The Art of Circumventing Rigid Requirements

Michael Zhang in PetaPixel.

Illustration by Francis Desharnais for Le Soleil

The Washington City Post recently decided to boycott the Foo Fighters’ restrictive concert photo contract by buying photos from fans instead. Now a different paper is protesting that same contract in a much different way.

This past weekend, the Quebec newspaper Le Soleil decided to send a cartoon sketch artist to cover a Foo Fighters’ concert instead of putting a photographer in the media area.

The Bizarro Life of Cartoonist Dan Piraro

Zachary Crockett in Priceonomics.

“My first royalty check was $90 for an entire month of cartoons. That was a very disappointing day.”
~ Dan Piraro, creator of Bizarro

The comics section of most newspapers is a time machine. 

In an era where breaking stories can be shared in real-time on the Internet, it’s odd to hold a paper that literally contains yesterday’s news — and comics are no exception: reprints of old Garfield, Peanuts, and Dennis the Menace strips fill the page. The world has moved on, but in the newspaper, Garfield still loves lasagna, Lucy is still pulling away the football, and Dennis is still menacing.

Pat Oliphant, Will Eisner elected into Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame

The Society of Illustrators has inducted two cartoonists to the Hall of Fame: Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit and editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant.

P. J. O’Rourke wrote the induction to Oliphant.

"The Hirschfeld Century"

David Gordon in Theater Mania.

Al Hirschfeld works on a drawing at his desk in 2002, a year before his death.
(© Louise Kerz Hirschfeld)

For over a decade, David Leopold had a uniquely difficult, yet entirely pleasure-filled, task: He was the archivist for the prolific theatrical artist Al Hirschfeld. "I thought it would be a two-year job," Leopold says of getting hired in 1990 by the then-86-year-old Hirschfeld. The job would end up continuing for 13 years, until Hirschfeld's 2003 death at the age of 99. "It was like King Tut's Tomb," Leopold recalls. "He had everything. When I first met him and I came up to the studio, I thought he was just a big packrat. It turns out, all of the magazines and stacks of newspaper clippings all had Hirschfeld drawings [in them].

Reprint on the "National Newswatch" website (13)

On the National Newswatch website.

"Harvey Kurtzman: The Man Who Created MAD and Revolutionized Humor in America"

From Fantagraphics.

Harvey Kurtzman created MAD, and MAD revolutionized humor in America. Kurtzman's groundwork as the original editor, artist, and sole writer of MAD provided the foundation for one of the greatest publishing successes of the 20th century. But how did Kurtzman invent MAD, and why did he leave it shortly after it burst nova-like onto the American scene?

WARNING: Graphic Content

On Amazon.

Have your IDs ready and your intolerance for incendiary pictures and controversial ideas checked at the door for it’s time to step into the head of the unabashedly liberal, award-winning cartoonist and writer Dwayne Booth (aka “Mr. Fish”), where inflammatory ideas meet deep insights and something like inspiring woe, discouraging indifference and gleeful nihilism are born!