Comic Strips

Team Cul-de-Sac launched as a fundraising effort for Parkinson's Disease Research after Reuben award-winning cartoonist Richard Thompson was diagnosed with the disease. The plan is to publish a book next spring and auction off some of the all-star art. Along the way it's featured art by retired cartoonists like Bill Watterson and Cathy Guisewite, all drawing Thompson's Otterloop characters. Here's a new piece by not-retired cartoonist Garry Trudeau. This is gonna be some book.

Another cartoon luminary of the past has joined IDW's Library of American Comics with the announcement of Cartoon Monarch: Otto Soglow and The Little King, a survey of Otto Soglow, the New Yorker minimalist who created The Little King, a much-admired character that influenced such design-heavy cartoonists as Ivan Brunetti and Chris Ware.

Long, long delayed by difficulties finding the source materials, Fantagraphics' long awaited reprinting of the complete Pogo by Walt Kelly is finally at the printers, Mark Evanier announces.

Benjamin Ahr Harrison directed this swell animated video that references Winsor McCay's great Little Nemo comic strip. Check out Hoffman's website for more musical stylings.

Those who find the comic strip Garfield the apotheosis of soul-sucking banality in the comics will no doubt be pleased by this press release in which creator Jim Davis frets that a new software that allows children to easily import images, manipulate them and even add sound effects will put him out of business.

"Back in my day we had only pencils and paper. This new software is like adding a jet pack to creativity. Kids can craft characters and backgrounds and tell a story with such ease and speed that I'm a little worried I might be out of a job soon."

But in a surprise twist, it turns out this software is licensed by Davis himself!

Fresh off his Raiders of the Lost Ark/Popeye mashup, Chuck Forsman is mixing Jaws with Peanuts.. Prints are available -- collect the whole set!

Tonight, at the Strand Bookstore located at the corner of Twelfth Street and Broadway, Craig Yoe and Patrick McDonnell will discuss the art of George Herriman, focusing on his masterpiece, Krazy Kat. The fun begins at 7 PM!

Crack open the spinach cans, because he's back! Popeye the Sailor is getting his own comic coming out from IDW Publishing. The Popeye ongoing series will be an all-ages book suitable for children, featuring all the classic Popeye characters and go on sale in 2012.

So much good stuff! Bestselling author Christopher Moore writes a graphic novel! Ray Bradbury, Grandmaster, has two classics adapted! Grant Morrison writes about superheroes and religion! Disney and Hitler, together again! Girlie comics from Marvel! "Good Girl" comics from Jim Silke, Doug Sneyd, and Dean Yeagle! Great Women comics from Gail Simone, Colleen Coover, Megan Kelso, Jill Thompson, and Corinne Mucha! (Can't find female creators on the newsstands? Check the bookshelves!) And lots of masterful work from Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Jim Starlin, and Floyd Gottfredson!

In a change of policy, the New York Times' venerable Week in Review section will go from running a round-up of editorial cartoons on the topics of the week to specially commissioned work. Among those tapped, Brian McFadden, creator of Big Fat Whale. McFadden is 27 and lives in Massachusetts, giving the section a younger perspective, to say the least.

In a blog post, Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams reveals himself as a male-basher who thinks all men need to be castrated to ensure a smoothly running society because all they want to do is rape and tweet pictures of their junk to co-eds:

This year's Reuben awards weekend -- the traditional yearly gathering of traditional comic strip cartoonists -- saw some special guests from the webcomics world specially invited, like Kate Beaton, Randall Munroe, and Scott Kurtz. Kurtz has written up the weekend in an absolute must read on the changing of the guard from a world where creators live by the structured patronage of big media companies in exchange for exclusivity, to a much more fluid world where entrepreneurship is as important as content and living by your wits is literally the way to the big payoff.