Cartoonist

This bulletin just in.Next month Blondie Bumstead, wife of Dagwood Bumstead and mother of Alexander and Cookie Bumstead, will take a job outside the home.In the World of Comics, this is big news.King Features Syndicate Group, which distributes the strip to more than 2,000 newspapers -- including The Sunday Sun and The Evening Sun -- describes Blondie's decision to enter the workplace as "the biggest thing to happen to an American icon since Superman got married."It's certainly a profound change in her lifestyle.

The Sun is welcoming back an old friend to its opinion pages: cartoonist Kevin “KAL” Kallaugher.  He'll bring his sharp wit and inimitable style to a weekly take on the news in Maryland and beyond. Next Sunday, he'll begin with a  KAL's-eye view of the State House. In the meantime, enjoy an archive of some of his previous work for The Sun and a video in which the artist describes his exploits of the last six years as a globe-trotting cartoonist.

Garry Trudeau's Sunday Doonesbury cartoon which excoriated Newt Gingrich went way beyond the pale! It was not only disgustingly partisan, it was cruelly subjective. I guess there's a slim-to-none chance of seeing a similar cartoon slamming President Barack Obama. How could there be when our illustrious, squeaky-clean president has no baggage? Thanks to the ever-compliant media in Mr. Obama's back pocket, he has never been vetted, which makes the playing field quite unequal, don't you think?

Garry Trudeau's Sunday Doonesbury cartoon which excoriated Newt Gingrich went way beyond the pale! It was not only disgustingly partisan, it was cruelly subjective. I guess there's a slim-to-none chance of seeing a similar cartoon slamming President Barack Obama. How could there be when our illustrious, squeaky-clean president has no baggage? Thanks to the ever-compliant media in Mr. Obama's back pocket, he has never been vetted, which makes the playing field quite unequal, don't you think?

News reports this month about the return next season of a slightly altered Oriole bird to players' caps for the first time since 1992 brought to mind its creator, longtime Baltimore Sun cartoonist James Adams Hartzell, who introduced the original bird in 1954. Gone is the "ornithologically correct bird" in favor of the cartoon one, The Sun reported. Hartzell's bird was a Baltimore tradition beginning in 1954, and from 1966 until its retirement in 1979 was a front-page feature of The Sun during baseball season.

"She's the most capricious editor I've ever worked with, in magazines and books, and I've worked in the underground press where there were cokeheads for editors."So says Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman, author of "Maus," in Jay Stowe's compelling Page 1 story in this week's New York Observer about New Yorker editor Tina Brown. Ms. Brown killed an O. J. cover that she insisted Mr. Spiegelman come up with at the last minute. Harvard professor Henry Louis (Skip) Gates, the New Yorker black culture contributor, assisted on the kill when Ms. Brown faxed him Mr. Spiegelman's image for the cover and he found it offensive.

Cover To Cover Bookstore Cafe will present cartoonist Barbara Brandon at 3 p.m. Sunday at 7284 Cradlerock Way.Ms. Brandon, the only African-American female cartoonist to be nationally syndicated, is the author of "Where I'm Coming From."Her comic strip, of the same name, is a collection of fictional characters based on Ms. Brandon and her friends exploring life and relationships.Information: 381-9200.POLICE*ings Contrivance: 9900 block of Guilford Road: Someone kicked in a front door between 7:20 a.m. and 4:55 p.m. Wednesday, and stole an undisclosed amount of cash.

A nationally known cartoonist and an expert in bilingual education will be the featured speakers during Hispanic Heritage Month at McDaniel College in Westminster. Co-sponsored by the McDaniel College Hispanic/Latino Alliance and the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the campus celebration that started Sunday and runs through Oct. 15 also features exhibits in Decker College Center. Hector Cantu, co-creator and writer of the newspaper comic strip "Baldo," takes the podium at 7 o'clock tonight in Baker Memorial Chapel.

Thomas F. Flannery, retired editorial cartoonist for The Sun and The Evening Sun whose trenchant yet subtle pen-and-ink cartoons made him a local institution, died in his sleep yesterday morning at his North Baltimore home. He was 79.For more than 30 years, the question, "Have you seen Flannery today?" was a frequent comment from readers of The Sunpapers."Tom was a wonderful man to work with," said Joseph R. L. Sterne, retired editorial page editor of The Sun. "He had a touch of Irish whimsy in him. He had a wonderfully sardonic outlook on life.

In tribute to Peanuts cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, who lived and worked in Santa Rosa, Calif., for four decades, the city has painted the town Brown. Fifty-five large sculptures of Charlie Brown stand sentry throughout Santa Rosa, offering proof that although he was a loser in love, baseball and everything else, Charlie Brown wins the game of attracting tourists. This June, after the installation of the statues, the number of people stopping in at the Santa Rosa Convention and Visitors Bureau increased by more than 50 percent to a record 6,660, said Mo Renfro, the bureau's executive director.

News reports this month about the return next season of a slightly altered Oriole bird to players' caps for the first time since 1992 brought to mind its creator, longtime Baltimore Sun cartoonist James Adams Hartzell, who introduced the original bird in 1954. Gone is the "ornithologically correct bird" in favor of the cartoon one, The Sun reported. Hartzell's bird was a Baltimore tradition beginning in 1954, and from 1966 until its retirement in 1979 was a front-page feature of The Sun during baseball season.

The Hays-Heighe House on the campus of Harford Community College is hosting a traveling exhibit featuring the cartoons and commentary of legendary Washington Post editorial cartoonist Herbert Block, who was known as "Herblock. " The exhibit, which began Friday and runs through Dec. 13, presents the late Mr. Block's perspective on such themes as the environment, education, the presidency, civil rights and democracy. One of the most honored editorial cartoonists of his time, Herblock caricatured 13 U.S. Presidents and chronicled American history from the Stock Market Crash in 1929 until his death in the fall of 2001.

Local cartoonist Michael Cotter asked the assembled youngsters at the Annapolis area library to name a big story in the news, and 13-year-old Rhaei Brown, who was sporting a Ravens jersey, couldn't utter his answer fast enough. "The lockout!" the Annapolis resident exclaimed, referring to the NFL work stoppage that recently ended. Then Rhaei created a cartoon about the lockout in which he depicted an NFL executive and a football player tugging at opposite sides of an oversized dollar bill.

Way back when I was a kid, there was a time when I seriously considered being a cartoonist. Over a span of many years, there were times when a lot of different potential careers were at the forefront of my thinking, to include astronaut, baseball player, fisheries biologist, genetics engineer, radio disc jockey, garbage truck driver, electric bass player, ship's captain (and crewman) and so on and so forth. As a result, I spent a fair amount of time reading about these various professions - back in the days when that meant going to the library because there was no such thing as an Internet - and learned a bit more about each of them than is probably healthy.

John W. McGrain, former secretary of the Baltimore County Landmarks Preservation Committee and official county historian since 1998, was an 8-year-old living in Ashburton when the world veered toward war in 1939. Reflecting on those Depression years the other day, McGrain said that by the mid-1930s, "all kids knew about the approaching war." Bubble gum packages came with "war cards depicting the Japan-China War; families gathered around the Philco in the living room to listen to Hitler's rantings on the radio."

The creator of the popular comic strip For Better or for Worse has had a change of heart - literally and figuratively - and won't be retiring after all. Lynn Johnston announced this month that, beginning Sept. 1, For Better or for Worse will be retold in a blending of repeat and new comic strips. Not long ago, Johnston, 61, had planned to retire this year and offer mostly reruns of her 29-year-old comic strip. But her life changed when she got divorced. "At this time in my life, I thought I would be on a cruise ship to Panama or the Mediterranean, retired with my Tilley hats, my sneakers.

Terry Zwigoff blames his unruly hair on a rainy Baltimore day. But the director has been similarly described in other interviews he's done while promoting his documentary movie about cult underground cartoonist Robert Crumb. His hair-raising "Crumb" opens Friday at the Charles Theater.Lamenting the journalistic fixation on his messy hair, Mr. Zwigoff comes across as a more genial version of his eternally kvetching subject. Slightly built, bearded and a tad disheveled, the 47-year-old Mr. Zwigoff is like a middle-aged poster child for casual nonconformity.

WASHINGTON - "Damn you and the likes of you to the bowels of hell, you ignorant racist bastard!" So wrote an outraged Muslim to political cartoonist Doug Marlette a few years ago after he drew a cartoon featuring the prophet Muhammad. Tens of thousands of Muslims bellowed, blogged and clogged until servers collapsed with hate mail and death threats. No cartoon - or cartoonist - would go unpunished. Here we go again. Similar passions are being expressed this week in response to another cartoon, this time on the cover of the liberal-leaning New Yorker magazine.

Hey, have you heard about this seventh-grade kid who keeps a diary? Actually, he's not a real kid, because, like, what real seventh-grader would wanna write every day? Well, unless you're text messaging, but that's not like writing. Text messaging is cool. Anyway, the kid is a boy named Greg Heffley. He's not that cool. In fact, he's kinda wimpy. He's got a big head and a stick for a body; he looks like a Blow Pop. Plus, he wears a stupid backpack the size of a microwave. He's got a mom who's a total wimp.