By the Comics Curmudgeon
If Carl Jung were alive today, he’d see political cartoons as a shortcut into our collective subconscious. Those brave few Americans who continue to read newspapers have the honor or seeing the darkest, foulest recesses of the human mind barfed out daily onto editorial pages everywhere. In order to fulfill their appointed role of shocking a jaded nation, the cartoonists select only the most depraved, taboo-violating subjects for their art. What we’re trying to say is that this week’s cartoons are all about awful stuff, so brace yourself before you click the clicky and see the things in store for you. MORE »

By the Comics Curmudgeon
Once every a generation or so, it’s important that our comfortable lives are shaken up, so that we can take stock and figure out what’s really important. Sure, economic disruptions are painful, but they can also herald a return to self-reliance and old-fashioned, time-tested values. Unfortunately, our current economic crisis passed that point weeks ago, so now you’re sort of just rubbing it in, Cold Dead Hand of Adam Smith. We promise to stop with the credit cards and the adjustable rate mortgages, OK? Just give us our fucking 401Ks back. Sadly, it appears that our political leaders will be forced to take truly drastic steps to stop our planet from being transformed into a vast hobo jungle. MORE »

Judd Gregg, a Republican senator from New Hampshire who was going to be Barack Obama’s secretary of commerce before he remembered that had already mortgaged his balls to Mitch McConnell, has fallen prey to another one of the president’s dastardly bipartisan schemes. He has accepted an invitation to attend some sort of “fiscal responsibility summit” next week. Oh noes! MORE »

Oh hi, people. This is your holiday editor of the day, wishing you good seasons &c. It is too bad your editor’s fucking plane can’t get to Portland (Oregon), ever, so he is back home again, where there is also a new blizzard, and many feet of tragic snow! Hope your holiday travels worked out a little bit better, and if not, well, that’s why motherfuckin’ baby jesus invented alcohol and pills and the marijuana. [STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL MYSTERY LINK]

By the Comics Curmudgeon
Hello, everyone! Did you miss Cartoon Violence, last Friday, when you were reading the Internets when you should have been celebrating the day after Thanksgiving by crushing innocent Wal-Mart temp workers to death? You were no doubt alone in the house as you sat in front of your computer screen, your Cheeto-stained fingers typing out the addresses of various porn sites, so you were probably naked. Because this week is a “work week” (for those of you who still have jobs), you’re probably not naked now. But guess who is naked! That’s right: various persons in cartoons! MORE »

By the Comics Curmudgeon

Hey everybody, are you enjoying the total implosion of late-stage capitalism? Are you watching your 401K lose digits by the day? Are you concerned that George W. Bush’s drunken meandering bullshit might not actually turn this thing around? Are you wondering, in other words, what the future post-apocalyptic meltdown will look like? Fortunately, there is an entire class of people whose job it is to imagine the most extreme scenarios, and depict them, through art, for us to look at in horror. I’m talking of course about political cartoonists! Join us for a guided tour of the hellscape, after the jump. MORE »

By the Comics Curmudgeon
Barack Obama’s campaign team has the right idea when it comes to combating “smears” from his nefarious opponents! We’ve no business offering suggestions to the people who vanquished Team Clinton, but perhaps that Web page could have been even better if it featured whimsical drawings that illustrate the smear-truth dichotomy. That’s right, we’re talking about cartoons! Check ‘em out, after the jump. MORE »

Each week, the Comics Curmudgeon helps explain Today’s Cartoons.

Welcome to our new confusing, post-Super Tuesday world! Since Republicans are good at falling into line once the true alpha male is revealed, they seem to have their plan figured out, while the Democrats, with their rampant overthinking and argumentativeness, are beginning to realize that they’ll be processing about who should get the nomination for months and months and months. Is there an alternative to Howard Dean choosing a name out of a hat? As ever, our political cartoonists are here to help. The white lady or the black fellow? Find out how we can pick, after the jump. MORE »

If Americans know one thing about the Foreigns (and sometimes that’s a near thing), it’s that they live in Foreign countries, which, obviously, are hellholes of awfulness and despair. Guess if they didn’t want to be crapped on day and night by a malevolent universe, they should have lived in America! This week, the Foreigns introduces you to some happenings overseas that we can safely laugh at only because they only happen to Foreign types, but otherwise they’d be pretty depressing. MORE »

For the last glorious five years, the percentage of hungry Americans has been steadily on the rise: 12% of this country’s population went without food at some point in the previous year, according to the USDA. That’s 36 million people, or the same number of people who live in California, the most populous state. MORE »

Demonstrating once again the old “anything new media can do I can do better” spirit, the New York Times gave restaurant critic Frank Bruni a blog. And, because they want to get back on Jay Rosen’s good side, they have comments. Comments which have already proved their value as a means of “extending the conversation” or whatever the hell blogs are supposed to do. To wit: MORE »