Tagged: strip

Tonight: Drinky The Crow!

Tonight: Drinky The Crow!

Tony Millionaire has made it to television.

The creator of Sock Monkey, Billy Hazelnuts and Uncle Gabby previously known as Scott Richardson has leased his Drinky Crow character to Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, which, evidently, is in need of more jokes about vomit and poop. Drinky the alcoholic crow appears in Maakies, Millionaire’s weekly strip syndicated to "what-to-do-this-weekend" papers all over the country.

The pilot goes up tonight and is available on the Adult Swim website. After that, Cartoon Network is going to think it over.

(Artwork copyright Tony Millionaire. All Rights Reserved.)

Flash gets real

Flash gets real

Gina Holden will be starring with Eric Johnson in the SciFi Channel’s new Flash Gordon series, debuting this August. No stranger to heroic fantasy projects, the Canadian actress previously appeared in Fantastic Four, The Butterfly Effect 2 and the upcoming Alien vs. Predator 2.

Based upon Alex Raymond’s classic newspaper comic strip, SciFi has already committed to a full 22 episode season. Jody Racicot (Night at the Museum) will play Dr. Hans Zarkov, and John Ralston (Earthstorm) will play the greatest villain of all time, Mongo’s Emperor Ming the Merciless. Anna van Hoft will play Ming’s daughter Aura, who has the hots for Flash and, therefore, doesn’t like Dale very much.

No word on who’s going to play Vultan, king of the original Hawkmen. Brian Blessed, who played the role in the 1980 motion picture, is currently filming Doctor Who.

Who’s your daddy, Dagwood?

Who’s your daddy, Dagwood?

They’re about to throw the book at Blondie.

Blondie: The Complete Bumstead Family History by strip writer Dean Young (son of Chic Young, Blondie’s real daddy) and Melena Ryzik have penned the definitive tale of the world’s most heavily circulated newspaper comic strip. Even if you find today’s efforts rather mundane, Blondie started out as a continuity strip: the story of millionaire Dagwood Bumstead and his love for jazz-age flapper Blondie – despite the threat of being disinherited by his family! 

Yep, Blondie’s roots are dark, indeed. Personally, I want to find out what happened to Daisy’s many, many pups. They all disappeared, you know. Hmmmm…

According to Amazon.com: It’s all here in this definitive book for the Blondie fan: Blondie and Dagwood, their children Alexander and Cookie, their neighbors Herb and Tootsie Woodley, the family dog Daisy, Dagwood’s boss Mr. Dithers, the mailman Mr. Beasley, and the neighborhood kid Elmo Tuttle. The book includes early history; Dagwood at work, Blondie’s starting her catering business, favorite cartoon strips, and the story of Chic and Dean Young, the creators of Blondie.

Blondie: The Complete Bumstead Family History comes out this August.

(Artwork copyright King Features Syndicate. All Rights Reserved.)

Irwin Hasen suffers stroke

Irwin Hasen suffers stroke

Our friend Tony Isabella tells us that comics legend Irwin Hasen is recovering from a stroke.

Tony provides Irwin’s definitive history: "Hasen is, of course, the talented artist and writer whose many credits include a 31-year run on the newspaper strip "Dondi," and comic-book covers and stories for such characters and titles as the Atom, Big Town, Detective Chimp, Flash, Gang Busters, Green Lantern, Justice Society of America, Our Army at War, Secret Hearts, Strange Adventures, Wonder Woman, and dozens more. He’s won the National Cartoonists Society award for best story strip and taught at the Joe Kubert School of Cartooning and Graphic Arts and the School of Visual Arts. If you have seen Irwin at conventions, you know that he is a snappy dresser, always friendly, and a teller of some of the best comics and life stories ever heard on a panel. I’m crazy about him."

Reports are that he’s on the mend and in good spirits. Irwin has been a frequent convention guest and always has a kind word for the fans. We always wish him nothing but the best.

(Artwork copyright All-American Comics Inc., renewed by DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.)

Cartoonists Conundrum

Cartoonists Conundrum

While we’ve been in the throes of office hell, we’ve noticed some changes going on in cartoonist-land that bear passing along:

  • Alison Bechdel has announced that she’s cutting back on production of her popular Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip from biweekly to monthly, in order to work on her new memoir, which she estimates will be ready in 2009.  She’ll be interspersing the new strips with "archive strips" (aka reruns), the first of which was published today — check out the very first episode of DTWOF, from 20 years ago!  (And be sure to check out Amanda Marcotte’s review of Bechdel’s Fun Home on the A-list political blog Pandagon.)
  • Mikhaela Reid passes along the news about Ward Sutton ending Sutton Impact (check out The Beat for more) and about the closing of The New Standard, a very friendly venue for political cartoonists which will be sorely missed.  (See Glenn’s post below for further cartoonist troubles at larger circulation papers.)
  • We do have some good news to pass along, however.  The Ormes Society’s Cheryl Lynn has kicked off the Torchy Brown Art Meme over at her blog, the results of which will be published on TOS’s site.  (That’s Torchy over on the right.)  And Heidi MacDonald crows that the House of Twelve Comic Jam folks have a new meeting place, starting this very evening.  It’s not far from Jim Hanley’s, so Manhattanites can grab their weekly haul and a drink with that jam, if they have the bread.

And if you are going to drink, please draw responsibly.

Play MSTie for me? Sort of.

Play MSTie for me? Sort of.

Three of the good folks behind Mystery Science Theater 3000 – Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett and Mike Nelson – have done some work in various media as The Film Crew. On July 10th,  they’ll be reuniting for a series of D2DVDs distributed by the Shout! Factory label.

According to the official MST3K news site Satellite News, here’s the premise: Determined to provide a commentary track for every movie, the guys settle into the dank basement of an office building, where, each day, their boss, entertainment mogul Bob Honcho, calls them on speakerphone and tells them which bad movie they will riff. There’ll be breaks in the riffing action for sketches and, best of all, no worries about whether they can eat and breathe!

First up from The Film Crew: Hollywood After Dark, the 1968 blockbuster starring Rue McClannahan, later of Golden Girls fame. Warning for the prudes and the peculiar: Rue’s got a strip scene. Three more "episodes" are in the can and will be released in upcoming months:  Giant of Marathon (1959, starring Steve Reeves), Killers from Space (1954, starring Peter Graves) and The Wild Women of Wongo (1958).

Retail price will be $19.99.

Bloggers respond to cartoon hate

Bloggers respond to cartoon hate

  • News
  • April 30, 2007

One of my favorite bloggers, Jon Swift, stepped out of satirical mode for a post to excoriate Chris Muir, a radical reactionary strip cartoonist who recently drew Hillary Clinton in blackface to mock a recent speech given by the Senator in which she quoted a Negro spiritual by affecting a cadence that didn’t sound quite right coming from a white upper-class woman.  (Lots of folks from all ends of the political spectrum were able to mock that same speech snippet without adding insult to injury.)

Swift noted, "If Chris Muir drew Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, for example, he wouldn’t have bothered drawing a panel showing Lucy pulling the football away at the last minute when Charlie Brown tries to kick it. That would be too Old School for him. Instead, Muir would just have Lucy say, ‘Democrats always pull the football away at the last minute when you are trying to kick it, Charlie Brown.’ Lucy and Charlie Brown would also probably be in their underwear."  His commenters responded by issuing a challenge to bloggers to "Show us how Chris Muir would do your favourite newspaper, comic book or web comic!"

Lots of popular liberal bloggers have already responded, including Chris Clark (For Better or For Muir), skippy the bush kangaroo (who riffs on Muir with Mutts) and Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, who I think captures Muir’s zeitgeit perfectly with this apology to Aaron McGruder:

Can the liberal comics blogosphere rise to the occasion as well?  Stay tuned!

The last internet argument

The last internet argument

  • News
  • April 17, 2007

One of my favorite web cartoonists, August Pollak, hits a home run with his Some Guy with a Website strip called "Internet Argument."  If you ever want to explain the world of blogs to anyone, you could do much worse than this strip.

A look at Sunderland

A look at Sunderland

  • News
  • April 16, 2007

Forbidden Plant International leads us to another glowing review of Bryan Talbot’s amazing Alice in Sunderland by Steve Flanagan. The catch is that Flanagan’s review is illustrative, done in the style of the book it’s discussing.

Flanagan’s 7-part comic strip review discusses Talbot’s presumed influences for this book, his stylistic choices, perceived structural weakness and subject matter.  Pretty heady stuff, and Flanagan’s not afraid to puncture his own pomposity.

It works better, of course, if you read the book first.  By that time maybe the traffic will have died down from Flanagan being BoingBoing’ed.

Let’s get Squashy!

Let’s get Squashy!

  • News
  • April 14, 2007

In case you thought Zippy was kinda normal, King Features will be launching a new strip, My Cage, on May 6th.

My Cage is a twist on "MySpace," except that it has a bit of a manga-style influence. Drawn by Melissa DeJesus and written by Ed Power, My Cage is about Norman, a young 20-something platypus who wanted to be a world famous writer. Like all too many writer wannabees, he is stuck in a crappy middle-management job. However, he does have a  girlfriend, a pet amoeba named Squashy, and the usual compliment of oddball co-workers.

Some 30 newspaper have picked up the feature, including the Houston Chronicle, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Chicago Sun-Times, St. Paul Pioneer Press and Madison (WI) Capital Times. No doubt you’ll be able to check it out at the Post-Intelligencer‘s website, one of the best places for the online reading of newspaper comic strips: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/fun/

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