Top Ten Comics from Sunday, Jan. 25th Washington Post: Tough Competition

Greetings to our blog readers in New Zealand, France and Lithuania.

For the Sunday, Jan.5th edition of "The Washington Post," our favorite comic strip was "Brewster Rockit: Space Guy," followed by "Sherman's Lagoon" and the Danish import "WUMO," which made fun of pug dogs.

We don't have images of pugs, but we do have these: 1) "The Jetsons" (for "Brewster Rockit," which is a satirical science fiction comic strip); 2) the late Freddie Mercury of Queen (for "Knight Life," in which cartoonist Keith Knight admits that he can't get "Bohemian Rhapsody" out of his skull" and 3) a hermit crab for "Sherman's Lagoon."


Here is our top ten:

1) Brewster Rockit: Space Guy

2) Sherman's Lagoon

3) WUMO

4) Knight Life

5) Reply All

6) Doonesbury

7) Lio

8) Dustin

9) Speed Bump

10) Prickly City

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/ (a comic strip blog from "The Washington Post" from Michael Cavna)

http://comicskingdom.com/

http://www.gocomics.com/explore/comics

Sunday Comics Grand-Slam (3 of 4): Pickup Lines for Satan

This week, we have a special surprise as we profile our top ten favorite comic strips from "The Richmond Times-Dispatch," not one of the two regular newspapers we profile in our weekly comic strips survey.

Our favorite comic strip of the week is "Pardon My Planet," a cutting edge single panel comic strip, along the lines of "The Far Side" and "Rhymes with Orange," which had the devil trying to pick up a young blonde woman in a strip which evoked the famous Edward Hopper painting "Nighthawks," with James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe.

The break-our comic strip "Dustin," which also runs in "The Washington Post" features the title character having a discussion with his girlfriend over who said a famous quote; the strip is made funnier by the fact that Dustin has an iPhone which can verify his or her argument.

"Mark Trail," an always informative strip, talked about the lifestyles of bears in the wild, and the reader learns that a grizzly bear can get up to 1,100 pounds as an adult! These creatures which are commonly found in Alaska were recently videoed by a very brave photographer and the magazine "Grit" showed the taken footage, which reminded us of the Werner Herzog documentary "Grizzly Man."

Lastly, "Funky Winkerbean" revolved around a family vacation to the beach which included the family dog (yeah, that's the reason for our image of Astro the Dog from "The Jetsons") which seems quite suitable as (to our memory) the comic is also found in "The Myrtle Beach Sun-News," the local paper for Myrtle Beach, SC.

Here is our top ten:

1. Pardon My Planet

2. Dustin

3. Doonesbury

4. Foxtrot

5. Mark Trail

6. Funky Winkerbean

7. Rhymes with Orange

8. Get Fuzzy

9. Dilbert

10. Grin and Bear It

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/

http://www.timesdispatch.com

http://www.gocomics.com/marktrail

http://www.alaskamagazine.com

http://www.grit.com

Best Comic Strips from King Features' Web Page: We Love Edison Lee

This image is in association with the comic strip "Bleeker," about a robot dog (no, not Astro from "The Jetsons") which revolved around a bouncing basketball, but our comic strip of the week is "The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee."

Here is a look at our ten favorite comic strips from the Kings Features web site:

1. The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee

2. Deflocked

3. Bleeker

4. Retail

5. Arctic Circle

6. Between Friends

7. Tina's Groove

8. Sherman's Lagoon

9. Dustin

10. Edge City

PS: Kudos to the North Carolina Central Eagles. The other school in Durham, NC, (for those of you in Estonia, Duke University is that 'other school') won their regular season conference title with their 15th straight win. The Eagles had a home win last night over Savannah State 64-57 (OT). The team was lead in scoring by Jordan Parks and Jeremy Ingram, who scored 17 points each.


http://www.nccueaglepride.com

http://www.edisonlee.net/

http://deflocked.com/

http://bleekercomics.com/

Silly Photo to Fill Space- A Day Without Shoes 2013

Today is the one day of the year where George Jetson can act like Fred Flintstone and go into work barefoot to recognize the plight of starving children in Honduras and Zimbabwe, but we imagine Cosmo Spacely would not appreciate the gesture, as it is 'One Day Without Shoes' Day.

Of course, for those of you who actually reside in Honduras and Zimbabwe, we should point out that we are making references to two vintage American cartoons of yesteryear: "The Flintstones" and "The Jetsons."

But, since the world is literally becoming a smaller place, we expect many of you in Honduras and Zimbabwe- hopefully all of you have at least one pair of shoes, are familiar with those animated entities.

We do appreciate the cause, but since one of us here had a tetanus scare as a child for walking barefoot and stepping on a nail, we are not personally participating in this global cause/event today.

And, we hope you like this image of two barefoot lovers in the rain, which would also be great for a community theatre production of Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park;" it was surprisingly tough to find a great photograph for this entry!

Links:

http://www.onedaywithoutshoes.com

The Best Films of 2012 (in my view)

Here are our list of our 20 favorite films that were released in our market place in the United States (we are a smaller city than New York or Los Angeles); let's jump in the pool:


1. "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia"

2. "We Need to Talk About Kevin"

3. "Jiro:Dreams of Sushi"

4. "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"

5. "Silver Linings Playbook"

6. "Zero Dark Thirty" (first image)

7. "Argo"

8. "A Separation" (Iran)

9. "Django Unchained"

10. "The Kid with a Bike" (France; second image)

11. "Pina"

12. "Beasts of the Southern Wild"

13. "The Dark Knight Rises"

14. "Damsels in Distress"

15. "Robot and Frank"

16. "Skyfall"

17. "Arbitrage"

18. "Moonrise Kingdom"

19. "The Master"

20. "Haywire"

Happy Birthday to the Jetsons

"The Jetsons," a very popular space-age cartoon debuted on Sept. 22, 1962; surprisingly, the original series (it was revived in the 1980s) only lasted 24 episodes. The series was shown around the world, and during the two years I lived in Turkey as a child (1977-79) on the TRT (Turkish Radio and Television) where the show was known as "Jetgiller."

We are featuring George Jetson's unyielding boss Cosmo S. Sprockets, voiced by the great Mel Blanc (1908-1989) who is best-known as the voice of Bugs Bunny. Another voice legend Daws Butler (1916-1988) provided the voice for George's Son Elroy; Butler also voiced Huckleberry Hound
and Yogi Bear.

The show is also memorable for a variety of supporting characters, including Astro the dog and Rosie the Robot. Some interesting trivia from the show: Astro originally belonged to the Gottrockets family and the phone number for the Jetson family was VENUS-1234. The show was set 100 years into the future in 2062, which if, of course, now 50 years into the future.

For more on "The Jetsons," visit our sister blog at: http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com

Other fan sites for "The Jetsons:"

http://www.cybercomm.nl/~ivo/

http://timeliketoons.tripod.com/new_jetsons_fan.htm