There are quite a few items we have our eyes and ears on today, including the potential for the GOP to finally cave and meet the President on his suggested compromise to temporary extensions to the Bush Tax Cuts. We're also watching the continuing "civil" war in the Republican Party over earmarks among other things, And we've been going over the announced - or rather, leaked by the chairman - details of the Deficit Commission's report, which we'll likely tackle at some point in the near future.
However, today is Friday - so we'd like to celebrate the efforts some of our staff and their colleagues on an outside project that launched this week.
We know that more than a few professional cartoonists and other media professionals read the Daily Felltoon and our daily commentaries. So we'd like to direct them - and you - to the website for a brand new project called Snow-by-Night.
It's an attempt at a new way to handle cartooning and comic books similar to a direction in which the major comic labels are going. It's an online graphic novel, one that will be be released at the rate of a page every Wednesday.
Like the serial cartoon strips of old, the story will follow a continuous arc - and has been written and created by someone who has worked professionally in the gaming and fantasy storytelling field. It's professionally edited, penciled and digitally inked, and then digitally colored - and then professionally published online. When the online graphic novel reaches around 32 pages, the plan is to have each finished chapter made available - on demand - to be ordered as a printed product. In other words, a good old-fashioned comic book.
Like many new media ventures, the Snow-by-Night team are using tools like Facebook and Twitter to grab the attention of those people who are more plugged in.
One feature we at the Daily Felltoon like about what they're doing with Snow-by-Night. For them, it's about the story first - and then the artwork must back up that great story.
They've got a lot planned to expand that story into a fully-fleshed out world, so we hope you'll go to snowbynight.com and check out their work.
If there was no other reason for us to recommend this project than that some of our staff was involved, we would. But this endeavor seems to be of high quality, and it appears that our friends are attempting to take the business of cartooning in a new direction - something we strongly favor.
Enjoy their work - and your weekend.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Real Superheroes
As a cartoonist, and being among those multitudes who love cartoons, we're used to seeing superheroes of all kinds - with capes, in tights, with masks, and special powers.
Today though, we celebrate the superheroes that most Americans don't see in comics and cartoons every day - those Americans who have served in our Armed Services. These folks aren't in any G.I. Joe movie, and you won't see most of them on television. Whether they're gay or straight, old or young, men or women - even officers or enlisted - in the military they were all just service members. They all had their own political views, but regardless of how they felt, they did their jobs well - and came home alive.
Today is a day for us to celebrate their work and their service.
We hope, if you have a chance today, that you volunteer some of your own service at your local Veterans Hospital or with another veterans support group. If you're looking for some guidance on who needs help in your area, we recommend the IAVA, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, or your local VFW.
We also hope you'll simply say, "Thank you" to a veteran, for his or her willingness to serve. And to do our part, we're sending out our own "Thank-Yous" today.
Thank You to our Army Veterans, who've fought in locations near and far across the globe - and came home far too often with bodies or minds seriously scarred.
Thank You to our Navy veterans - including our webmaster - who have guarded, protected, and patrolled the roughly 2/3 of the planet the rest of us normally don't think much about.
Thank You to our Air Force veterans, who not only patrol the skies, but keep an eye on the thousands of objects that orbit our planet - and who know the difference between an airplane contrail and a missile launch.
Thank You to our Marine veterans, who so often go places that not even other armed services members wish to go, and accomplish tasks that most other people think are impossible.
Thank you to our Coast Guard veterans, too often overlooked. When Americans need to be saved from our own mistakes - for example, when massive cruise ships end up dead in the water off the coast of California - our Coast Guard members simply and humbly do their jobs.
Chances are statistically near 100% that someone you interact with every day is a veteran. Many of them are people you may not have even realized that served. So ask around today. Find a veteran or two. Thank them for their service.
Real-life superheroes appreciate gratitude too.
Today though, we celebrate the superheroes that most Americans don't see in comics and cartoons every day - those Americans who have served in our Armed Services. These folks aren't in any G.I. Joe movie, and you won't see most of them on television. Whether they're gay or straight, old or young, men or women - even officers or enlisted - in the military they were all just service members. They all had their own political views, but regardless of how they felt, they did their jobs well - and came home alive.
Today is a day for us to celebrate their work and their service.
We hope, if you have a chance today, that you volunteer some of your own service at your local Veterans Hospital or with another veterans support group. If you're looking for some guidance on who needs help in your area, we recommend the IAVA, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, or your local VFW.
We also hope you'll simply say, "Thank you" to a veteran, for his or her willingness to serve. And to do our part, we're sending out our own "Thank-Yous" today.
Thank You to our Army Veterans, who've fought in locations near and far across the globe - and came home far too often with bodies or minds seriously scarred.
Thank You to our Navy veterans - including our webmaster - who have guarded, protected, and patrolled the roughly 2/3 of the planet the rest of us normally don't think much about.
Thank You to our Air Force veterans, who not only patrol the skies, but keep an eye on the thousands of objects that orbit our planet - and who know the difference between an airplane contrail and a missile launch.
Thank You to our Marine veterans, who so often go places that not even other armed services members wish to go, and accomplish tasks that most other people think are impossible.
Thank you to our Coast Guard veterans, too often overlooked. When Americans need to be saved from our own mistakes - for example, when massive cruise ships end up dead in the water off the coast of California - our Coast Guard members simply and humbly do their jobs.
Chances are statistically near 100% that someone you interact with every day is a veteran. Many of them are people you may not have even realized that served. So ask around today. Find a veteran or two. Thank them for their service.
Real-life superheroes appreciate gratitude too.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Dr. Jekyl, Mr. Hyde, And Ethics
Having integrity as we work in the fields of media and communications requires that we hold ourselves to higher ethical standards. It also requires that we apply those same standards to both those we comment upon and those within our own own career field.
We're willing to admit for some of our staff that there has been some pushback lately in our hammering of those in the Tea Party and on the far right who claim to be Republicans. To us, Republicans as we remember them, and as most Americans think of them, tend to identify more closely to functional libertarians. Not the ideological strait-jacketed insanity of Rand Paul (which already appears to be loosening up), but classic Republicanism. Those kinds of Americans are assertive (not aggressive) about a number of things - fiscal conservatism, military readiness, and smaller government, when sensible and possible. However, they also understand and fully respect that good government means being willing to compromise.
The problem is, that's not what a growing number of those using the Republican brand want the GOP label to mean. That's why we continue to point out the Jekyl and Hyde nature of the modern GOP. For those of us who are conservative, that doesn't make us RINOs. It makes us honest.
Likewise, for those of us on the left, there are those in our field who claim not to know the difference between "progressive" and "liberal" when we know damn well those claims are false. We've caught heat for that lately, but we've called out some of our fellow journalists for that lapse in honesty, too.
Which brings us to Mr. Keith Olbermann.
We won't belabor the subject. Others inside and outside our business have obsessed about this to the point of ridiculous for the past four days.
Suffice it to say that we know Mr. Olbermann knows the old journalistic axiom that, if you have to ask if your actions or words could be considered unethical, you've already gone too far. He apologized last night to his viewers and others for his lapse in judgement, and we applaud him for doing so.
As Mr. Olbermann's colleague Rachel Maddow mentioned last week, for those of us in the media who choose who hold ourselves to higher standards, the rules are different. Our ethical conduct is what separates us from those in the media and elsewhere who operate with a two-faced agenda, claiming to be fair while having an outright bias.
"Anything worth doing is worth doing well," is a phrase that we take very seriously around here.
If more people both inside and outside the media took that phrase to heart, maybe there might not be such a huge gap between the faces we show the world, and those we show each other.
We're willing to admit for some of our staff that there has been some pushback lately in our hammering of those in the Tea Party and on the far right who claim to be Republicans. To us, Republicans as we remember them, and as most Americans think of them, tend to identify more closely to functional libertarians. Not the ideological strait-jacketed insanity of Rand Paul (which already appears to be loosening up), but classic Republicanism. Those kinds of Americans are assertive (not aggressive) about a number of things - fiscal conservatism, military readiness, and smaller government, when sensible and possible. However, they also understand and fully respect that good government means being willing to compromise.
The problem is, that's not what a growing number of those using the Republican brand want the GOP label to mean. That's why we continue to point out the Jekyl and Hyde nature of the modern GOP. For those of us who are conservative, that doesn't make us RINOs. It makes us honest.
Likewise, for those of us on the left, there are those in our field who claim not to know the difference between "progressive" and "liberal" when we know damn well those claims are false. We've caught heat for that lately, but we've called out some of our fellow journalists for that lapse in honesty, too.
Which brings us to Mr. Keith Olbermann.
We won't belabor the subject. Others inside and outside our business have obsessed about this to the point of ridiculous for the past four days.
Suffice it to say that we know Mr. Olbermann knows the old journalistic axiom that, if you have to ask if your actions or words could be considered unethical, you've already gone too far. He apologized last night to his viewers and others for his lapse in judgement, and we applaud him for doing so.
As Mr. Olbermann's colleague Rachel Maddow mentioned last week, for those of us in the media who choose who hold ourselves to higher standards, the rules are different. Our ethical conduct is what separates us from those in the media and elsewhere who operate with a two-faced agenda, claiming to be fair while having an outright bias.
"Anything worth doing is worth doing well," is a phrase that we take very seriously around here.
If more people both inside and outside the media took that phrase to heart, maybe there might not be such a huge gap between the faces we show the world, and those we show each other.
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