Politics

With her How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less soon to come out (and getting solid advance reviews) cartoonist Sarah Glidden is embarking on another journey to the Middle East, with hopes of turning it into another non-fiction comic. And she's funding part of the travel via Kickstarter with a project called "Stumbling Towards Damascus". For the project, she'll be working with the Common Language Project, a Seattle-based group of journalists who travel to under-reported on areas. For this trip they'll be journeying to places affected by the Iraq war, including Syria, Turkey and the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Glidden's larger hope is to follow in the tradition established by Joe Sacco, whose "comics journalism" in the Middle East has won multiple awards.

Speaking of Cartoonists Doing Things: Steve Murray -- the birth name of the cartoonist better known worldwide as Chip Zdarsky -- has launched a campaign for mayor of Toronto, ON:

Comics are for everybody -- even Muslims! You all know abut The 99, Naif al-Mutawa's ongoing attempt to create heroic archetypes for Middle Eastern youth. They have their own theme park and cartoon in development and everything and got a shout out from President Obama earlier in the year for helping bring people together.

You cannot say that indicted former Illinois governor Rod Bagojevich is not a smart and pragmatic man. Although recently convicted on a single count of federal corruption, Blago, as he is known to fans, had a mistrial on 23 others, so he's still out and about. And what does a pol do while out on bail to feed the family? He takes it to the people, and makes a little spending money by signing autographs at Wizard World Chicago/Chicago Comic-Con. Blago is well aware that cashing in on celebrity is the best follow up to a political fall, and while thwarted in his attempt to appear on 'm a Celebrity... Get Me out of Here!, has been a contestant on The Apprentice. So he's gone where all reality stars go.

Cartoonists Ted Rall, Mat Bors and photographer Steven Cloud are in Afghanistan to tell "the people's story" and send back cartoons. They've been uploading them as often as possible using satellite phones.

Now, that is funny.

While guest appearances in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and SAVAGE DRAGON, among many other comics, helped President Obama become as sure-fire a sales enhancement as a variant cover by Jim Lee, an actual comic book publisher...

Tempest in a teacup? or...a tea bag? The first we got wind of this was a story on the right-leaning Newsbusters site protesting the portrayal of the Tea Party movement in the latest issue...

Leftist author, teacher and activist Howard Zinn passed away yesterday at age 87. His bestseller, A People's History of the United States, was a ground level view of American history that focused on the...

We trust that readers will be very familiar with the expression Michelle has adopted here.

Poor Bluewater...bad timing. UPDATE: Bluewater has released a statement: The country is a lesser place with the passing of Senator Kennedy. Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum we could all learn a...

One fewer cartoonist is (potentially) gainfully employed today, after the Senate questioned a Treasury plan to hire a cartoonist. The Treasury's Bureau of Public Debt hoped that witty cartoons and seminars on humor would...