The U.S. Postal Service has announced some new 2022 stamps and you can see here that these new Peanuts stamps will be added to celebrate Charles Schulz’s 100th birthday.
There are 10 designs surrounding Charles Schulz’s image.
Art director Greg Breeding designed the stamps from original Peanuts artwork.
I’m going to buy them, and of course never use them. The release date has not been announced, but I’ll be checking the stamps on my snail mail to see who uses them first, it would be interesting to see who does! Schulz was born Nov. 26, 1922, so possibly November would be the date they are released.
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This cartoon ran the other day and of course there was a lot of arguing over it. Most people felt that masks were not needed now or ever.
I don’t like to do political stuff because it’s not what the readers expect from me, but this really isn’t political. I’m not taking sides, I’m not saying wear a mask or don’t wear a mask. I’m just asking if a judge should be making medical decisions?
You may agree with the CDC or not, you may agree with a doctor or not, but why should we be having a judge make the decision on whether we should wear masks on airplanes and even Uber rides?
This snake/worm cartoon from last week has gone viral on Instagram. I’m not sure why, do people like snakes? Or is it worms?
You can see by the numbers below that over 2 million Instagram accounts have seen it, and by the time this story runs, the numbers will be even higher. Over 83,000 people so far have “liked” the image and over almost 8000 people have “saved” the image on Instagram and over 2800 have shared it. They don’t link back to me or tag me, which is the proper thing to do, so those many people shared the image without giving me, the artist, any credit, but that’s ok, my signature and copyright is on the cartoon.
But it’s interesting to see what goes viral on the internet and what doesn’t and this snake/worm cartoon has really taken a life of its own.
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I saw this photo online and came up with the cartoon below, which was published Friday. This is an image from the Jersey Shore in 1905. It was entitled, “Ice cream sandwiches at the beach.”
As I looked at the photo, I was thinking, “They probably paid a nickel for the ice cream since back then everything was a nickel.” But then I noticed on the wagon it says the ice cream sandwiches were only 1 cent.
But usually whenever you hear of something from history – not even that far back, like say the 1940s and 1950s – things were a nickel – the price of a movie admission, the price of a sandwich, the price of an ice cream cone and of course the price of a pickle.
I suppose the cartoon could have taken place today, in a dollar store, where everything is a dollar, but I like historical things and drawing historical images.
I know I went overboard with all the items and prices, but I thought it made the image funnier.
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This cartoon got quite a few comments yesterday. It seems that everybody has a story on what they hated to eat as a kid. I think I didn’t like liver and possibly spinach. Spinach I like today. Liver never.
I don’t think my mom forced me to eat what I didn’t like, but I do remember her telling me to try it.
One thing I have almost daily is olive oil, I take a spoonful daily for the omega threes and to be in step with those blue zones around the world, and I also put it on things when eating. But I didn’t like it as a kid and my mom was telling me how good it is for your health, I remember. She said I would get used to the taste. I eventually did.
One lady mentioned spaghetti, in a comment. She didn’t like that and was forced to eat it as a kid. I can sort of understand that, as I am not a big fan of spaghetti, but I’ll eat it, I don’t have to be forced to eat it, but I wouldn’t order it in a restaurant.
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I saw this meme or whatever it is, on Facebook the other day, and I was transported back to being high school age again. It was sort of like when you smell something and that smell instantly transports you back in time? Well this did it for me.
I was working at a department store after school many years ago and I was in the cafeteria with co-workers, there weren’t many of us there, a handful perhaps. I can picture it now – dark lighting, red leather seating, black tables. Right there in the cafeteria, I drew up a little cartoon on a napkin that said something like this meme above – something about the managers getting paid to stand around and do nothing. And I guess it was a picture of a manger with his or her arms folded.
Karen (her real name), one of the supervisors/managers, saw it and asked me to tear it up. I refused. She was really upset over it. I don’t know what happened next, but I don’t think I got in trouble, and I don’t think I tore it up either.
I was maybe 17 or 18 and Nancy, the boss, was maybe 25. It’s so funny to think about it now, we were kids. On that day, at that moment, it gave me the knowledge of how important and influential cartooning was. I’m sometimes a packrat but I don’t think I saved that cartoon. Wish I had. To think, this napkin drawing, which was never published and probably ended up crumpled up somewhere, had such a huge effect.
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Almost five years ago, I interviewed Will Henry, the cartoonist who does the comic strip Wallace the Brave. The comic strip was new at the time, but I saw something I loved about it and reached out to Will for the interview. Today Wallace the Brave is syndicated in newspapers around the country and it’s just as charming as ever.
Wallace the Brave is reminiscent of Calvin and Hobbes, yet it’s unique.
PBS did a short interview here. with Will recently, right out in his muse – the Rhode Island waterfront (and his liquor store, where it all started)
I often ask people I interview, which comic strip they would like to crawl into and visit for the day. Wallace’s world in Rhode Island is where I think I would like to visit.
I saw in The Daily Cartoonist today, that cartoonist Jim Keefe, cartoonist for Sally Forth, who previous was the writer and artist of Flash Gordon, wrote in his blog a few years ago, about the size, or rather, lack of size of the printed comic strips today.
A few years back I showed this example here, the comics in the Miami Herald – smaller than postage stamps!
I think this is the time I realized that my dream of being a published newspaper cartoonist was not my dream anymore.
I know people read the newspaper comics, but not many. I haven’t read the actual newspaper comics for years, and by years, I mean a decade or more. I think I gave up with The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County left the comics pages. Today I read them online, where you can pick and choose your favorites and sort of make up your own comics page at GoComics.com and Comics Kingdom and other sites like Webtoons.
I think one of the best places these days to publish and to read comics is Instagram. You can follow the comics you like, flip through them one panel at a time and they easily come up in your daily feed, you don’t have to look for them. I publish there Monday thru Friday.
I’m enjoying reading old “Our Boarding House” comic panels featuring Major Hoople, from the 1920s and ’30s, on Facebook. A couple of groups post one Major Hoople panel a day, it has a lot of devoted fans.
In the past I always felt that I had to be published in the newspapers – it was why comic strips were created – to be in the newspapers. Just like movies – created to be seen on the big silver screen. But today big features show up on streaming services and most comics show up online or on social media.
And with both of these situations, you can control what you see, when you see it and how you see it. You can watch a movie on your 3 inch phone or 65 inch tv – same with the comics and those tiny, postage sized comics can be easily blown on on any screen for easing viewing.
By not being confined to daily newspaper publication, you can vary your schedule, you can change the size of the panels – make them longer, shorter, etc. Not be edited, which can be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it, and probably the best part – publish instantly without a four to eight week lag time. I can’t imagine these days completing a comic strip or panel and then waiting eight weeks to see it in print.
Of course, publishing online rather than with a syndicate in newspapers has one major drawback – no money – you don’t get a salary. But times are changing. NFT’s seem to be something interesting to look at these days along with other money-making ideas for artists and cartoonists.
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I had to reset my internet user name and password. For some reason, it just disappeared from the list, I couldn’t sign on or get internet – so a lady on the phone at the ISP reset it all for me.
She asked me for a new user name and password. I gave her a silly word for the password and felt embarrassed, so I told her it was my cat’s name. I don’t have a cat. Or a dog for that matter.
And that made me think of this cartoon. So many people use their pets’ names for their passwords.
A lot of people liked the cartoon and shared it, so I guess it hit a nerve.
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My fascination of ancient Egypt, Rome, Greece and all sorts of archaeology goes way back. I studied it in college as part of Art History. My textbooks, which I still have, are in my living room and I glance at them every once in awhile. Guided tours of ancient Egyptian sites are part of my bucket list.
I do a lot of cartoons based on ancient times, I enjoy doing those.
And now that I think of it, if asked, what I would do if I wasn’t doing what I do now, I might say, “I’d like to be an archaeologist , digging around in Egyptian deserts. But not now, I think.
A MEME THAT POPPED UP THE OTHER DAY.
I was shocked into reality the other day while watching a tv show on Egyptian and Greece archeology. They were digging up ancient Greek tombs and relating them to Egypt at that time and one of the archeologists said something like, “We’re lucky to find this one in tact. The tomb raiders did not find this tomb, but we did through sonar (or radar, he said something like that.” And I was stunned. Why is a modern archeologist, digging up ancient tombs any better than ancient, or even current tomb raiders.
The main difference is that tomb raiders are taking gold and silver and precious items. Archaeologists are taking bodies; actual bodies. Why is this any better?
One lady archeologist, I can’t remember her name, has a life quest to find Cleopatra’s tomb. And do what with it when she finds it? Display her remains to the world? Another has a quest to find Alexander the Great’s and Cleopatra’s ancient Alexandria under present day Alexandria, I guess that’s ok, as they are looking for cities, not entombed bodies.
I can understand digging up and finding ancient cities, but I’m having second thoughts about digging up entombed, embalmed bodies.
So I have to think on it now. Is desecrating an ancient body permissible in the name of science? Is it ok to dig it up, pillage, analyze it and show it off in museums? I’m wondering. I’m sure I will still do ancient Egypt related cartoons, because in my cartoons the people are alive and in their time in their settings.
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