"The Three Wise Men All Chip In for a Nice Satellite Dish" ©D.Barstow

“The Three Wise Men All Chip In for a Nice Satellite Dish”

Assignment for Illustration Friday: Wise. (I wasn’t in Slate yet, but could have used this there, too.) Owl? Too obvious. Wise, as in smartass? Too snarky.

So I went with the wisest of the wise, and I’m ready to start Christmas early, too!

Hey, maybe I should make this up as a card for Cafe Press! Or not. I’m loving the colors here. I don’t know whether the clothes are quite correct. Costumers needed on the set!

As far as the right hand on the first wise man, it’s backwards. But that meant good luck in the olden days.

I wrote the post below last February in my Griffith Park Blog. It’s a popular post, so I thought cartoon people would like to take a look at it here. I update it below.

I just couldn’t believe this article in the LA Times and many other papers today.

But for one day — this Sunday — nearly a dozen cartoonists of color will be drawing essentially the same comic strip, using irony to literally illustrate that point. In each strip, the artists will portray a white reader grousing about a minority-drawn strip, complaining that it’s a “Boondocks” rip-off and blaming it on “tokenism.” “It’s the one-minority rule,” says Lalo Alcaraz (”La Cucaracha”). “We’ve got one black guy and we’ve got one Latino. There’s not room for anything else.”

Blondie comic book cover

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Credit: G. B. Trudeau / Universal Press Syndicate.

It was a week ago that all the papers threw up their hands in mutual pretended concern that Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury did his Nov 5 strip early, predicting Barak Obama for the win. How to handle this delicate situation? Most papers decided to take the “risk” and run it. Not the LA Times.

First the Times decided not to run it.

Times editors have decided that in the interest of accuracy, it would be best to wait to see the results of the election.

They changed their minds, however, when readers wrote in. Much sarcasm ensued.

I applaud the L.A. Times decision to wait until the election before running Doonesbury’s strip where Obama wins “in the interest of accuracy.” But in the interest of accuracy the Times should also withhold Non Sequitur, Mutts, Get Fuzzy and Tundra (animals don’t really talk). Also stop Brewster Rockit: Space Guy (he’s not really in space). Just don’t tell the editors that Snoopy can’t fly his doghouse.
Bill Becher
Westlake Village

Here’s part of the suspect strip.

Personally, I found the repetitious shouts of, “We Did It,” and “Now I’m proud to be an American” so annoying from folks that I deleted every MySpace friend and Twitter friend that said it. I guess I’m not very social with my social networking.

I wanted to give a shoutout to two extremely talented and funny syndicated guys that work for a cause, and yet don’t get all preachy. (And note the word funny, which most certainly does not describe most syndicated strips.)  This fall, both of these guys aimed many of their cartoons in support of Proposition 2, which just passed here in California! It will affect more than 19 million animals, Farm Sanctuary says, and will most definitely “persuade” other states that it is essential to treat farm animals as living creatures.

Image from HuffPo, which I ASSUME got permission from Andrews McMeel. AM is very strict about any kind of image use, as they should be.

A California initiative on the November ballot — Proposition 2, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act — will phase out the cramming of veal calves, breeding pigs and egg-laying hens into small cages and crates.

The Huffington Post has an interesting interview with  Patrick McDonnell, the creator of the comic strip MUTTS. (I don’t believe in reading the PuffPost regularly, when they don’t believe in paying their writers (over 2000 now), when it’s the BIGGEST BLOG in the world. (We won’t go into the fact that Arriana Huffington is a billionaire, too.))  Read more »