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Two funny ladies

hilary-rina — Hilary Price, left, and Rina Piccolo

I did a 10 With Tom recently with cartoonist Rina Piccolo who does/did the Tina’s Groove comic strip. Well, recently it was announced that Rina has ended Tina’s Groove and has teamed up with Hilary Price to do the Rhymes With Orange comic strip together.

Rina emailed me to apologize for not being able to spill the beans when I interviewed her but it was not time to reveal the news. I understand completely and to be honest, I always got Rina and Hilary mixed up. Not sure why, I don’t want to say because they are both female cartoonists, but perhaps because Rina did fill in at times for Rhymes with Orange and helped start the Six Chix comic strip which I always associate with Hilary. Also, Rina and Hilary seem to have the same sense of humor, which of course makes total sense for their team up with Rhymes With Orange.

You can read a lot about it in the Comic Riffs column here.

Rina says she enjoys doing single panel cartoons rather than daily comic strips with the same characters each day and I guess that is how I feel and why I keep going back and forth between my Tomversation panel and my Paws comic strip. The single panel gag cartoon always draws me back. No pun intended.

rhymes — Rhymes With Orange. courtesy King Features Syndicate

Park Row – Newspaper Row

parkrow

I saw this photo at the Stuff Nobody Cares About blog, which is a really great blog. To see a very large version of this photo, where you can almost see in the windows, click here.

I don’t know why, but I am fascinated by newspapers, especially the ones from the early days, when the news basically only came from newspapers. New York City had 14 dailies at one time. Amazing.

Above, you can see three newspaper buildings on Park Row, across from New York City Hall, I don’t know why year this photo was taken, probably early 1900s.

The tall building at the left with the dome is Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World Building which was razed in 1955 for a car ramp entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. I have recently stood there looking at the car ramp imagining the World Building being in that space.

Tammany Hall building is the small building next to that to the right. In 1867, The New York Sun purchased the building. The Sun then moved to Broadway, a few blocks away. I have a story and photo on that building here.

The building with the clock tower was designed by famed architect Richard Morris Hunt in 1875 and was the home of the New York Tribune. The building was demolished in 1966. Finally, The New York Times, built in 1889 can be seen to the right. In 1904, the Times moved to their Times Square location and now they are at 620 8th Avenue in a beautiful modern glass building. Pace University now occupies the old Park Row Times building today. The only remaining newspaper building on Park Row. That and the Sun building at 280 Broadway are the two vestiges of a great New York newspaper period.

Back in the day, New York City had these newspapers – The World; The Times; The Herald; The Evening Post; The Globe and Commercial Advertiser; The Tribune; The Morning Telegraph; The Sun; The Call; The Press; The American; The Evening Journal; the New York Daily News and New York Mirror. They were not all around the same time, but most were!

I’m missing my daily comics news

I miss The Daily Cartoonist blog. It’s been over a year, I wonder if it’s ever coming back. I liked getting all the comics news in one place. I learned a lot from Alan Gardner, who blogged each day, and I enjoyed the comments that people would engage in on each posting. On May 2, I thought it would come back, you know, exactly on the day Alan took a break.

I thought of almost doing it myself, you know, posting comics news daily, but I don’t have it in me. It’s hard enough keeping up with local news at the Coconut Grove Grapevine, where I think I finally want to lighten my load.

My perfect life would be to wake up and cartoon every day. And travel. I am working toward that.

A grandmother’s love

This Lichtenstein painting called, “Masterpiece,” recently sold for $165 million by art collector Agnes Gund and of that, Ms. Gund is donating $100 million to start a social justice fund which she hopes will lower the prison population in the US.

The money will go to the Art For Justice Fund.

From their website: “Over the next five years (2017-2022), the Art for Justice Fund (A4JF) will support innovative advocacy and interventions aimed at safely cutting the prison population in states with the highest rates of incarceration, and strengthening the education and employment options for people leaving prison. In addition, the Fund will support selected artistic initiatives that enable artists to bear witness to the injustices of the system and speak to the potential of people enmeshed in it.”

Ms. Gund has six African American grandchildren so this hits home for her. She told The New York Times that “she has worried about their future as they’ve matured, particularly in light of shootings of black teenagers like Trayvon Martin in Florida.”

More here at NBC News.

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The Bat-signal

Here are a couple of videos of the Bat-signal being lit up last night in Los Angles in honor of Adam West. The first is from the Associated Press, the second is the news report from KCAL Channel 9 in Los Angeles.

Sending up the Bat-Signal

Los Angeles is lighting the Bat-Signal tonight (June 15) in honor or Adam West’s passing. Mayor Eric Garcetti will light the signal at a special ceremony at 7:30 pacific time.

The signal will be shown from City Hall. The signal will be projected on LA City Hall.

Batman has always been a part of my life it seems. In the 1980s, while lying on the beach I used to think of Batman. What happened was that a friend of mine had fantasies of buying the shuttered St. Moritz Hotel in South Beach, which is part of the Lowes Hotel at 16th and Collins Avenue. Back in the 1980s, 16th Street was open, it was a street now it’s part of the Loews property. I would park there and lay out on the beach at the water’s edge, but with the St. Moritz hotel in the distance.

As I would lay on the beach, I would imagine that my friend Franco needed me to run the front desk or something, and he would send up a Bat-signal type thing from the roof to alert me. The way he would alert me was a little more rudimentary. There was tinfoil on the two very top windows and when he needed me, he would open and shut the windows and flash the tinfoil into the sunlight, which would send a sort of Bat-signal up and then I would know I was needed to get inside to work.

A time before cellphones. 🙂

Buy a magazine from a Dalek

I saw this floating around online somewhere. It’s Dodger the Dalek. This video is from 1964, in Coventry, England. The Dalek sells magazines. A college student designed it.

Doctor Who started in 1963, so this was created in its second year.

Tomversation or Paws?

comics — A bunch of my Tomversation panels. Different people. Different situations.

So the Gemini in me is rearing it’s ugly head. I am now off the “Paws” kick and now on the Tomversation kick. I have been working on my Tomversation comic panel.

So now it’s this way – On Labor Day, September 4. Either Tomversation or Paws will start daily publication. Maybe both!

I love them both. Paws is great because of the characters and I love Tomversation because it’s all over the place. Each day is a different cast and different subject matter and I enjoy coloring them, where Paws is basically black and white. Paws consists of the same characters, too, day after day, so the reader has a chance to get to know them and identify with them.

So as I work on both this summer, I guess the big reveal will be in September. I hope you’re following along!

Batman’s Adam West has passed away

batman2 You know when someone you don’t know passes away but you feel like they are friends? Friends in your head? Well that happened again today. Adam West, tv’s Batman passed away from Leukemia at age 88.

He’s one of those people that I feel is family. I never met him, never saw him at any ComicCons, but just from the 1960s series, he has always been a friend to me – in my mind. The Batman tv series was a huge part of my childhood. We didn’t have a color tv at the time, so I would go to my friend’s house to watch often. It was one of the first color tv series I ever saw.

The closest I ever got to him was seeing the Batmobile in one of the New York museums last year. I was in awe. The museum guard had to keep telling me to step back away from the car, I was getting so close to it.

It was on Wednesday and Thursday nights. Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel.

Here’s more on his passing.

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Paws

So I’m back on my “Paws” kick again, you know, my comic strip/panel with Tombo and Jacomo. When I used to publish, I had quite a large following on Instagram and I’ve noticed that similar panels and strips have quite a large following there.

I am considering publishing daily on Instagram, Facebook and hopefully GoComics. I want to see how the GoComics thing goes before I start. I was thinking of maybe the fall, you know, maybe on Labor Day.

I had hoped to publish my Tomversation comic panel starting in January, but a few newspapers contacted me and they were interested in daily publication, but they gave me the run-around for so long that I put off publishing online. It amazes me how selfish newspaper editors can be. I had a few very large dailies interested in the feature and they had me on a string, practically sending me contracts to sign, but then things just stopped in mid-negotiation. I don’t know why. I felt all of a sudden ostracized like Kathy Griffin. I just fell off their radar. It put me back months since I was waiting to start publishing in the newspapers and online at the same time.

Anyway, “Paws” is sort of a mix between Mutts and Krazy Kat. Tombo the Rabbit and Jacomo the Mole are the stars. There are other characters, too, who live in their little village of Coconut Cove.

I’ll keep you posted as things move along.