Cartoon Clichés

I got the idea for this one after reading some old cartoon collections from the 1940s. I narrowed it down to six from about 20 re-occurring themes I saw including someone being held up on a street corner, lemmings jumping off a cliff and an optometrist in front of an eye chart. It's odd how these situations became so iconoclastic but apparently you can't use them anymore unless you're being ironic. I wonder who makes those rules. I suspect in twenty years people will groan and grimace at the cutting edge humor of today.

Fruity Fruit

As much as I hate re-blogging, I thoroughly enjoyed this article over at the Daily Mail site. It all seems so gratuitous although how anyone can be so upset by this that they became "distressed" and "had to sit down in the car park" makes me wonder about the state of the world.

Cartoon Art

The Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco is currently showing an excellent Monsters of Webcomics exhibit. In addition to the ten featured artists (including original art from Cat & Girl, Perry Bible Fellowship and Achewood) they also have a virtual gallery featuring one hundred additional websomics (watch long enough and you'll see three Rabbits Against Magic strips!). If you go be sure to check out the amazing Ron Dias Roger Rabbit Toontown backgrounds.

Downward Rabbit

My first ever yoga joke.

Off the Beaten Pathé

British Pathé—whose logo is a chicken—have made their entire 75 year archive of old movie clips available for browsing. I like this rabbit show which was filmed in Watford in 1942, the town of my birth.

Google Gadgets

Talking of iGoogle, the GoComics Google gadget has now expanded to include Rabbits Against Magic.

Recycle or Die

I'm humbled to note that the super talented Alex Hallatt who draws the incredible Arctic Circle put this one on her excellent blog.

iGoogle Comics Themes

New comics iGoogle themes available here! So many to choose from. I'm torn between Krazy Kat, Peanuts and Pearls Before Swine but there are so many others I may be switching every week.

Breaking the Fourth Wall

Since my strip isn't "reality" based I have occasionally broken the "fourth wall", the phrase that's used in comic strips when the characters become aware that they're just, well, characters in a comic strip. Previously they've looked over a fence to discover themselves, interacted with politicians and celebrated their own comic strip birthday. I think this one's my favorite.

Tall Tale Versus Retail

Some hot crossover action in today's Retail by Norm Feuti featuring, let's see, Toby, Robot Satan, Cory from Watch Your Head, Ralston Rabbit from Ink Pen, Leopold from Scary Gary, Lio, Alice from Cul-de-Sac and the entire Tall Tale Features cast of comic charcters. A quick plug for Gill which has sadly been put on a indefinite hiatus but you can buy a copy of "I'm not Retarded, I'm Just Big-Boned" here. 107 strips for just $10!

Ornithological Yahtzee

Yesterday I ran a Rabbits strip about jaywalking. Yes, a visual pun. It's not my best strip by a long way and it's an idea that's probably been done before.
Nonetheless, it was a surprise to see another jaywalking visual pun in today's Rhymes With Orange. Because daily cartoonists typically work several weeks in advance, it was obviously just a coincidence.
Then there's today's Knight Life.
Maybe it's National Jaywalking Week.

Lasso the Moon

This is an actual fact (about the digital info, not the phishing scam email collection) that I read in a scientific publication, although the statistic didn't specify if they are paperbacks or hardbacks. If the books were David Foster Wallace novels it wouldn't be that impressive at all.

Tales From Beanworld

This joke reminded me of documentary I saw years ago about how you can feed coffee beans to animals (in this case wolves) and collect them again after they have "passed through the digestive system". Apparently, that process is similar to roasting the beans. I don't think the FDA has approved that process here in the US although one might assume it could be marketed as a "green" technology since it uses much less energy. Or would that be "brown" technology?

Rough Rabbit Riders

This is maybe the earliest remaining evidence of the preliminary sketches I did when developing the Rabbits Against Magic strip. Eightball can be seen bottom left although he has evolved a bit since then. Weenus came a bit later.

Trickle Down Economics

Here's a cartoon I created for a non-profit in Mexico this week. It demonstrates why international aid rarely reaches the intended recipients.

Hooked on Homonyms

Here's my Sunday strip from this week:Amazingly, over at the Daily Ink, fellow Brit Piers Baker who draws one of my favorite strips, Ollie and Quentin ran this:Who would have fort it?

Guerrilla in the Midst

Here's some more follow up from the Allan McDonald detention. As I mentioned before, I lived in Honduras for two and a half years and spent many evenings hanging out with Allan at his house and in the El Paraiso Cafe in Tegucigalpa talking politics and cartooning. The situation in Honduras seems to show no signs of being resolved any time soon. Meanwhile, all the reports I hear are of extensive media blackouts and the distribution of emotive propaganda so no one inside the country has much idea of what's really going on.

Something Under the Bed is Drooling

I got a lot of comments about this being a sort of Lio tribute although when I drew it I was thinking more Calvin and Hobbes or Monsters Inc. Lio would undoubtedly have come up with some amusing way to make friends with them. Regardless, I had a lot of fun creating those monsters.

DMV

I haven't been to the DMV for years. It seems like you can do everything online these days except for the photo which here in California you only have to renew every ten years. Maybe it's not the crazy annoying bureaucratic hell of lines and forms it used to be. I was surprised when I pulled out my license to draw this cartoon that it actually says "Driver License" on it instead of "Driver's License". In fact, shouldn't it technically be "Driving" or "Drive" License? If ever run for govenor, there's my hot button issue platform right there.

Make a Fortune in the Comics!

Apparently the funnies you read every day back in 1933 brought $8 000 000 a year to a small group of 200 cartoonists. Sadly those glory days are long over. Still, it's worth checking out this vintage Modern Mechanix Magazine over at their fascinating and ambitious blog where they're apparently scanning in their entire output dating back to forever. My favorite line is how the depression era can bring big checks to cartoonists with new ideas. I wonder if that still works.

Thanks to Sherm at the always excellent Cartoon SNAP blog for the tip.