WaPo runs same Summer Art section two weeks in a row

I'm noting this because of the illustrations by Chalzea Xu, which are lovely, although she's not a cartoonist. 

 You can see that the stories changed slightly but the illustrations didn't.

Also Hannah Good, who is, illustrated a Pride story.

Those darn WaPo comics and cartoonists

 

Reader critiques: The ‘Doonesbury’ editors reveal Garry Trudeau’s epic prank

Washington Post May 24 2025: A13

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/05/23/unfunny-comics-doonesbury-qr-code-prickly-city/

A Dagwood of cartoon beefs

As I’ve previously proffered, there seems to be some form of comic collaboration occurring on the pages of The Post. On May 8, four strips featured takeout food, and two of them specifically mentioned pizza. Granted, Dagwood in “Blondie” is obsessed with eating the most unhealthy, gargantuan sandwiches almost every day. How does he stay so slim?

Eric Greene, Annapolis

The coldest of cuts

Wait. Was it a joke within a joke?

I scanned the QR code embedded in the May 18 “Doonesbury” that was supposed to take me to a list of MAGA’s banned words. Imagine my dismay when I got a dreaded 404 error message saying the site had “disappeared.” That message suggests that the site once existed and Garry Trudeau didn’t make the whole thing up. So how scary is that? Should we be worried Trudeau might meet that same fate? Should we worry that he might be renditioned to some black-hole prison somewhere? How worried should we be about Stephen Colbert, Dana Milbank and others who use their words and wit to skewer President Donald Trump and his minions? How worried should I be if The Post publishes this note? What a sorry state we’re in!

Janet Keefer, Pittsboro, North Carolina

Note from the prankster “Doonesbury” editors: The 404 error page is intentional! “The banned word list is banned!”

Slathered with blather

“WuMo” MustGo! It’s not funny or clever, as hard as Mikael Wulff and Anders Morgenthaler try. You’re wasting The Post’s (and readers’) money on them. I don’t have a replacement to suggest, but there must be other cartoon creators that are worth reading.

Lewis Gollub, Bethesda

Fresher greens

I request that you remove “Heart of the City” from your comics lineup. The characters are confusing. The content is unintelligible. It’s a waste of valuable space when there are probably hundreds of aspiring cartoonists who are more creative.

Pam Williams, Spokane

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Extra nopales

In her May 17 Free for All letter, “It’s unfunny because it’s true,” Anne Schwartz suggested that The Post consider eliminating “Prickly City.” It is the best political cartoon in the paper. Scott Stantis has stayed neutral, using his strip to point out inconsistencies and problems in the Biden administration and now highlighting illegal actions taken by the Trump administration. Comic strips are not necessarily funny. “Prickly City” rightly provides a warning to citizens to pay attention to what’s happening in this country. If anything, please move this strip to Page A2.

Janet Burt, Fairfax

Hold the knuckle

The “Beetle Bailey” cartoon glorifies bullying and physical abuse; The Post needs to eliminate it from the comics pages. Multiple members of my family have served in the U.S. military, and I find the cartoon’s depictions of military service offensive.

Catherine Nellist, Rockville

---

 

 

(Edith Pritchett/The Washington Post)

Pass the Pepto

I always appreciate the concisely rendered messages of Joe Heller’s and Clay Bennett’s editorial cartoons. And I’m always laughing at my favorite comics: “Prickly City,” “Non Sequitur,” “Baby Blues,” “Lio,” “Pickles” and “Red and Rover,” and saving my favorite, “Pearls Before Swine,” to read last. But I am also looking at the half-page dedicated to Edith Pritchett’s cartoons. Please stop squandering precious space and subscribers’ money (both of which are at grave risk now) on the Pritchett void.

Jane Margaret Dow, Arlington

Lost and profound

I am not easily moved to tears, but Harry Bliss’s May 4 Book World article, “Loving my dog Penny meant digging her grave,” sure did the trick. My husband, Eduardo, and I share our lives with our two amazing Pomeranians, Dolce and Gabbana, who will be 10 this month. I cannot fathom the day either of them leaves us. However, as with many other important issues you touch on in marriage, this has been discussed, albeit with difficulty.

Even though his piece was hard to read, we fully agree with Bliss that the generosity and love our dogs give us unconditionally, at all times, is profound, “and profound things need to be written about.” We’ve discovered that we often find our humanity by interacting with these soulful creatures. No matter how many more years Dolce and Gabbana have left to grace us with their company, we can’t be thankful enough.

Carlos Navarro, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Is Ann Telnaes making far more money now than she did at WaPo?

by Mike Rhode

(Corrected 5/9 with the notice that she still has a free tier)

I don't know, I haven't asked her. But while the Post continues to claim her, insofar as the Pulitzers are concerned (with full page ads run at least for 2 days), she may be far better off without them. Here's her initial newsletter about quitting the paper over a squashed cartoon, and there's plenty more coverage spread throughout this blog.

In her Substack newsletter about winning the award, she wrote, "Due to you all, my Substack Open Windows has reached 100,000 subscribers!!" I don't believe she has a free tier anymore, just She still has a free tier, but if everyone paid for a subscription at $80/year or $8/month she would gross perhaps $8,000,000 to a maximum of $9,600,000.

Substack fees are described on their website.

From Substack: 10% of each transaction

From Stripe: Credit cards

A credit card fee (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction fee) and a Billing fee for recurring subscriptions (0.7% for recurring payments as of July 2024).

Their example shows the bite at about 20% on a $5 dollar payment.

If we use that back of the envelope, Ann might be netting $6,400,000 before taxes.* I find this stunningly hard to believe, but I hope it's true. A dish best served cold after all...

*I'm not an accountant or businessman so feel free to correct my thinking. 5/9: Thanks to Wim Lockefeer for pointing out she still has a free tier; my paid subscription version wouldn't show that to me.

Comic strip illustrates WaPo real estate section today

 I don't usually pay attention to the real estate section, having committed myself to a small house over 30 years ago, but I paged through today's Spring Home Buying Guide, and much to my surprise, found a cartoonist.

Offer high? Offer low? What’s a buyer to do? [in print as Offer high or low? Strategies vary]

By Tom Peterson

Washington Post April 13 2025: EZ 18-19

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/04/12/offer-high-offer-low-whats-buyer-do/

What we care about though are the illustrations by Jui Talukder that form a comic strip. (and bravo to the Post for actually printing them in color for a change).

 

 

That darn Edith Pritchett

Letters to the Editor

Readers critique The Post: A painfully unfunny cartoon

Let's not be mean-spirited and hurtful.

An illegitimate joke

Barbara Wilson, Bethesda

April 5, 2025: A13

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/04/04/kermit-puppeteer-navratilova-23andme-deportation/

Well, Edith Pritchett has done it again. Her March 29 editorial cartoon, "Your 23andMe results are here," was mean-spirited and hurtful. We all know people who have faced some of the very situations she makes fun of, and I can imagine how they might feel if they saw this cartoon.

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Edith Pritchett is back in WaPo

Edith Pritchett returned to the print pages of the Washington Post today with a cartoon about 23andMe's bankruptcy.

I apologize for my mistaken assumption that she'd been let go when the Post's editorial page editor resigned. Hopefully she was just enjoying 2-week vacation. ComicsDC regrets the error and will be retracting, or rather correcting, our original post.

Comic strips turning political in WaPo print edition

The Post may have lost (aka gotten rid of) most of its political cartoonists, but the daily strips are starting to make up for that.

Wiley Miller's Non Sequitur mocked Doge and Musk this week:

 

Scott Stantis' Prickly City has often been more political than most other strips. This week, both strips could have been political cartoons instead:

 

Barney and Clyde got there several times last week, as they have been doing since January:

Nick Sousanis' graphic novel page featured in WaPo newsletter

By Philip Bump https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=596c1be2ade4e24119c3d7be&s=67cc5b7dbc8c802d91a34e42&utm_campaign=wp_bump SNIP I will leave you this week with this beautiful, complicated illustration of how stars are formed. (Nick Sousanis) I will admit that I am too bleary-eyed and headachy to really understand what it shows, but it is pretty, and sometimes that is good enough. thanks to comics scholar Barbara Postema for noticing this was by our friend Nick.

That darn Michael Ramirez

Pumping irony [ Michael Ramirez letters]

Katherine Murphy and Robert J. McManus

Washington Post March 8 2025: A15

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/07/opinions-two-pillars-readers-respond/

Was Michael Ramirez's Feb. 25 editorial cartoon, "The weight is over," commissioned by the Trump administration? The cartoon used a mean stereotype to depict the government as getting fat on taxpayers' money. No, federal employees work hard to grant Americans security.

This cartoon enrages me because two friends unjustly lost their jobs. It enrages me because my friend who works at the Environmental Protection Agency had to drive into the office on a vacation day to email her five points demanded by Elon Musk. It enrages me because my sister's job at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which she always loved, has turned morose because of the siege mentality among federal workers. It enrages me because Ramirez mirrored the big lie about government that got Donald Trump elected and that is killing our democracy. Musk is not a trainer exercising the government to be healthier. He is an executioner, slashing agencies and cutting jobs with blind swipes of his big red chainsaw.

Katherine Murphy, Falls Church

Michael Ramirez is a talented artist who has won two Pulitzer Prizes for cartooning, and I greatly enjoy his painstakingly rendered artwork. It's his ideas that often fall short.

Take his Feb. 25 cartoon for example. Aside from the offices established by the Constitution, our "Government" is simply the sum of the departments, agencies and programs established by Congress and signed off on by a president — not something inflicted on a free people by outside forces. Are there programs we no longer wish to support? Are too many resources devoted to a given activity? Are there waste and fraud? By all means, focus on those and make adjustments accordingly, by legislative or administrative action. That's why we have congressional oversight and departmental inspectors general.

I have had some experience in government, including four years as a political appointee in a GOP administration, and I am confident I know more about the bureaucracy than Ramirez does. Whenever I hear someone complain without specifics that the government is "too big," my answer is a rhetorical question: "How big should a box be?"

Robert J. McManus, Bethesda

 

at the time, I posted this comment on the Post website, and my opinion hasn't changed.

How tone-deaf has the Post editorial page become to run this cartoon? I'm not in favor of censored cartoonists, but the Post's home readership of federal workers and contractors is suffering immensely during this phony pretense at government reform. 

 

I got one 'clarifying' and 8 'thoughtful' ratings in the WaPo's ridiculous new 'comment' system.

 

That darn Edith Pritchett

What's haute, what's naute [ Edith Pritchet letter

Jennifer Hull, Greenville, South Carolina

Washington Post Feb 15 2024: A13.

online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/14/rent-seeking-usaid-doge-musk-leonardo-da-vinci/

A gut punch. That's what I felt when I came upon Edith Pritchett's Feb. 3 cartoon, "The fashion philistine's guide to identifying haute couture." Many of the articles that led up to it were alarming, even frightening. I thank The Post for giving us the truth about the chaos unfolding in this country, but where was the courage in this cartoon choice?

WaPo published final Candorville comic strip this weekend

The strip has been cancelled by its syndicate due to Darrin Bell's legal troubles. The Washington Post newspaper dropped him immediately when they came to light, but slipped up on Sunday and published the last strip that was distributed weeks ago. They had replaced it on Sunday with Curtis (which runs weekdays as well) and with Six Chix on weekdays. DD Degg at the Daily Cartoonist has a good rundown of Bell's career today. I'm mailing my copy to the Billy Ireland library at Ohio State University.

Stories and cartoons continue on Ann Telnaes' quitting WaPo

The Daily Heller: Cartoonist Walks After WaPo Kills Bezos Satire

The Daily Heller January 7 2025  https://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/the-daily-heller-washington-post-editorial-cartoonist-walks-after-satire-of-bezos-is-killed/

My colleagues in print
The Boston Globe prints a collection of protest cartoons
Ann Telnaes
Open Windows Jan 10 2025 https://anntelnaes.substack.com/p/my-colleagues-in-print

My Ann Telnaes Cartoon!
The Washington Post cartoonist's severance package...
Jack Ohman's You Betcha!
Jan 10 2025 https://jackohman.substack.com/p/my-ann-telnaes-cartoon

All the President's Billionaires
Ruben Bolling
Jan 10 2025

https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2025/01/10

Alex Fine show at Dwightmess - opening night photos

I popped in briefly to say hello and check out the exhibit. We used to see his work regularly in the Washington Post Magazine, illustrating Gene Weingarten's column. Information on the show follows the pictures. This exhibit is mostly celebrity portraits. Here's Bruce Guthrie's photos.

 

Alex Fine

 

 And a Taylor Swift print for sale, but not on the wall. This was for an Economics journal based on the money generated by her Eras tour:

Hairhoppers & Showstoppers:
Portraits, Posters, and Editorial Art by Alex Fine

Bio: Alex Fine is a Baltimore-based illustrator with an extensive client list that includes TIME Magazine, Newsweek,  Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Wired, Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, Scholastic, Harper Collins, AT&T, Variety, Baltimore City Paper, and Politico. He is represented in North America and United Kingdom by SNYDER.

"My first art show in years and I’ll have a large collection of well coiffed portraits, band posters, and editorial art from years of magazine and newspaper work. Contact me or Dwightmess with any print requests and if you live in the DMV, hope to see you there!" ~Alex

Check out more of Alex's artwork !!--> @alexfineillos

Event Info:
Hairhoppers & Showstoppers:
Portraits, Posters, and Editorial Art by Alex Fine

Opening Reception:
Friday. January 10th. 7-9pm.

Location:
DWIGHTMESS
805 Silver Spring Ave, Silver Spring, MD 20910.