comics

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CEO -- Chief Embezzlement Officer.

CFO -- Corporate Fraud Officer.

BULL MARKET -- A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

VALUE INVESTING -- The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E RATIO -- The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the
market keeps crashing.

BROKER -- What my broker has made me.

STANDARD & POOR -- Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK ANALYST -- Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT -- When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets
equally between themselves.

FINANCIAL PLANNER -- A guy whose phone has been disconnected.

MARKET CORRECTION -- The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW-- The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

YAHOO -- What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

WINDOWS -- What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought
Yahoo @ $240 per share.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR -- Past year investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse.

PROFIT -- An archaic word no longer in use.

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In 1969, the American writer John Updike famously declared, "I see no intrinsic reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise and create a comic strip novel masterpiece."

The statement was immediately ridiculed by literary traditionalists, who disparaged comics as a "low" medium unworthy of serious critical attention. But it became a rallying cry among comic book creators, long second-class citizens in the art world.

Forty years has proved their prescience. Graphic novels – usually defined as extended-length illustrated books with mature literary themes – have risen to widespread prominence, spurred on by the work of respected talents such as Art Spiegelman ("Maus: A Survivor's Tale") and Will Eisner ("A Contract With God").

Graphic novel sales in Canada and the United States hit $375 million in 2007, five times the figure reported in 2001, according to ICv2, a pop culture site. "Jimmy Corrigan," a book by Chris Ware, has sold hundreds of thousands of copies alone; "Persepolis," originally a graphic novel by Marjane Sartrapi, picked up an Oscar for best animated film in February.

The world of comics and graphic novels is in the midst of a creative renaissance that may be greater than the dawn of the Marvel Universe in the 1960s. This development has been a longtime coming, considering that the beginnings of both newspaper comics and the cinema occurred at roughly the same time in the late 19th century. Film quite quickly matured into the 20th century's great American art form, while comics remained relatively insular and ignored by adults.

Alternative graphic novels are represented on film as well (Road to Perdition, Ghost World, American Splendor, Persepholis) and are increasingly making their presence felt at traditional book store chains where there are now entire sections devoted to graphic novels as well as manga (Japanese graphic novels, which are another subject entirely).

Generation Next folks currently coming-of-age are almost as conversant about the latest graphic novel as Generation X-ers were about grunge music. The main difference is that graphic novels show no signs of being a temporary trend. Indeed, they may be here to stay, well into the 21st century.

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Images courtesy of Marjane Satrapi. Art Spiegelman, Naoki Urasawa, Neil Gaiman, and Evanston Review

Original Source: Christian Science Monitor and Evanston Review

Images courtesy of Britt/State Journal-Register, Britt/The State Journal-Register, Sherttius / Boulder Camera, and CAM/Ottawa Citizen/Copley News Service, Mike Smith/Las Vegas Sun/King Features Syndicate, and Jones/Creators Syndicate

Original Source: Time

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PHOENIX (AP) — Thelma Keane, the inspiration for the Mommy character in the long-running "Family Circus" comic created by her husband, Bil Keane, has died. She was 82. She died Friday of Alzheimer's disease, the family said.

"Family Circus," which Keane began drawing in 1960, depicts the good-humored life of two parents and their four children. It is now featured in about 1,500 newspapers. "She was the inspiration for all of my success," Bil Keane, 85, told The Associated Press from his home in Paradise Valley on Sunday. "When the cartoon first appeared, she looked so much like Mommy that if she was in the supermarket pushing her cart around, people would come up to her and say, 'Aren't you the Mommy in 'Family Circus?' and she would admit it."

Bil and Thelma "Thel" Keane met during World War II in the war bond office in Brisbane, Australia. She was a native Australian working as an accounting secretary, and Bil worked next to her as a promotional artist for the U.S. Army. "I had this desk alongside the most beautiful Australian 18-year-old girl with long brown hair," Bil Keane said. "And I got up enough nerve to ask her for a date." The two married in 1948 and moved to Bil Keane's hometown of Philadelphia. They had five children and moved to the Phoenix suburb of Paradise Valley in 1958.

Not only was Thelma Keane the inspiration for the always-loving and ever-patient comic character also named Thel, but she worked full-time as her husband's business and financial manager. Her family says she was the reason Bil Keane became one of the first syndicated newspaper cartoonists to win back all rights to his comic. "There was nothing that I did in the cartoon world or in the business world that she wasn't the instigator of, and she certainly deserves all the credit that I get credit for," Bil Keane said. "The losing of Thel is a heartbreaking thing for me," he said. "However, it makes me realize how important she was to my worldly success, and I know where she is now, I feel that she's still helping me and probably giving me the inspirations you can only get from an angel in heaven."

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Original Source: AP

Being in the Air Force means having to move frequently. When some friends of ours were transferred to a nearby base, the local TV station interviewed them for a human-interest story. The interviewer asked their five-year-old daughter how she felt about settling into a new home. She calmly replied, "Oh, we carry our home with us – we just have to find a house to put it in."
-- Alan Whittle

My friend, a Marine, didn't care that his trip to the shooting range had been canceled, but he was put off that his physical exam was still on.
"Should it bother me," he asked, "that they don't seem to care how well I can shoot, but they are interested in how fast I can run?"
-- Dawn Gutierrez

Original Source Reader’s Digest

Original Source: Washington Post