Reuben Awards

So, in about 30 seconds today, I kind of answered my own question about the Reuben Awards. Here is the National Cartoonist Society's site on the topic. One of the fascinating things that I'm going to have to take more time to check out is the members list where many famous cartoonists have written and illustrated short autobibilographical blurbs.

The 2004 awards were only handed out this last May so I have a long wait for the 2005 awards. Also I notice that awards are given out for more than just cartooning. Someone received the Greeting Card award, another the Comic Book award. This is interesting: someone won the Oustanding Advertising Illustration award. I figured there could be a whole awards show dedicated to Advertising.

Brad Bird won for feature animation which is odd because that's not really cartooning; I mean he directed The Incredibles, a computer animated movie. Oh well, I liked that movie so much that I wished he earned more awards for it. Also I'm noticing that they distinguish between Cartoonist of the Year and Outstanding Newspaper Strip which seems odd to me since all the nominees for both categories are cartoonists that draw newspspaer comics.

Oh and this is exciting. I just discovered a new cool comic strip in my seach through the nominees. Dan Coverly writes a one panel strip called Speed Bump whose three strips I have found so far have made me laugh. Here's the first one I found. I'm off now to see if his strips appear on either comics.com or ucomics.com.

I edited this layout today from the templete given by blogger. Yes it has some kinks and some big remnents from what it used to be but hopefully those'll be gone soon. I also want to add clips of comics down both sides.

Anyway I realized that I had forgotten to mention the Reuben Awards. So I found the Wikipedia website on the subject to find that it was rather incomplete. I personally don't know much about them other than that they are like the Oscars for cartoonists. If anyone has more information about them, I'd like to know.

Also, Pat Brady, creator of the adorable comic strip Rose is Rose, won for the year 2004. However, clicking on his name leads to a listing for Pat Brady, Roy Rogers' sidekick. I'm too new to Wikipedia to really know how to fix this but I have seen sites where people of the same name get broken up into seperate pages. If someone knows more, let me know. If not, I'll probably figure it out this weekend.

Here is the strip mentioned in the last post. It is my favorite single strip of all time. Ironically, it never solicited a laugh from me (and I laugh at a lot of things). What it did do, however, was change the way I look at life. Thank you Bill Watterson.

I guess an introduction post is pretty obligatory, but to be honest I doubt anyone's going to read this stuff. I created this blog for two reasons: 1) Because livejournal.com was getting so social oriented. I got tired of making posts about the mundane details of my day and dealing with the friends who actually got angry when I didn't post. 2) I wanted to share my love of comic strips with all the random people out there who might be interested, or, God willing, share back the same love.

To my friends who know me, it's no secret that my favorite comic strip of all time is Calvin & Hobbes. And actually, that should be pretty obvious to anyone who is also a comic strip fan. It has surprised me somewhat that when I find other people who love comic strips and they rank their favorites, Calvin & Hobbes and Far Side are always, ALWAYS, in the top 5 and almost always the top two in order. Far Side is indeed my second favorite but not by any big margin. Once you go below Calvin & Hobbes, all my other favorites are so close together that even I'm not going to try and sort them out.

Actually, that's a copout. In truth, I just don't want to turn this blog into a ranking system. I also don't want readers to write me complaining, "Hey, what moron thinks Sherman's Lagoon is better than Boondocks? Boondocks rules." And yes, Boondocks does indeed rule (though you might start hearing some complaints in later posts about its recent decline; I have to check into this further), but it occupies a different niche in the funnies than any other strip and therefore should not be compared with other strips.

In fact, That's how I feel about most strips today. You can't compare Blondie and Doonesbury on virtually any level, but they both genius en their own regard. And for those out there who would immediately place Doonesbury above Blondie because you like irreverence, political humor, and crassness, I would just like to point out that Blondie is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year and you need to learn some God Damn respect. I mean the fact that the jokes are still fresh is a true testament to its legacy. It's still being written by the original creator's son Dean Young (as well as Stan Drake) and has international circulation in over 2000 newspapers.

Ok, so that last line isn't me talking. I have my book here, 100 years of American Newspaper Comics: An Illustraded Encyclopedia edited by Maurice Horn. I also have learned tons of stuff from Wikipedia. Nothing excites me more than learning about a new thing so if anyone has questions about a comic strip I talk about, I might not know all the answers but dang nab it I'll find out.

Well, that's my rant for now. I was going to leave you with my favorite single strip of all time but I still have to find out how to post pictures on this blog. Not to mention that I don't want the lawyers from Universal Press Syndicate to send me a letter threatening litigation. I'll be back when I know more.