Actor and InterWebs celebrity Wil Wheaton informed fans today that "Blue Light Special," a story he wrote in 2006, has been adapted into an episode of the collaborative webcomic BlogJam. In the strip, Wheaton relates a story about the toy that "defined his childhood" — in this case, Star Wars action figures. Wheaton helped write…
Nova Scotia newspaper The Chronicle Herald has vowed to defend an April 18 editorial cartoon by award-winning cartoonist Bruce MacKinnon after police received a complaint that the cartoon could qualify as "hate literature." The cartoon (pictured here) depicted the wife of Qayyum Abdul Jamal, who was arrested in 2006 on terrorism-related charges that involved an…
Vincent T. Hamlin was born in 1900 and grew up during tumultuous times—he enlisted in the Army at age 17 and served in France during World War I. After returning home, he studied journalism and art at the University of Missouri, but was kicked out of art class because his teacher told him he was…
Born in 1947, Barbara Slate started out in greeting cards before moving to comics. In 1974, she met with a greeting card buyer from Bloomingdales and showed him 24 feminist greeting cards she had designed. Thus, the "Ms. Liz" line was born. Ms. Liz then became a comic strip in Cosmopolitan, and then an animated…
In the new massive two-volume set Willie & Joe: The War Years, Bill Mauldin’s World War II cartoons are given a deluxe treatment, from the Army-green canvas covers to the oversized printing of Mauldin’s voluminous output. The only thing publisher Fantagraphics couldn’t overcome in producing the book was the rough condition of much of Mauldin’s…
Cartoonist Ted Key, creator of the popular newspaper comic panel Hazel and the classic cartoon characters Mr. Peabody and Sherman, died today at 95. Born Theodore Keyser in 1912, Key created Hazel for the Saturday Evening Post in 1943. The panel shifted over to King Features Syndicate in 1969 after its creator acquired the rights…
Born in Elkhart, Indiana in 1955, Jerry Scott initially went into advertising. He got his start in comics by submitting gag strips to magazines in the mid-1970s—and sold one of his first ones to the Saturday Evening Post. In 1983, he was asked to take over the Nancy comic strip, which he worked on for…
This year marks a resurgence of interest in the late Bill Mauldin, who started out as a soldier-cartoonist in the U.S. Army during World War II. This revival is thanks largely to Todd DePastino, author of the new Mauldin biography A Life Up Front and editor of Fantagraphics’ new collection of Mauldin’s cartoons, Willie &…
Born in the Bronx, NY in 1930, Howie Schneider is best remembered for Eek & Meek, the comic about two mice (later two men) he created for the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA) in 1965 and ran for 35 years. Schneider also published several cartoon books, wrote a daily cartoon called Unschucked for the Provincetown Banner…
Over at Comixology, Shaenon K. Garrity offers up her thanks to Dark Horse Comics for publishing Little Lulu reprint volumes en masse, and provides a great analysis of what made the comic strip work. Simply put, I’m quite certain this is a quality piece of commentary because it actually made me want to hunt down…
I had all but given up on newspaper comic strips in recent years. My favorites (Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, Peanuts, etc.) had disappeared and every new innovative comic appeared online, not in the funny pages. Then a friend pointed me to Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson of the Washington Post. Like many…
In today’s brand-new full-color episode of Simone & Ajax: The Case of the Maltese Duck, by Andrew Pepoy, our heroes find themselves in la belle France, hot on the heels of the thief or thieves who stole the legendary Maltese Duck. What tortures will they face on their quest to find it? And what’s with…
