We are excited to announce that we have picked our winners! Thanks to all who took time out of their day to enter and respond. We really enjoyed reading your answers.
And now, the moment you've all been waiting for... CONGRATULATIONS to the following...
Andrew Rogas: Dark Side of the Horse. It's simple humor, while thinking outside the box at times. Whether its result being what you don't expect, or going way outside the panels of the standard strip, or the occasional animated strip, it's a nice addition to your comic strip viewing. Fun facts: Samson, the cartoonist of this strip, hails from Finland, and one of his greatest influences is Bill Watterson.
Elisabeth Wells: I've discovered many great comics through GoComics, although in the last year I would say Andertoons, Banana Triangle, and Barney & Clyde are my new favorite finds!
Joyce Herbster: Non Sequitur- The worthy successor to the late, great The Far Side.
Andres Gomez: I've always read here the Calvin and Hobbes strips, but some weeks ago I began to read Cul de Sac. It's a very fun and nice strip and now I like it a lot.
Scott Graham: Probably one of the most under appreciated strips- Domestic Abuse.
Timothy Fisher: I've used GoComics for a long time, and I love it. My favorite from the past year was when you added U.S. Acres to your lineup. I had all the books, but they were really starting to show their age. Now I can read crisp, clean, color copies every morning with the rest of my funnies. Thank You!
June Price: This year I have discovered Badlands and enjoy reading it whenever I can.
If you see your name above, please send your shipping info to rewards@gocomics.com. Winners, you have one week to send this info before your prize is forfeited.
(Apoligies for such a cruddy title-- the only other idea I had was "Pat Oliphant is better than everyone," which while true, seemed a little on-the-nose)
My first recollection of Pat Oliphant's work is pretty hazy, but distinct enough to stand out: while out to a fancy dinner with my parents when I was a little kid, my dad, eager to stoke my budding interest in illustration (or give me something to think about besides the ETA of a fresh basket of rolls) pointed out a framed sketch of, I believe, Benjamin Franklin that Oliphant drew for the establishment. I craned my neck to study the drawing-- the confident, smooth lines coming together in an economy of detail that somehow managed to be incredibly precise but remained loose enough to generate a humming energy that I'd never before considered artwork capable of containing. I didn't know it then, but it would be nearly two decades before I learned how to properly pronounce his last name. Rolls arrived, and I moved on.
There's momentum and grace to Oliphant's work seldom seen anywhere in the medium of illustration, and entirely absent elsewhere on the editorial page; a snapshot of physical motion and enormous scale that needs the readers' full attention to function properly not only as an astounding piece of art, but as a lacerating means of satire.
For an editorial cartoonist to feed the ever-hungry mouth of daily deadlines-- especially when the work depends on a context juicy enough to lampoon-- demands the artist show up with his convictions already firmly in place, lest he end up with a daily punchline that amounts to "Politics… am I right?!?!"
Virtually every editorial cartoon relies on metaphor in order to make its case, and it's here that Oliphant's brilliance really comes through. It's one thing to draw a sow with "Big Business" scrawled across its body and add a few squealing piglets labelled "Congress," or whatever, but Oliphant is able to peg his subjects with far more inventiveness, thanks both to his unparalleled artistic ability and his nuanced, long-view grasp of the issue at hand and its place within historical context. Looking over his body of work, he's rarely been on the wrong side of history.
I'd love to go on and on at even greater length about my admiration for Oliphant's gifts (and likely will at a later date), but for everyone's sake, I'll wrap up with a selection of some of his archived pieces. This time around, let's just appreciate these works from an artistic standpoint and forget our respective political affiliations (for the record, I've written in "Opus & Bill" on every ballot since 2000) as we raise a chalice of the finest India ink to Pat Oliphant's legacy and all the great work yet to come.
But, hey-- you don't have to take my word for it... go see for yourself by clicking right here!
As a fan of longtime AMU writer Roger Ebert (I highly recommend his book Life Itself: A Memoir) I was delighted to come upon a link to zenpencils.com, the web site of Gavin Aung Than, a freelance cartoonist based in Melbourne, Australia. Than adapts inspirational quotes into comic stories, and his version of one of Roger Ebert's most widely-circulated passages is excellent.
It begins "'Kindness' covers all of my political beliefs."
I'd borrow the whole strip and paste it in here, but it would occupy about three feet of vertical space -- plus you will enjoy visiting his site, where signing up for his mailing list rewards you with three free frameable prints. You can read the Ebert piece here, and more about Mr. Than here.
p.s. Oops. I just realized John Glynn beat me to it, posting about this yesterday, but I'll leave it up on the theory that other readers may be as behind as I was.
This week's pick comes from our Software Developer, Ben Kreeger: As much as I embrace yellow sticky notes, I don't think my love for them quite matches Doug Savage's. He's also far better at drawing chickens, robots, spiders, cats, bears, and blocks of tofu than I am (he's also a lot funnier than I'll ever be). I absolutely love his comic Savage Chickens. It's a schizophrenic blend of hilarious observations about irony and life, blocks of tofu trying out pick-up lines, zany mash-ups of popular culture, and chickens telling jokes about things other than chickens. I strongly encourage you to check it out — it's one of my all-time favorite comics. Oh, and he's really, really good at drawing on sticky-notes.
Every year, my family would start our vacation in Estes Park, Colo. And every year, our first stop in town would have to be the magic shop.
My brothers and I would each have $3 to spend, and we would go wild. For some reason, I almost always ended up with the "Magic Stick."
Unfortunately, I was never quite as talented as the magician in the video. And by "not as talented," I mean that I was terrible. Still, I tried every year, to the consternation of my family.
I had almost given up on my future as a magician when I came across Magic in a Minute.
These quick lessons are simple enough that even the least-talented magician can stump an audience. I plan on amazing my family with a few of these at our next gathering.
-- EAP
http://zenpencils.com/comic/118-roger-ebert-on-kindness/
Really enjoyed this quote/comic mashup by Zen Pencils. Zen Pencils is Australian cartoonist Gavin Aung Than. Gavin takes memorable quotes and adds a narrative/graphic story to them. The effect can be profoundly inspirational. Well done, Gavin.
YOU LIKE US! Major thanks to those who have "liked" GoComics on Facebook! We're feelin' the love. THANK YOU! Now, let's have a big ol' international giveaway, shall we?
Enter to win one of the SIGNED prints pictured above by leaving a comment on this blog post with an answer to the following question: What's the best GoComics strip you've discovered in the past year? In order to be counted, you must include your first and last name when leaving your comment.
This contest will end on Wednedsay, June 5th at 10am CDT. Seven winners will be selected and announced on the blog that same day.
Good luck and happy commenting!
We can't say "walk," "cheese," or "outside" at my house unless we fully intend on those things happening in the next 3 minutes.
--Julie
And some people say that marketing doesn't matter.
-- Gene
Isn't this cool? We had a blank poster and some pens set out at our post-Reubens awards party and the cartoonists just went to town! Who's on the poster? Good question! There's (clockwise from top left) Mark Tatulli (Lio, Desmond Pucket), Cathy Guisewite (Cathy), Michael MacParlane (Mac), Bill Hinds (Tank McNamara), Mark Pett (Lucky Cow, The Boy and the Airplane), Jan Eliot (Stone Soup), Ryan Pagelow (Buni), Jerry Van Amerongen (Ballard Street), Brian Bassett (Red & Rover), Jen Sorensen (editorial cartoons), Lincoln Peirce (Big Nate), Jef Mallett (Frazz), Jonathon Lemon (Rabbits Against Magic), Brad Anderson (Marmaduke), Greg Evans (Luann), and Rob Rogers (editorial cartoons).
I do admit that I don't know who drew the purple stringy thing next to Big Nate nor who drew the dog in the O of GOCOMICS, so please accept my apologies.
Then there's Mark Parisi (Off the Mark). He illustrates a wide assortment of his characters including a reference to yours truly in the upper left corner. Now, I'm just the kind of immodest, glory-seeking weirdo who doesn't care how my name gets in print as long as it gets in print, but I admit I am perplexed by Mark's illustration. Am I the cap-wearing, butterfly-attack victim on top? Or the chinless, enraged doofus with mandible issues on the bottom?
Or I am both?
That would explain my wild mood swings and frequent trips to the orthodontist.
-JG
