Pearls before Swine Comic

Yes, we are VERY serious.

Comics: Zits

Awww...

Check out today's (Feb. 1, 2009) Zits comic strip.

Inside the Teenage Brain

Just finished watching the PBS Frontline program Inside the Teenage Brain. This should be required viewing for parents, junior high, middle school, and high school teachers, principals, school board members. If you missed it you can watch it online here.

Cartoonist, Jim Borgman added commentary along with strips from his true-to-life comic strip, Zits.

Foxtrot

Bill Amend is only doing one strip per week nowadays but this Sunday's (Nov. 25) was excellent for a children's lit tie-in. Brilliant, again.

Basal Readers...er ...Comics

This new series called Toon Comics, described in this Publishers Weekly article, sounds very interesting. Françoise Mouly (New Yorker art director and wife of cartoonist Art Spiegelman) is behind the effort.

“Comics are the gateway to literacy for young kids,” said Mouly who expects Toon Books to transform books for early readers the same way RAW influenced indie comics. “RAW showed that comics can be taken seriously,” she said. Little Lit, a comics line for older kids launched by Mouly and Spiegelman in 2000, “was an intermediate step using the RAW model. Now there are more comics for kids 10–12 years old but not for very young kids.”

Alas: Foxtrot

My standard of living takes another hit today as I learn that Bill Amend will cease daily publication of his comic strip, Foxtrot, on Dec. 30. He will continue a Sunday strip.

"After spending close to half of my life writing and drawing FoxTrot cartoons, I think it's time I got out of the house and tried some new things," he said in a statement. "I love cartooning, and I absolutely want to continue doing the strip, just not at the current all-consuming pace."

I love this comic strip. The whole Fox family in their daily nuttines reflects daily life in MY family.

When The Fellowship of the Ring movie was on the horizon, Jason donned his hobbit cloak and waited in line to buy tickets. I always remember the Sunday strip of the Lord of the Rings Christmas tree. You gotta love a guy who titles one of his books, Orlando Bloom Has Ruined Everything.

I will look forward to Sundays in 2007.