News
December 16th, 2010 | Posted in General
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6w0r-ScEG4[/youtube] This video has really been making the rounds on the Interwebby. Before anyone cries foul over the ‘dark’ nature of the clip, go rent and watch “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”. Not only is it an underrated movie, but the climatic assassination/death scene in it is what this clip parodies. Michael Cavna of the excellent Comics Riffs blog on Washingtonpost.com interviews animator and creator of the short Edmund Earle. READ MORE
December 10th, 2010 | Posted in News
Once again, the National Cartoonists Society Foundation will soon be bestowing some lucky and talented young student of cartooning the Jay Kennedy Memorial Scholarship, an award of both prestige and plenty of dough for the recipient’s college education in memory of the late King Features cartoon editor: From the NCSF Website: Jay Kennedy Scholarship The annual Jay Kennedy Scholarship, in memory of the late King Features editor, was funded by an initial $100,000 grant from the Hearst Foundation/King Features Syndicate and additional generous donations from Jerry Scott, Jim Borgman, Patrick McDonnell and many other prominent cartoonists. Submissions are adjudicated by a panel of top cartoonists… READ MORE
December 7th, 2010 | Posted in News
So, last week I posted about how my USO trip coincided with two other events I would have considered attending: the Australian Cartoonists Association’s Stanley Awards and the International Society of Caricature Artists’ annual Convention and Competition. At that time I posted the results of the ACA’s Stanley awards, but I still haven’t posted the results of the exhaustive ISCA competition… so here you go. If you aren’t an ISCA member or not into the live caricature scene, these names might not mean a lot to you, but these represent some incredibly talented folks who are all well deserving of recognition for their work: The… READ MORE
November 30th, 2010 | Posted in News
As rewarding and fun as my USO trip to Afghanistan with a bunch of other National Cartoonist Society cartoonists was, it happened to come at a time that caused me to miss out on two other cartooning/caricature events. One was the International Society of Caricature Artists‘ annual convention and competition, which happened Nov. 7th-12th in Las Vegas. The other was the Australian Cartoonists Association‘s Stanley Awards weekend, which this year was held in Melbourne. Last year I was one of the guest speakers at the Stanleys, and had an outstanding time meeting a lot of wonderful and talented Aussie cartoonists as well as getting to… READ MORE
November 23rd, 2010 | Posted in News
About this time last year I conducted “The Great Art Blowout”, where I sold some 60 or so pieces of artwork I did for various projects at dirt cheap prices just to clean out my flat files in my remodeled studio. That sale went so well I threatened to do it again in 2010. Well, 2010 is almost toast, so I have combed through my overflowing flat files again to bring you another Great Art Blowout… but this time it’s nothing but published artwork from the pages of MAD Magazine! That’s right! This is your opportunity to own an actual piece of artwork from the… READ MORE
November 18th, 2010 | Posted in News
This was printed up as a USO Autograph Card for giving out on tour Visting FOBs NCS Osama Watch– No sighting. Pastis claiming 65% of any reward if we spot him Originally each group was supposed to visit up to 6 forward operating bases (FOBs) over the three days we were spending in the Kandahar area, but due to the flight snafus we were only scheduled to visit two each. Considering how long it took us to actually GET to Afghanistan it was really too bad our time there was so short that we could’t visit more sites, but co-ordinating and promoting our visits were… READ MORE
November 16th, 2010 | Posted in News
The view from one of the few windows in the C-17 Kandahar, Afghanistan One of the things that the U.S. Military and the USO take seriously on these tours is security, so we were not informed of any of our actual destinations until we were ready to depart. Therefore none of us knew until the tour commenced that we were headed to Kandahar, the second largest city in Afghanistan (after Kabul) and the location of the Kandahar Airfielf (KAF) the largest military base in the southern part of the country and second largest in Afghanistan after Bagram. It’s also a NATO base, with 27 nations… READ MORE
November 15th, 2010 | Posted in News
Click for a closer look: L to R: Stephan Pastis, Mike Luchovich, Jeff Keane, Rick Kirkman, Garry Trudeau and myself in Kandahar, Afghanistan Some Background The annual member business meeting of the National Cartoonists Society takes place early on Saturday morning at each NCS Reuben Awards weekend, and it’s usually filled with equal parts routine and contention… but every once and a while something is brought up that ends up being something special. At the meeting in 2007 in Orlando, cartoonist Jeff Bacon stood up and what he had to say started something very special. Jeff is a retired Navy captain and the creator of… READ MORE
