A Short Time Ago, in a Gala Not Far Away

Last night was the main event at the National Cartoonists Society annual conference.

At the reception I had a long and very worthwhile conversation with Colleen Doran*. During the banquet, Collen had fun presenting the awards for best comic book and best graphic novel.

Sorry to say, Art Spiegelman was a no-show. Sy Barry, at age 97, looks and sounds great.

I know that one of you who’s reading this is a fan of cartoonist Hilary Price. She also presented an award.

Next year’s meeting will be in Columbus, Ohio, held in conjunction with the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. I am hoping to be there, assuming the NCS continues to welcome non-member rabble like myself.

* I first met Colleen exactly 21 years ago, two years before starting this bloggy thing. Her website is, and always has been, in my LINKS section. Colleen is also on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/ColleenDoran

Hobnobbing With the Professional Doodlers

What happens at the National Cartoonists Society conference stays at the NCS conference. Okay, not really, but I’m still feeling too euphoric to say very much.

I spoke with quite a few people, some more familiar than others. I had wonderful chats with a couple of comic book artists I already know, Joe Staton and Colleen Doran. Also, two cartoonists who I hadn’t met before today, Lynn Johnston and Greg Walker, one of Mort Walker’s son.

Tomorrow, I will be wearing a suit and tie to attend the Reuben Awards ceremony and banquet.

Art Spiegelman, creator of Maus, will be the recipient of the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award.

Adventure strip and comic book artist Sy Barry will receive the Elzie Segar Award for excellence in cartooning.

Summer in the City

Opposed as Dick Cheney reportedly is to Donald Trump’s version of the Republican Party, they share a pathological sadistic streak. Cheney limited his torture to foreign adversaries during a war, but Trump has no such reservation. Cracking the heads of civilian American citizens is fine with him.

It will be interesting to see if the Washington, D.C. crackdown helps or hurts tourism in the nations’ capitol.

Trump says Washington D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, and Oakland are Blue Cities, referring to their Democratic populations. But of course what he’s really saying is they’re Black Cities, referring to their racial mix.

Ya gotta admire a record that features both an autoharp and a jackhammer.

HELP! Pythons!

When starting this bloggy, with its 19th anniversary coming up on 9/5, I added a gallery section that is no longer working. The first thing I put in there were scans of a fumetti (photo comic) from the May, 1965 issue of Harvey Kurtzman’s HELP! magazine.

Not to be confused with the 1965 Beatles movie HELP! that had not yet been named when the January, 1965 issue of HELP! was published.

HELP! #22, January 1965 – Airbrush photo editing by Terry Gilliam

“Christopher’s Punctured Romance” starred John Cleese as a man with an unhealthy interest in his daughter’s Barbie doll. It starts on page 17.

Terry Gilliam started at HELP! when Gloria Steinem — yes, her — was leaving. Gilliam was the art director at HELP! when he met John Cleese in New York, and “Christopher’s Punctured Romance” was the result.

When Gilliam followed Cleese to England, he recruited Robert Crumb to be his replacement. Crumb arrived just as HELP! publisher James Warren was shutting it down.

I first heard about this amazing sequence of events from Harvey Kurtzman at a Boston NewCon, in 1975 or ’76. Maybe Denro remembers better than I do.