When I think of all the people (and one dog) I would like to spend Christmas with, Charles M. Schulz’s endearingly insightful band of characters from Peanuts comes fairly close to the top of the list. (Dear family and close friends, please rest assured you are at the top Continue Reading
Comics
Weekend pop art: The Peanuts gang channel their inner Indiana Jones characters
I have always thought there is nothing that the Peanuts gang cannot do. Flying Sopwith Camels in dog fights with the Red Baron, waiting all night in a pumpkin field for the Great Pumpkin to arrive, and god bless you Charlie Brown, chasing after The Little Red-Haired Girl, and Continue Reading
For the love of Mooch and Earl: Happy 20th Anniversary MUTTS!
MOOCH: “Earl, can you tell me a shtory?” EARL: “Okay. Once upon a time …” MOOCH: “Uh … I’ve heard that one.” So shhh-stop me if you’ve heard this one … A mostly non-anthropomorphic cat and dog (they can talk but largely act like animals), let’s call them Mooch and Continue Reading
Stories in small boxes #2: Pearls Before Swine
You get the impression that Stephan Pastis, one time insurance claims litigator and now irreverently funny and über-successful cartoonist of hit comic strip Pearls Before Swine, is the kind of man who doesn’t like to play it safe. Well, not any longer, anyway. Realising after one year of law Continue Reading
Bye bye newspapers, hello web: Bill Watterson debuts first cartoon in 19 years for Stripped
Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts and Mutts aside, is pretty much my favourite comic strip of all time. Drawn by the enigmatic almost J D Salinger-esque Bill Watterson, who has been the subject of a recent movie and book, both of which were aimed at finding out more about the Continue Reading
That’s some original artwork you have there, Charlie Brown
Along with tens of millions of people worldwide, I am a lifelong, diehard Peanuts fan. Some of my earliest memories are of buying the paperback editions of Peanuts collection from the local second-hand store for 10 and 20c each and settling back into the delightful world of Charlie Brown Continue Reading
“Dear Mr Watterson” – “Calvin and Hobbes” gets the documentary treatment
I have loved comic strips for the longest time. While Peanuts is my first great love, and has been joined my affections in recent years by such superlative strips as Pearls Before Swine, Get Fuzzy, and the insightful and adorable artistic triumph that is Patrick McDonnell’s Mutts, it is Continue Reading
Weekend pop art #3: What lies beneath the pop culture veneer?
Roaming across one of the most interesting, fun sites on the internet recently, Flavorewire.com, I came across a piece by Johnny Otis on the highly imaginative one-of-a-kind work of Brooklyn-based Jason Feeny, whose artistic modus operandi is to see, in the words of Otis, “what lies beneath the shiny veneer Continue Reading
You’ve made my life wonderful, Charlie Brown
One of the many joys of being so connected to so much information these days is that you come across amazing articles from all kinds of sources that may never have come your way otherwise. Such was the case with this wonderful look at the way Charlie Brown and Continue Reading
Comics: “Cheeky Weekly”
Like most kids, I got into comics in a big way growing up. But unlike most kids in Australia, instead of avidly following the adventures of Spiderman and Batman, I gravitated mainly to British comic books that celebrated a very idiosyncratic type of English humour. It obviously struck a Continue Reading