I grabbed this photo from a Facebook group.
Category: Cartooning
Anime Pick – Future Boy Conan
Hayao Miyazaki’s first directorial work, the outstanding Future Boy Conan from 1978, is finally available in the U.S. Conan is no barbarian, but he’s one tough kid. We’re not quite all the way through the series, but I can’t imagine the conclusion being a disappointment.
Toth the Line
Been too busy to switch mental gears back to my now fully up-to-date WordPress installation, but here’s something I can post quickly, that I know will interest at least one of you. It’s a documentary about master comic book artist and designer Alex Toth. Almost as much time is spent discussing his difficult personality as his art.
Hollow Caustic Decision
Ten days ago I spoke here about Maus. It’s been revealed that one week before then, on January 10, Maus was banned from a school district in Tennessee.
Jonathan Pierce, the board member who initiated the vote to remove Maus from the eighth-grade curriculum, said during the meeting that the Holocaust should be taught in schools, but this was not the book to do it.
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/27/1076180329/tennessee-school-district-ban-holocaust-graphic-novel-maus
Today happens to be Holocaust Remembrance Day. So now the question is, what Holocaust books does the McMinn County School Board allow in its schools? Being Tennessee, gotta wonder if they’re teaching “Intelligent Design” as scientific fact.
A Charlie Brown Passing
Peter Robbins, the best-known voice of Charlie Brown, has taken his own life. It’s being said that Robbins was the first voice of Charlie Brown, but I am not certain of that.
Just Call Them Political Cartoons
Last week I noted that Art Spiegelman’s Maus won a Pulitzer Prize. It was the first, and so far it’s the only, graphic novel to be awarded that distinction.
The category of graphics that the Pulitzer people have recognized for exactly one hundred years is editorial cartooning. But no more. From now on, the category will be called Illustrated Reporting and Commentary. Cartooning is not illustration, and if they think this somehow dignifies the craft, it doesn’t work for me.
http://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2022/01/21/editorial-cartooning-legend-dead-to-pulitzers/
The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists seems to be taking the change in stride. Maybe some of their Illustrated Reporters and Commentators will have something to say about it.
FYI for cartoonists entering the @PulitzerPrizes. From their site: "The Editorial Cartooning category is now called Illustrated Reporting and Commentary. Redefined last year, the category recognizes "a distinguished portfolio of editorial cartoons or other illustrated work"
— AAEC (@AAEC_Cartoonist) January 20, 2022