Laugh Tracks

Calvin, FoxTrot, Garfield on ballot for Nick Mag Comics Awards

Several of your favorite GoComics strips have been nominated in the Nickelodeon Magazine Comics Awards!

• Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson: Favorite Comic Strip
• Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes): Best Hair in Comics
• FoxTrot by Bill Amend: Favorite Comic Strip
• Garfield by Jim Davis: Favorite Comic Strip

The newly created Nickelodeon Magazine Comics Awards honor the best comic books, strips, and graphic novels for kids published across the U.S. Readers vote for their favorite comics and characters either by mailing the ballot printed the December/January 2008 issue (on sale now) or by voting online at http://www.nickmag.com/comicsawards. Ballots must be received no later than December 31, 2008. The winners will be announced in the April 2009 issue of Nickelodeon Magazine and online at nickmag.com.

Pat Oliphant is in the house!

Who was the charming gentleman who just walked by my desk? Why, the one-and-only, legendary, Pulitzer Prize-winning master of editorial cartooning himself, Pat Oliphant. Not an everyday occurence around these offices, believe it or not.

Early on during his Kansas City stop, Mr. Oliphant chatted with Matt Schofield of the Kansas City Star about making fun of the president elect.

New Comic: Garfield Minus Garfield!

Garfield Minus Garfield, the Dan Walsh webcomic that reveals just what a lonely, bizarre human being Jon Arbuckle would be without his fat feline friend, is now on GoComics.com. A few months ago, we told you about the G-G book, which features Walsh's productions along with the Jim Davis originals. We're presenting the strip online just like it's displayed in the book, with the G-G strip on top and the original Garfield strip below it. Go check it out!

VOTE!

Trudeau betting on Obama

Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau has been no stranger to controversy in his almost 40 years of cartooning, and he's raising eyebrows once again. Trudeau completed this week's Doonesbury series several weeks ago, and those strips were sent to newspapers across the country. But this week's cartoons center on an event that may or may not take place - Barack Obama winning the presidency. The election, of course, happens on Tuesday, and despite the fact that Obama has been leading in the polls, the outcome of the race remains very much in doubt.

This article from the Houston Chronicle discusses the bind some newspaper editors are finding themselves in - should they run the possibly irrelevant Obama series or a set of August reruns submitted by Universal Press as alternatives? As for Trudeau:

"From a risk-assessment viewpoint, I felt comfortable with the odds," Trudeau said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "The way I see it, if Obama wins, I'm in the flow and commenting on an extraordinary phenomenon. If he loses, there'll be such a national uproar that a blown call in a comic strip won't be much noticed. Besides, I'll be the one with the egg on my face — not the editors."