Today’s Bizarro by Dan Piraro.

Joshua Glenn of the Boston Globe has created an audio slideshow presentation that points out the influence of cartoonist Winsor McCay on cinema. Films like King Kong, Dumbo, and Mary Poppins are used as examples.

(via BB)

That’s me (at right) today with curator Lucy Shelton Caswell at the incredible Cartoon Research Library, housed in the Wexner Center on Ohio State University.

Wow! This is the place. Everything from McCay to Manga - an incredible collection… perhaps the collection of comic strip art and artifacts in the U.S. I saw rare Winsor McCay, Milton Canniff, Noel Sickles, Schulz and on and on… If you live in Ohio I urge you to visit and support this incredible resource. If you live out of town, add this to your vacation plans next year (a big Jeff Smith exhibit is being prepared now for next spring-summer, May 10-Aug. 17, 2008).

Independent animator (and former syndicated cartoonist) Chris Harding (Learn Self Defense) launches a new online comic strip today called We The Robots. There are thirteen comics currently posted and new ones scheduled weekly. I tend to be a fan of just about everything Chris does and this latest project is no exception. It should be noted that the strip is loosely related to the next animated short that he’s currently working on. He explains in one of his blog posts:

“It’s hard to explain the relationship between the animated Work In Progress, and the non-animated comic strip that goes with it. Both take place in the same fictional world of robots. The short is more broad and doesn’t revolve around any specific robot, where the comic strip has several regular characters.”

Today’s Non Sequitur comic by Wiley has a nice dig on th Schulz bio. Click HERE to read the entire strip.

(Thanks, Patricio)

In case you haven’t been following it, the debate over David Michaelis’ Charles Schulz bio rages on. Fresh comments from daughter Amy Schulz Johnson, Peanuts comic book artist Dale Hale and Peanuts animation producer Lee Mendelson add to the conversation. Join the discussion here.

Like Schulz’ Peanuts, Bill Watterson’s classic comic strip Calvin and Hobbes was beloved by many and still has a devoted following - despite it’s retirement in 1995. Tim from the Calvin and Hobbes: Magic on Paper website has unearthed a selection of Watterson’s student artwork, from his days at Ohio’s Kenyon College, drawn for the school newspaper and the 1980 yearbook. Considering that new Watterson art is rare, it’s great to see some old stuff that’s new to our eyes.

Good Grief! The conversation continues on our post about the Michaelis bio of Charles Schulz. Schulz son Monte adds some additional comments today, as well as new reactions from Schulz daughters Amy and Jill.

(Note: To keep the discussion from breaking into numerous threads, comments are closed for this post but can be continued in the other post with Schulz’s family comments.)