Cartoonists With Attitude

I heard the sad news this morning that Cape-Cod-based cartoonist, artist, sculptor and children’s book author Howie Schneider has passed away at the age of 77 due to complications from heart surgery.

I only got to know Howie in the past year (I don’t usually talk about it in this blog, but I work at a syndicate), and I am deeply sorry I didn’t know him longer. Howie would often send me witty hand-written notes with each batch of cartoons. I taught him how to use a scanner and PhotoShop so he could submit his comic strips to the syndicate by e-mail. He came to visit New York not long ago, and told me over sushi lunch that he preferred to send the strips by mail because it gave him an excuse to go into town and chat with his friends at the post office.

Howie always called me “sweetie,” which coming from someone else could have sounded condescending but coming from Howie was high praise and an expression of his generally sweet nature.

Sweet he may have been in person, but his cartoons had bite. The Sunshine Club, Howie’s syndicated strip about “Generation Rx,” and issues of aging, often used dark humor and touched on politics, health insurance (and the lack thereof), prescription drug costs, death, life expectancy and much more.

Here’s the PDF press release about Howie’s passing, which has lots of biographical details.

Here’s what his hometown paper, Provincetown’s Banner, wrote about Howie yesterday.

Wikipedia has some more information on Howie as well. I could not find any online examples of Unshucked, other than this book collection.

Last night in the midst of an all-nighter (Alt-weeklies have to go to press early because of next week’s holiday.) my friend Dan called me up. During our conversation, he insisted I check out Gogol Bordello, a band I’d heard of, but never actually listened to. Turns out I like them very much and their two albums gave me enough rocket sauce to power through the mind-numbing process of correcting all my squiggles in Photoshop well past my bedtime.

And from their new album Super Taranta!

Hopefully they’ll swing by the sleepy backwater of Bostontowne sometime soon.

As always, ignore this post if you don’t care, but I had to document my displeasure at yesterday’s events in the NBA. June 28, 2007: the day the Sonics died. They’re done. Over. Bye-bye. Finito.

We go from the high of the #2 pick, to trading Ray Allen for… excuse me, Wally “Whiney-Little-Bitch” Szczczerbiak (or however you spell it)?!?! The guy who, with the Timberwolves a few years ago, bitched and moaned for a whole game and stomped around like a 2 year-old, throwing the ball to the ceiling and not getting ejected… which got him booed heartily at the Key Arena for the next couple years? THAT guy?!

This was the final middle finger from Clay Bennett (the Sonics owner, not the cartoonist!) to the fans in Seattle. We said goodbye yesterday not only to Ray Allen, but to Gus Williams, Jack Sikma, Fred Brown, Gary Payton, and Shawn Kemp.

Go TrailBlazers. You’re our local team now.

It’s nice being a football/baseball town, anyway…

Following is a description of my San Diego Comic con table for their catalog. They asked my to highlight special events and special products I’d be featuring….

Shannon Wheeler will attend the Too Much Much Coffee Man table as much as he is able but he is getting old and the relentless gruel of working conventions is wearing him down. He’s hoping that one of the perks of his long run in the industry is to exploit a small cadre of fans for free labor. They will be young and attractive people so don’t allow Wheeler’s absence to influence your spending habits. Wheeler is still eager to sign your books and do sketches. If Wheeler is not around, buy something anyway. Wheeler needs the money. If you leave your purchase along with signing instructions you can return later to a fully inscribed book (or shirt or whatever). Wheeler is hoping to spend more quality time in the bar with his friends this year. If you’re desperate for face time you can always search him out there.

Thank you. Shannon is looking forward to seeing you there.

In other news, Harlan Ellison and Gary Groth have resolved their litigation issues without going to court. I know that I don’t deserve any credit but I’m going to take it anyway.

Can we curb our environmentally destructive way of waging war and forge a sustainable future for our military? I have a new on page comic in the Boston Phoenix that answers the question.

The Cartoonists With Attitude gang storms the capital on July 7 with an edgy satirical cartoon slideshow and book signing!

• When: Saturday, July 7, 2 p.m.
• Where: Borders 18th & L Streets NW Washington, DC 20006 ( 202.466.4999)
• Price: Free!

Celebrate Independence Day weekend with a slideshow and signing with edgy, groundbreaking and controversial alternative cartoonists from around the country! Be there or the torturers, bombers, ex-gays and wire-tappers win! Meet:

• Ruben Bolling (”Tom the Dancing Bug”)
• Matt Bors (”Idiot Box”)
• Keith Knight (”The K Chronicles”)
• Brian McFadden (”Big Fat Whale”)
• Stephanie McMillan (”Minimum Security”)
• August Pollak (”Some Guy With a Website”)
• Ted Rall(Silk Road to Ruin)
• Mikhaela Reid (”The Boiling Point”)
• Ben Smith (”Fighting Words”)
• Jen Sorensen (”Slowpoke”)
• Masheka Wood (”Not Just Knee Deep”)

And in case you weren’t aware, you should really read our group blog (also available as an RSS feed if you want to get all our blogs and most of our cartoons in one convenient place. We also have a not-so-frequently updated Cartoonists With Attitude MySpace page if you want to be our friend.

I am so sick of this argument. Check out her comment and my response.

For more on why this is so ridiculous, see Brownfemipower.:

This is the wonderful and self explanatory logic of racism. MLK didn’t die because a racist white man shot his ass, and the racist white man didn’t shoot MLK’s ass because he was advocating for FUCKING DESEGREGATION–MLK died because he didn’t want white folks to lose their place at the top of the food chain!! He didn’t want black folk to be JUDGING on white folk!

And lordy lord, MLK didn’t get thrown in Birmingham jail (or any of the other jails he was thrown into) because his black ass was protesting SEGREGATION (note from MLK: Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States.) he was thrown in jail because he was upset beyond all reason at how black folks were hating on white folks with their reverse racist calls for desegregation. HE WAS PROTESTING BLACK FOLKS!! Didn’t you KNOW???

I stand corrected! I must have been watching Eyes on the Prize backwards.

From the NY Times (“The Same Words, but Differing Views”)

In an unusual effort to cement his interpretation of Brown, [Roberts] quoted from the transcript of the 1952 argument in the case.

“We have one fundamental contention,�? a lawyer for the schoolchildren, Robert L. Carter, had told the court more than a half-century ago. “No state has any authority under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens.�?

Chief Justice Roberts added yesterday, “There is no ambiguity in that statement.�?

Oh yeah? Too bad for Roberts that Carter, now 90, is still alive to call bullshit:

“All that race was used for at that point in time was to deny equal opportunity to black people,�? Judge Carter said of the 1950s. “It’s to stand that argument on its head to use race the way they use is now.�?

Jack Greenberg, who worked on the Brown case for the plaintiffs and is now a law professor at Columbia, called the chief justice’s interpretation “preposterous.�?

“The plaintiffs in Brown were concerned with the marginalization and subjugation of black people,�? Professor Greenberg said. “They said you can’t consider race, but that’s how race was being used.�?

William T. Coleman Jr., another lawyer who worked on Brown, said, “The majority opinion is 100 percent wrong.�?

went to the Scott McCloud talk. Thanks Jenn for getting me the tix. I’m exhausted now - I’ll have to exposit more later.

It was a great talk. It slowed down when he read his new favorite comic. I was surprised by how good his daughter’s power point talk went.

The talk took place at the ad agency of Wieden & Kennedy. A crack up of a place.

the Platform animation fest is happening in conjunction with Scott’s talk. Lots of people, crazy punk marching bands…

live art with time laps photos and flash lights (I drew a running too much coffee man but I was too proud to take a picture)…

and beer drinking with animators. I managed to hang out with my old animator pall Danny Antonucci (animator on the TMCM converse commercial). We stole beer by from the tap when the waitress was gone for 15 minutes. We tipped her well hoping that would balance out the crime.

Full night.

*EXTRA!! EXTRA!! KEEF COMING TO WASHINGTON D.C NEXT WEEK..

Cartoonapalooza: Fireworks in Pen and Ink!

The Cartoonists With Attitude gang storms the capital on July 7 with an edgy satirical cartoon slideshow and book signing!

• When: Saturday, July 7, 2 p.m.
• Where: Borders 18th & L Streets NW Washington, DC 20006 ( 202.466.4999)
• Price: Free!

Celebrate Independence Day weekend with a slideshow and signing with edgy, groundbreaking and controversial alternative cartoonists from around the country! Be there or the torturers, bombers, ex-gays and wire-tappers win! Meet:

• Ruben Bolling (”Tom the Dancing Bug”)
• Matt Bors (”Idiot Box”)
• Keith Knight (”The K Chronicles”)
• Brian McFadden (”Big Fat Whale”)
• Stephanie McMillan (”Minimum Security”)
• August Pollak (”Some Guy With a Website”)
• Ted Rall(Silk Road to Ruin)
• Mikhaela Reid (”The Boiling Point”)
• Ben Smith (”Fighting Words”)
• Jen Sorensen (”Slowpoke”)
• Masheka Wood (”Not Just Knee Deep”)