Matt Wuerker defends his Cheney record

Here's a letter by him on Poynter.

Beetle Bailey found by DC bloggers on the road

A couple of my friends, well one friend and his girlfriend whom I haven't actually met, drove across country and discovered Beetle Bailey on the road. One senses the possibility of an epic poem here.

Today's Beeler Cartoon hearkens back to x-ray specs ads

 Nate Beeler's Washington Examiner cartoon today hearkens back to the golden days of comic book advertisements, as he shows TSA agents using those x-ray spectacles that would purportedly see through women's clothing.  Ahh, if only everything sold in comic books worked as advertised...

Click the link to see the cartoon - Full-Body Scanning and the TSA

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs DVD

Jen Chaney gives the animated Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs DVD a rave review in today's print Express. I saw this movie recently and thoroughly enjoyed it.

This also appeared in the following day's Washington Post, and online.

Textile Museum's cosplay

Arion Berger at the Express notes in today's print edition that the Textile Museum has a program on 'Harajuku Japanese Street" which probably has some relevance to cosplay.  The event is January 10, 2-4 pm, $20 for non-members.

Dirda on science fiction

Michael Dirda, a Post book critic, isn't afraid to get his mind dirty with genre fiction. He's reviewed longform comics for the Post. Here, courtesy of a link from Politics and Prose, are excerpts from an interview with Locus magazine that focuses on science fiction..

Richmond, VA, February 5th: Jim Rugg and Chris Pitzer @ Velocity Comics

From: Colin S

Jim Rugg and Chris Pitzer hit the road to talk about their latest creation: AFRODISIAC.

http://www.conventionscene.com/2010/01/06/vanc-afrodisiac-tour/

This is a bit too far afield to me, but the book looks pretty amusing.

NPR's Weldon's graphic novel year in review

Glen goes back to the well ...

2009: The Graphic Novels That, Um ... Grabbed?
by Glen Weldon
National Public Radio's Monkey See blog January 6, 2010

OT: Help send Ted Rall to Afghanistan

Ted's an acquaintance of mine, thru SPX and the like, and he's asking to raise $25,000 to go back to Afghanistan to do more cartoon journalism. One can pledge funds here -
Comix Journalism: Send Ted Rall Back to Afghanistan to Get the Real Story or click the Widget below. I just pledged $50 because I think cartoon journalism like Ted and Joe Sacco do is an important emerging media (or genre if you'd like).

Catching up with Cavna

Michael's got a piece on the Post's new Sunday Funnies design. I agree with him that Doonesbury reads horizontally much better. This vertical thing may work fine for native Japanese readers* and people that read a LOT of manga, but for me it's distracting.

Another new post is on animation and the Academy Awards and he's got quotes from the makers of the movies that should be of interest. Of these, I've seen Up, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Ponyo, all of which I thought were excellent. Coraline rests on the DVD pile, but I've already read the book and listened to the audiobook so I wasn't in as much of a hurry as I normally would be.

I'm glad that Avatar is not being considered an animated film. I think a line is going to have to be drawn between movies that are intended to look animated and movies that are not, no matter how much computer-animation is backing both types.



*Feel free to insert any other cultural group of your choice.

Post's Blake Gopnik on Daumier

I missed this one due to travelling, but I'm catching up. I don't recall this painting, but one of the best exhibits I've ever seen was on Daumier at the Phillips. Daumier's sculptures of the French Assembly, caricatures in bronze, are in the National Gallery of Art, displayed in the sculpture halls.

 

Setting the stage for the contemplative connoisseur [online as Rediscovering Honoré Daumier in the intimate Phillips Collection]
By Blake Gopnik

Washington Post , December 31, 2009; C10

OT: National Geographic's cover history

My wife helped out with the research for this article and is thanked at the end. Some cartoonists have worked for Geographic over the years, but I don't think they have any there. The children's magazine still has some freelancing for it.
 

Fauquier designer changed National Geographic's look
 

From February 1910 until August 1979, that most collectible of magazines, National Geographic, was recognizable by its yellow cover and its border of clustered oak and laurel leaves. Howard E. Paine of Delaplane removed them gradually, sometimes one at a time. He replaced the border with color...

 

Update - Richard Thompson wrote in to tell me that Paine hired him for jobs and is quite a cartoon fan.

Adult Swim music featured in Express

Animated Mixtapes: Adult Swim
By Christopher Porter

Express (January 5, 2010): 21

http://www.expressnightout.com/content/2010/01/adult-swim-mixtapes.php

Porter links to some free downloads.

Post website reports Graphic.ly e-comics has raised a million bucks

Graphic.ly Raises $1.2M For Comic Publishing
Daniel Brusilovsky
TechCrunch.com
Monday, January 4, 2010

Looks a little too optimistic to me, but what do I know.

Real World DC's cartoonist's taste questioned

Amanda Hess has got a couple of stories on The Real World: DC's cartoonist, Andrew at her Washington City Paper blog, The Sexist. The first is an overview "Rape Cartoons by the Real World D.C.’s Andrew Woods" of his work at the Rocky Mountain Collegian while the second is "Sexist Comments of the Week: Real World Rape Cartoons Edition" on the preceeding week's story.

I bow to Amanda's actual reporting as opposed to the "Eh, he was mentioned in this article as a cartoonist" approach that I took. She even tracks him down to being an intern at the Washington Times and getting an editorial cartoon published.

Tom Grindberg grew up in DC suburb

Tom Grindberg grew up in a DC suburb but he doesn't say which one in this interview:

 

Best, Daniel.  2009.

LOOKING BACK WITH TOM GRINDBERG

20th Century Danny Boy blog December 22, 2009

http://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2009/12/looking-back-with-tom-grindberg.html

 

Dragon Ball videogame review in today's Examiner

'Dragon Ball: Revenge of King Piccolo' for Wii gets 2 out of 5 stars from Greg Prince in today's Washington Examiner.

Post magazine photo puzzle is comic books

The Second Glance puzzle by Randy Mays is pictures of comic books from David Kennedy.

 

Also, the cartoon journalism of Our Town continues.

Danny Hellman's Typhon anthology deeply reduced

This isn't Washington news, but I'm posting the fact that Danny Hellman's Typhon anthology has a deeply-reduced sale price because it was a book I meant to review, and Danny sent me a pdf, but I still haven't gotten to it. So, out of guilt, I'll tell you all you can get the book for $14.95, $10 off the original price. I just ordered a paper copy that I hope to have more luck in reading than the e-version. I'm old school and much prefer paper.

For a DC connection, Danny's cartoons used to appear regularly in the Post when the Source section existed, and he was often in the City Paper before they were bought out by a company that rapidly went bankrupt.

Post shoehorns Sudoku puzzle into Sunday comics section

Note to Comics readers: Post debuts Sudoku Monster puzzles by David Bodycombe
Washington Post Sunday, January 3, 2010

Make of it what you will - And while all your favorites are still in the section, you'll notice some have swapped places for greater readability. Among others, "Mutts," with its Zenlike simplicity, cedes its front-page space to the wordier "Sherman's Lagoon."