. ET for a discussion with "Daddy's Home" creator Tony Rubino at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/04/15/DI2008041502007.html.

Comic by D.C. natives launches at NYC Comic Con

Arthur Delaney writes in "myself and three other D.C. natives are launching our DIY comic NANOMAN: THE POST - HUMAN PROMETHEUS at the NYC Comic Con this weekend. What we've got right now is a 52 page "beta" book. Check out our website: www.NewAmericanGraphicNovels.com."

Best of luck with your new comic book, Arthur, and we look forward to hearing more about it.

Ex-Express reporter Rosenberg on NYC comic events

Scott Rosenberg's got a couple of articles in his new paper AM NY - see his Ten-Cent Plague review at "Curse of the comics," by Scott A. Rosenberg, April 15, 2008 and "An iFanboy guide to Surviving Comic Con," by Scott A. Rosenberg, April 15, 2008.

Oliphant exhibit coverage from television

There's a video here too -- "Political Cartoonist, Presidential Candidates Appear In D.C.," NBC 4 April 15, 2008.

The exhibit is excellent by the way. More details to follow.

Wuerker cartoon offends Californians

See "Perspectives on Heston and heaven," Readers' Representative Journal (April 15 2008) in which the article starts, "Bob Smith of Glendale calls him Chuck Heston -- he knew the man for 20 years and spent time with him at the L.A. Tennis Club -- and was horrified to see the Matt Wuerker cartoon in The Times' opinion pages on April 8."

Matt, Matt, Matt...

Washington writer reviews new gag comics book on Nazis

See "Is It Kosher To Laugh At Swastikas?," by Menachem Wecker, Jewish Press April 9, 2008 for his review of We Have Ways of Making You Laugh: 120 Funny Swastika Cartoons by Sam Gross.

Oliphant exhibit opening photos

Here's a link - at some point, I'll put the best up here with labels.

April Previews, or What does Mike order?

I don't know if anybody cares, but I always appreciated it when Bart Beaty did his satirical lists, Send Info, from Previews, and then Rodrigo Baeza does his serious ones. So here's what I'm ordering this month.

Herbie Archive, p. 31

Kyle Baker's Nat Turner sc

Joe Kubert biography - Man of Rock, p. 287

Matt Madden and Jessica Able's Drawing Words and Pictures, p. 291

Donald Duck Family - Dan Jippes

Comics Comics 4, p. 328

Gary Giani on Prince Valiant, p. 398

Dark Knight novel (I've got a childhood fondness for superhero novels, for no good reason),

Superheroes! Capes and Crusaders in Comics and Films book by Roz Kaveney, p. 401

Neil Gaiman's The Dangerous Alphabet, p. 405

If I missed anything, let me know!

Oliphant Exhibit in Washington, DC press release

Oliphant Exhibit in Washington, DC

Kansas City, MO (04/08/2008) Editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant’s exhibit, "Leadership: Oliphant Cartoons and Sculpture from the Bush Years" will be on display April 15 through July 15, 2008 at the Stanford University Washington Center Art Gallery in Washington, DC.

The exhibit is based on a collection of Oliphant’s work in his recently released book, "Leadership: Political Cartoons – The Bush Years" from Andrews McMeel Publishing.

A review of the book on Comicsreporter.com called Oliphant a "...legend who still rushes at his targets knives out, no apologies. He also draws extremely well. After reading so many newspaper cartoons where it seems the reader is expected to compensate for odd stylistic choices and a lack of craft, reading a bunch of Oliphant is like moving mid-bite from vanilla wafers to rum-laced chocolate cheesecake. He's one of the few cartoonists in that field who can communicate -- and punish -- with the quality of his art alone."

The Stanford University Washington Center Art Gallery is located in the Sant Building at 2655 Connecticut Ave., NW in Washington, DC. For questions about the museum or the exhibit, please call 202.332.6235.

For more of Pat Oliphant’s work, visit: http://www.gocomics.com.

Jeff Kinney podcast

Continuing our coverage of the ex-University of Maryland cartoonist, the Free Library of Philadelphia has a downloadable mp3 of his talk to them from April 12th.

Persepolis editors from Alexandria

See "Anjali Singh: Rooting for good books—graphic or prose," by Calvin Reid, Publishers Weekly, 4/14/2008, and she's got a couple of other comics titles that she acquired too.

Animator Lisa Henson profiled in Sunday's Post

On the kid's page - "Familiar Name, Different View," Washington Post Sunday, April 13, 2008; Page M16. The article by Brenna Maloney starts, "It took two years of huffing and puffing, but Lisa Henson, one of the producers of the animated comedy "Unstable Fables: 3 Pigs and a Baby," finally blew the house down."

WashingtonTimes still polling about comics

April 15: Bethesda Writer's Center on Writing Comics

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose

This Feiffer cartoon dropped out of a book I was buying. I was amazed at its timeliness - he's still got it!




Keep reading...

A little further...


Actually, below is the real unmodified cartoon - from the New Republic of October 15, 1972. Sad, isn't it? You can make almost a one-for-one switch of wartime scandals.



But at least we've still got Jules Feiffer to kick around! And my apologies to him for the liberties I took with his cartoon to make a point that should be obvious. And I apologize to everyone for misspelling Guantanamo, but I'm even sorrier that the whole world is familiar with how to spell an obscure American naval base's name.

A little bit of New York(er) in DC

While waiting for the American Empire talk, I noticed this rack of New Yorker cartoon cards in Politics and Prose. Bob Mankoff has done an amazing job at making money for both cartoonists and the magazine, hasn't he?

Mike Konopacki at Politics and Prose

Labor cartoonist Mike Konopacki was at Politics and Prose this afternoon to discuss his new book A People's History of American Empire. Howard Zinn who wrote the original that this graphic history (Konopacki kept stumbling over what to call it since it isn't a novel) was based on called in sick, disappointing some in the crowd, but not me, as Konopacki talked comics for 45 minutes instead.


Since the early 1970s, Konopacki and his partner Gary Huck have been doing labor editorial cartoons, with a detour into doing a comic book on the World Bank for a labor union in the 1990s. This was Konopacki's first longform work though. You can order a cd of the talk from Politics and Prose. He worked with pen and ink, and tracing paper and then scanned in the art and reworked it in Photoshop. To add verisimilitude, he used many photographs including famous AP ones like the girl burned by napalm in Vietnam.

Konopacki did a promo video for the book too which can be seen on youtube -
A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn

And here's some more shots:

So, how do you find these new acquisitions?

Book sales, among other places.



This is three days worth of book-sale hauls, from two sales. Most of it is going to Michigan State University's Comic Art collection. The nice thing about being in DC is the international culture - almost 100 of these books are manga in Japanese, and there's even a Jacques Tardi album that MSU doesn't have yet.

And sometimes your family provides, like this nifty light-up Superman bust. Oddly enough, my wife wouldn't let me keep the whole cake.