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It’s calendar season and I’m part of it this year.
Many years ago, I published a calendar based on our village and it sold like crazy. Now I have a 2026 “Tomversation” cartoon calendar, based on my cartoon work.
It’s a wall calendar, 11″ x 8.5″ in size when opened. There are over 25 cartoons covering the 12 month calendar pages. It’s a limited edition.
They matte finish allows for writing on the calendar for notes and such.
I based the calendar on animal cartoons – mostly dogs, some cats and even snakes and other animals like lions and fish (are fish animals?).
I don’t charge for my blog or cartoons published online and people are always asking how to support me, so I put this together where you can purchase a calendar or two and support me that way. It will keep me from charging for subscriptions for this blog and my Tomversation comics online.
I’m selling it through Etsy here, if interested.
No calendar? That’s fine, you can subscribe to this Tomversation blog by clicking here – it’s free! Receive my five cartoons each Friday and 2 blog posts during the week!
Till next time . . .
All cartoons via TomFalco.com
Subscribe to this Tomversation blog by clicking here – it’s free! Receive my five cartoons each Friday and 2 blog posts during the week!
All comics By Tom Falco
Subscribe to this Tomversation blog by clicking here – it’s free! Receive my five cartoons each Friday and 2 blog posts during the week!
Nancy the comic strip is going through some changes.
You remember Nancy, don’t you? Well, it has been in production all this time.
The Ernie Bushmiller comic, started in 1925, went on until 1982, when he passed away. Mr. Bushmiller wrote and drew the comic. It started out as Fritzi Ritz, who is Nancy’s aunt and then morphed into Nancy when she was introduced in 1933. So yes, it goes way back.
From 1982 to 2018, after Bushmiller’s death, the strip was written and drawn by various people.
Mr. Bushmiller took Fritzi Ritz over from a cartoonist named Larry Whittington, who started it in 1922. I only mention it because it’s been in quite a few hands over the years. For the last seven, it’s been written and drawn by the mysterious Olivia Jaimes, but currently it’s in reruns.
Another change. And therein lies the rub.
I remember reading Nancy when I was a kid. I mostly remember it at my grandmother’s house, so maybe it wasn’t in the newspapers we got at home and was in something she subscribed to.
Since 2018, there was a “new” Nancy. It was the same old Nancy and Sluggo, but in a new way. As I mentioned, cartoonist Olivia Jaimes wrote and drew the strip, now she is retiring from that and Caroline Cash is taking over. New strips will appear in the new year. Currently old Ernie Bushmiller strips are running.
When Olivia first took over, I tried to interview her for my 10 With Tom column, but I received no response. Olivia Jaimes is a pseudonym and she, or is it a he? likes to remain unknown.
I find it quite careless to just take on a well-known strip, make it your own for a few years and just “retire.” But I guess that was the case from 1982 to 2018 when the strip was run by others, sort of passing it around until Olivia took it over in 2018. And now she is passing it on. And who knows, perhaps she needs to leave for personal or health reasons.
I know that if I was given a legacy strip, I would guard it and cherish it like so many other cartoonists do.
I was reading comments on The Daily Cartoonist blog, where I found out about this Nancy change and there are those for it, and those against it.
One commentor feels as I do, saying, “I find it highly insulting that Andrews McMeel just passes this classic comic strip over to others willy nilly. And Olivia had a plum position that people would kill for. She just went through the motions. Didn’t she take off a long period of time last year, having others fill in for her?” He went on to call her “blasé” about it.
Andrews McMeel runs GoComics.com – they syndicate the strip along with so many others.
But again, since we don’t know who Olivia is, perhaps she was ill in the summer and needed the break and maybe that’s the case now.
One guy says in the comments at The Daily Cartoonist that it isn’t a “plum” assignment. But I beg to differ. As a cartoonist myself, I think having a nationally syndicated comic strip is a “plum” assignment. He called it a “zombie strip,” but it was alive when Olivia produced it. And thousands, if not millions of people read it over the past seven years.
Another comment on the Daily Cartoonist: “I miss the original Bushmiller style Nancy. I shudder to think what would have happened if Peanuts had been continued after Schulz’s death. I guess, however, things change and time marches on. And maybe I’m a little envious of a working cartoonist.”
Other strips have changed hands and changed the look and feel, which sort of makes it the cartoonists’ own. In the beginning, Ernie Bushmiller took Fritzi Ritz over from Larry Whittington, so there right there it shows that a person can take over a feature and really put their stamp on it.
Anyway, the new Nancy starts in January, we’ll have to check it out.
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I came upon this new show (new to me), called “Under the Vines“. It’s a drama-comedy from New Zealand. It just started showing on one of our PBS channels here in Miami, but I think it’s a few years old.
I had seen the commercial and it looked good, almost a Green Acres sort of thing – a fish out of water plot line.
Two people, a step daughter and a nephew inherit a vineyard. They don’t know each other and are told they are “sole heirs” of the vineyard.
To make a long story short, they meet each other and find out the quandry, of both being owners, but they end up both wanting to sell the place and get out asap. But it’s such a charming place, that by the end of episode one, they stay and attempt to work it out, and therein lies the show. I’ve only seen the one episode, but I love it.
I guess there are not many actors in New Zealand because the actors seem to move from show to show. One guy, Pana Hema-Taylor, I’ve seen on “Under the Vines”, “800 Words” and “Brokenwood Mysteries.” He has small parts on every show, and I laugh whenever I see him pop up. It’s almost a requisite to have him on a show based in New Zealand.
Anyway, I got the idea for this cartoon from the show. When the barrister told the characters they were the “sole heir” of the vineyard, the cartoon is what popped into my head.
In my head, my cartoon had a different scene – they were in a lawyers office and were being read the will, but it ended up being this.
I like to put little Easter eggs in my cartoons – things that regular fans would notice.
I’ve used scenery from other cartoons over, sort of like they do in tv and movies – just redressing the scene and using the same sets. And I’ve used the same people at times – just giving them different dialogue.
In this case, you can see the storefront, redressed, and used in two cartoons.
Sure, I can easily redraw the scene, but I think it’s fun to do this, just to give the audience something to enjoy if they find the “Easter egg.”
Here’s a quick little video of the single panel cartoon. There’s no sound.
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This cartoon ran last week and it got a lot of interest – from people who remember this and from those who think it’s an exaggeration.
Unfortunately, it was a thing – when we were kids, we had orange shag carpet all over the house. Our nextdoor neighbors had red. I can also remember houses having green. Weird.
And kitchens were harvest gold or green – green appliances, etc. We had harvest gold. The odd part is that our house was built from scratch and my parents chose the styles and colors – so that was what was chosen – that was the style.
The house was redone after Hurricane Andrew’s wrath in 1992 and it’s being renovated right now. My two brothers are contractors, and they are handling the job. I’ve seen photos and it seems like they knocked the whole inside of the house down – kitchens, bathrooms, walls, and so much more.
I haven’t been by, because I want to be surprised at the finished product. I’ve seen the work they do, so I know it will be a modern (for today) white kitchen, all open concept, with a large island in the middle, which of course will be old and haggard in 20 years and of course, out of style; but it will be the utmost in fashion today.
The 1970s were a unique decade in terms of cultural, technological, and social change. Some things that were common then are either obsolete, outdated, or have evolved in some way.
Here are a few things from the ’70s that are no longer around or have been replaced along with brightly colored shag carpet:
Some of these items are still fondly remembered in pop culture, while others are almost completely forgotten.
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I saw this old comic strip recently, it’s “They’ll Do It Every Time.” It’s from the 1940s.
This reminded me of me because I never wanted to go anywhere – to weddings, parties, communions, whatever, and my mother would always say to me, “You always say you don’t want to go, and then you’re the last one to leave.” And she was right, I did it every time.
I remember a few years back I was at a Chamber of Commerce event and at the end, I was sitting at a table with three other people, and as we were talking the restaurant staff was taking the table cloth off the table, telling us they needed to get ready for the dinner service, so we were basically pushed out.
One of the people with us was a friend named Robert, who is no longer with us, he was a nice guy. As we exited the building, I can remember him looking down at my shoes and saying, “Nice set of wheels!” Which I guess meant he liked the shoes. I had never heard that expression before, but it always stayed with me.
“They’ll Do It Every Time,” the comic panel is one of the ones I enjoyed as a kid. I was surprised to read recently that it ran new until 2008; it started in 1929.
I also liked “Hazel,” and “Our Boarding House” and so many single panel cartoons, which is why I probably do my Tomversation single panel cartoon today.
I see also old “Our Boarding House” cartoons posted daily on Facebook and I often watch the old Hazel tv show reruns.
While the cartoon above is not single panel, most of the time “They’ll Do It Every Time” was single panel.
I like the fact that single panel cartoons have to happen in that one panel. Of course, “The Far Side” was the best when I was growing up. I loved seeing that in the newspaper every day.
While I don’t have to be limited to a single panel or a single size since I’m publishing online and I could fill up a whole page with multi-panels if I wanted, I do enjoy having the one size – 5″ x 5″ where I have to fit it all in.
Once in awhile I do break it up, as I did with this one last week, but it’s very rarely that that happens. I like to keep it in the one panel.
There are many single panel cartoons that I don’t like, simply because I don’t enjoy them, so it’s not that every single one is enjoyable to me. But the format is what attracts me to it.
New Tomversation tees are available at the Etsy shop. They come in four colors, many sizes. Only available in the U.S. at the moment. With free shipping on every order. Here’s the link to the shop.
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I got my tickets for New York Comic Con (NYCC) yesterday.
It’s a whole process. I no longer get press passes after 15 years of that, so I have to purchase the tickets now and wait in line, online, like everyone else.
You have to be fan verified, and get a time and date to get on and buy the tickets. Mine was 10 am Sunday morning, the first thing, the first group, but of course if you get online at that very moment, there is a long wait to get your access to the tickets. My wait was 20 minutes, not that bad.
Who are these people that are always there, first in line? In person, you see them in tents, camping outside venues for a week to buy something like an Nintendo Switch or concert tickets.
By the way, NYCC is Oct. 9-12, and the tickets sell out fast.
For so many years, I wrote for the Huffington Post and other publications and I received press passes, which made me feel important, but best of all, I didn’t have to wait in any lines and I had access to everything for all four days.
To be honest, I think I outgrew the whole thing, but since I’m a cartoonist, I feel it’s my duty to go, but it seems that Comic Cons have gone from being comic oriented, to movies, games and tv, which make up the bulk of it all.
One of my cousins works for a company that sells original cartoon art. His company has a booth at the cons and last year when I finally found his booth, he was telling me how the actual comics are all confined to a small area now, almost being forced out of their namesake event. I can’t even find the cartoon syndicates now. I’m not sure they show up anymore.
The best part of course is the cosplay, you know, people dressed up as their favorite tv and movie characters. But I do like to mix and mingle with other cartoonists and organizations. I could have sat and worked the National Cartoonists Society booth, but I declined. I’m not sure why, that way I would have free access and get to meet many of my peers. Maybe next year.
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