Welcome to the webbed and wired edition of R&R, aristotle. We’ll be doing the same sort of song and dance here as we do in print: reviewing the latest comics and cartoon-related books and ranting about trends and abuses and unfathomable foolishnesses. Each installment will stay here for about four weeks, with a new one coming in just about every other week or so. If you don’t have the time to ponder every punctuation mark in this deathless prose and merely want to see what might be there that would interest you, we suggest you scroll down the page looking for the bold-face type that heralds the notables who reside herein this week. So here we go with Opus 292 (and a reprise of Opus 291):

Opus 292: Sylvia Retires from Print, the F-Word, Krassner Offenses, Pulitzer and Other Awards for Unconventional Editoonery & Obits for Babin, Moebius, Matera and Mike Wallace (April 20, 2012)

Opus 291: Rape in Doonesbury Banned, Plagiarists Detected & Obits for Jan Berenstain and Shelly Moldoff (March 27, 2012).

Opus 292 (April 20, 2012). On the occasion of Sylvia’s retirement from print, we conduct a fond appreciation of Sylvia and her creator, Nicole Hollander, and we showcase a notable quantity of editorial cartoons from the last month. We also rehearse Paul Krassner’s obscene pranks and discuss the whys and wherefores of the most tabooed word in English, the F-word.  And we report on Andy Capp’s sobering up, Corey Randolph’s retirement of The Elderberries, Brooke McEldowney’s latest daring in 9 Chickweed Lane (unwed motherhood!), cartoons in Playboy, the resolution of the disgraceful case of Canadian border guards seizing a computer and its owner for allegedly possessing child porn (it was manga), plus reviews of Stan Lee’s Mighty7 and commentary on Catwoman, Franchesco’s She Dragon, Fatale, Lobster Johnson, Batman, Mud Man, and All Star Western, and obits for Rex Babin, Moebius, Fran Matera, and Mike Wallace, a dramatist whose connection with cartooning is obscure. But first—

BUNNY BULLETIN: Announced Monday, April 16, Matt Wuerker of the online and multi-media political news organization Politico won the 2012 Pulitzer for editorial cartooning. He’d been a finalist twice, in 2009 and 2010, and he is also a Herblock Prize winner (2010). Interviewed by Michael Cavna at ComicRiffs, Wuerker said: “This feels fantastic, to state the obvious. This is a dream come true. I’ve been cartooning for some 30 years now, and up until a few years ago, I didn’t think anything like this was vaguely possible.” Wuerker freelanced editorial cartoons for most of his career until 2007 when he was invited to become a founding staffer at Politico. And that, he said, profoundly changed his career.“I credit the people aboard the good ship Politico,” he said. When he came aboard, he thought he’d have a nice ride on a tidy little ship. And then the ship became a rocket ship.

            “I can’t thank everybody enough — Jim VandeHei and John Harris [executive editor and editor-in-chief], in particular, for all of the creative license that they’ve given me,” he said in Politico’s report. “I feel like a piccolo player, and I’m in this great big orchestra, and as a piccolo player, if I’m just out there playing my piccolo, I’m just this annoying guy with this little instrument in the corner. But I’ve had the great, great fortune of finding myself in this great orchestra with major players and fabulous conductors and a fabulous concert hall, and that’s what this is about. So I share this with all of you. The much more serious players at Politico will be picking up [Pulitzers] in the years ahead.”

            Read more at ComicRiffs.com and/or Politico.com (both for April 16) and watch a video of Wuerker describing his feelings and overwhelming sense of good luck (can be seen at either). We’ll have a selection of his cartoons in the next opus, next month.

            And now, we resume our regular programming. Because of the vast length of this opus, you may wish to take a breather halfway through—that is, just after reading about Nicole Hollander. You choose. Here’s what’s here, in order, by department—:

NOUS R US

Mandrake Movie

Glen Keane Leaves Disney after 38  Years

Matheson Case Ends Unhappily in Plea Bargain

PayPal Bans Sales of Erotica

Superman Letter Up for Auction

Unconventional Editoons Reap Awards                                                        

Jack Ohman Collects Scripps Howard Award

Nick Anderson Gets Berryman

Dr. Seuss Gets Insulted by “The Lorax”

PLAYBOY, GRAPHIC NOVELISH AND CARTOONS

What To Do about the F-word

Stan Lee in Time

Stan Lee Court Case History

Corto Maltese Screwed Up

Academy Awards History—Not!

SYLVIA HOLLANDER, ICON

Nicole Retires From Print

EDITOONERY

Tony Auth Leaves Philadelphia Inquirer

Signe Wilkinson Stays On

Nate Beeler Goes to Columbus Dispatch

The Future of Editorial Cartooning, Self-Syndication and False Cheer

ROUND-UP OF THE MONTH’S EDITORIAL CARTOONS

Paul Krassner and Outrageous Iconoclassicism (Mickey and Charlie Brown Fucking)

Loaded Words Not Permitted in New York Schools

THE FROTH ESTATE (Alleged News Institution)

NEWSPAPER COMICS PAGE VIGIL

Darrin Bell and Rudy Park

Funky is Forty

Corey Randolph and The Elderberries

Brooke McEldowney Does It Again—Unwed Motherhood

Pastis’ Pearls Too Self-Referential?

Andy Capp Sobers Up

CIVILIZATION’S LAST OUTPOST

Harold Camping and the End of the World

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

BOOK MARQUEE

More Wimps

Bruce Timm’s Naughty and Nice Girls

BOOK REVIEWS

Barney Google

Hark! A Vagrant

Comics and the U.S. South (Scholarly Essays)

Two Krazy Kat Books

Nancy Is Happy

Stan Lee’s Secrets Behind the Comics

The Complete Peanuts: 1983-1984

FUNNYBOOK FAN FARE

Stan Lee’s Mighty 7

FOUR-COLOR FANTASIES I’M READING THESE DAYS

Catwoman and Guillem March

Franchesco’s She Dragon

Fatale

Lobster Johnson

Batman

Mud Man

All Star Western (Jonah Hex)

PASSIN’ THROUGH

Obituarial Appreciations of Rex Babin, Moebius, Fran Matera, Al Ross

And, Mike Wallace

Our Motto: It takes all kinds. Live and let live. Wear glasses if you need ’em.

But it’s hard to live by this axiom in the Age of Tea Baggers,

so we’ve added another motto:.

Seven days without comics makes one weak.

(You can’t have too many mottos.)

And our customary reminder: when you get to the $ubscriber/Associate Section (perusal of which is restricted to paid subscribers), don’t forget to activate the “Bathroom Button” by clicking on the “print friendly version” so you can print off a copy of just this installment for reading later, at your leisure while enthroned. Without further adieu, then, here we go—

NOUS R US

Some of All the News That Gives Us Fits

PARADE, THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER SUPPLEMENT that usually includes (however postage-stampish) a “cartoon parade,” contained no cartoons whatsoever, parading or otherwise, in its April 1 issue. I put it down as a perverse April Fool’s joke, but when the April 8 issue showed up likewise cartoonless, I began to fear for the perpetuation of the artform: Parade has been a stalwart in publishing cartoons, but after two weeks in a row without a giggle, could it be giving up on cartoons? Then came the issue of April 15—and a welcome reprieve: two postage stamp cartoons within. ... Caricaturist Steve Brodner does a regular “Brodner Minute” of animated editorial cartoonery at washingtonspectator.org. ... Jules Feiffer received the 2012 Fischetti Lifetime Achievement Award. ... Archie is getting married again in the current Archie title continuity: another trip down Memory Lane, this time it’s Valerie’s, the African American member of the Pussycats, who dreams she’s marrying Archie. ... “Christians BD” (bande dessinee, French for “drawn strip,” or comic strip), an ecumenical group of Catholic and Protestant comic book makers with 25 years experience amongst them, appeared again this year at the International Comics Festival at Angouleme, France, in a special “Christians BD” section; the group’s objectives are to promote the comic book style of explaining Christianity, to establish a link between faith and reason, and to attract more authors. ... And, not to abandon Archie Comics too quickly, the alternate cover of the second issue of Kevin Keller is by Dan Parent, an echo of the cover of Archie No.1, this time with Kevin on skates jumping the barrel on the frozen pond. Why the pond would still be frozen by mid-April, don’t ask. ... And right about here, on the other side of the $ubscribers Wall, we have posted one of those mind-boggling instances of the right hand not knowing what the left hand doeth when it comes to displaying sexy covers in Previews. And yet, both hands are in plain sight all the time. Who are these people? Moral self-righteousness gone amuck (but containing, therein, a lesson for us all: suppression of sex will never work).

            Warner Bros is conjuring up Mandrake the Magician in celluloid, picking up the movie rights to the classic comic strip with Atlas Entertainment producing, reports Borys Kit at hollywoodreporter.com. Created in 1934 by Lee Falk (who also created The Phantom in 1936), Mandrake is an illusionist who has the power to quickly, instantaneously, hypnotize his foes. Forever attired in top hat and tails, “Mandrake fights evildoers ranging from gangsters to masters of disguise to aliens. Mandrake is one of those characters that Hollywood has long tried to nail down in a viable movie adaptation. Columbia Pictures made a 12-part serial in 1939, and a TV movie aired in the 1970s, but nothing has made it to screens since.”

            Animator Glen Keane, a 38-year veteran of the Walt Disney Animation Studios who worked on such classics as “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Aladdin,” announced last month that he is leaving the company. According to HollywoodReporter.com, he said that while the studio has been his "artistic home," he decided after "long and thoughtful consideration" that there are "endless new territories to explore" and so he is moving on. The announcement came as a shock. "He's such a Disney icon and an inspiration to so many people," one source said. Confirming his departure, a Disney spokesperson said, "Glen Keane has decided that the time has come to take the next step in his personal exploration of the art of animation. As much as we are saddened by his departure, we respect his desires and wish him the very best with all his future endeavors."

            In 2000, someone broke into Nicolas Cage’s house and stole his mint copy of Action Comics No.1; in April last year, the priceless artifact (one of only two in such pristine condition known to experts) was found in an abandoned storage locker in California's San Fernando Valley by a man who had purchased the contents of the locker. It returned to Cage just in time to help the actor with his financial travails, which saw him face bankruptcy for failing to pay taxes despite having earned more than $40m in 2009. Cage sold the funnybook for a record-breaking $2.16m in November. And now this whole preposterous adventure may find its way to the big screen: Lionsgate is reported to be interested, and the spec screenplay “takes the form of a heist comedy in which a group of fanboys break into Cage's home and steal the comic,” reports Ben Child at guardian.co.uk.

BORDER ORDEAL ENDS BUT JUSTICE HAS STILL GONE AWRY

ICv2.com reports that the Canadian government has dropped all criminal charges against Ryan Matheson (previously referred to as "Brandon X"), an American computer programmer whose laptop was seized by Canadian customs officials when he traveled to Canada from the U.S. in 2010. He was arrested and detained based upon images in his laptop that customs officials deemed “child pornography.”

            In a plea bargain that resulted in the dropping of all criminal charges, Matheson pled guilty to a non-criminal code regulatory offense under the customs act of Canada and will not stand trial.

            Matheson's defense cost $75,000. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund helped by recruiting expert witnesses for the trial and providing $20,000, while the Comic Legends Legal Defense contributed $11,000, but that still leaves Matheson with nearly $45,000 in debts relating to the case. The CBLDF is currently seeking funds to help pay off Matheson's debt and to create new tools to prevent future cases. Visit cbldf.org for details.

            The ICv2 report continues:

            Now that the case has been settled the details of Matheson's arrest and detention have come out. Matheson was subjected to abusive treatment by the police when jailed and then placed under harsh bail conditions. His life was severely disrupted for two years during which was unable to use computers or the Internet outside of his job because of the strict conditions of his bail.

            In an accompanying statement Matheson described his situation: "I was given extraordinarily strict bail conditions considering it was my first offense of any kind and I had a totally clean record. My bail conditions tightly restricted my use of computers and the Internet. My conditions had even specifically named a single company I could work for, which prevented me from advancing my professional career. I am a computer programmer and I've been in love with computers ever since I was seven years old. To place such overbearing conditions on me was heart-wrenching and very difficult to endure. Even for people who do not have a life and career based on computers, I believe completely restricting Internet access is wrong; too many things in life and society nowadays rely on the Internet. In my opinion, it's like restricting use of basic utilities like water and electricity."

            Matheson also describes his longstanding interest in manga and anime, which had led him to study Japanese language and culture: "I first got into anime when I was about eight years old by watching Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z that aired on tv at the time. Soon after I started reading manga with my first volume of Ranma and began drawing my own illustrations and making my own animation flipbooks. To this day I still draw and have attended art and drawing classes. I have been studying Japanese since high school. To have this healthy and fulfilling hobby of mine deemed ‘unfavorable,’ ‘deviant’ or ‘criminal’ by ignorant government officials is insulting and degrading not only to me, but also to the millions of fellow fans who take part in enjoying this art. After going through such a challenging and difficult period of my life, my own convictions about what anime and manga mean to me have become stronger than ever before."

            At last the image that Canadian customs found so objectionable has been identified publicly, a moe-style parody of a classic Japanese wood block prints called the "48 Positions," which were wrestling positions in the original classic print and rendered as sexual positions in the parody. As anyone familiar with manga and anime knows, "moe" refers to cute, often diminutive characters, which undoubtedly led the overzealous customs officials to suspect child pornography, though it is totally obvious that no underage models were used to create the illustration, which contains very little detail in the rendering of the sexual acts.

PAYPAL BANS TRANSACTIONS INVOLVING EROTIC STUFF

In early March, Betsy Gomez at Comic Book Legal Defense Fund reported that PayPal told publishers that they cannot sell erotic material that depicts incest, pseudo-incest, rape fantasies, bestiality (including non-human fantasy characters), and BDSM. “Selling these materials will result in the deactivation of the publishers’ PayPal accounts. As a result of PayPal’s new policy, many publishers are taking down erotic work. Anyone who uses PayPal is subject to their terms of service. The banning of the erotic work may have less to do with PayPal’s opinion of the work and more to do with business practices. Commentary on both ZDNet and Daily Kos notes that erotic work carries a high likelihood of buyer’s remorse, and credit card companies charge higher fees for returns on such high-risk content. PayPal likely instituted to practice to avoid these fees.”

            In response, CBLDF reports, the American Book Sellers Foundation for Free Expression and the National Coalition Against Censorship sent PayPal a letter decrying the policy. The list of organizations signing on to ABFFE and NCAC’s letter is growing, and CBLDF has joined the coalition against PayPal’s erotic content policy.

AGED SUPER ARTIFACT

Shed Light on Siegel and Shuster Rights

A check for $412 is being auctioned off, and 12 bids so far have jacked its value to more than $25,000. The check on the block is the one endorsed by Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster when they signed over their rights for creating Superman. Bidding at Comicconnect.com began March 27 and will close April 16. “The check includes an accounting,” writes George Gene Guistines at the New York Times: “$130 for the rights to Superman, $210 for stories in Detective Comics and two $36 payments for stories in More Fun and Adventure Comics. The back of the check includes a stamp from a United States District Court from 1939, when it was used as evidence by DC Comics in its successful copyright infringement lawsuit against Victor Fox, a publisher who unveiled Wonder Man, a hero deemed too similar to the Man of Steel.

            “The signing away of the rights to Superman long plagued his creators, and their heirs have been waging a court battle to restore their claim on the copyright. In March 2008 a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that the heirs of Siegel were entitled to claim a share of the United States copyright to the Superman character. Time Warner, which owns DC Comics, would keep the international rights to the character. Last month, the Hollywood Reporter said that Warner Brothers Studios and DC Comics had filed a brief before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to try to hold on to all rights to the character.”

UNCONVENTIONAL EDITOONS REAP AWARDS

Portland-based editooner Matt Bors won the prestigious Herblock Prize for 2012, becoming the first alternative political cartoonist to win the award. In reporting the Herb Block Foundation’s  March 12 announcement, Michael Cavna at ComicRiffs remembered Bors’ “withering Steve Jobs obituary cartoon” (you can see it at Opus 285, and while your off surfing, stop in at Opus 288, where we recollect Bors’ Christopher Hitchens obit cartoon, embodying a similarly off-beat approach). Nationally syndicated by Universal/Uclick, Bors has also done cartoon reportage, visiting Haiti last year and, the year before, trekking off to Afghanistan with Ted Rall (see Ops. 265 and 267). On the other side of the $ubscribers Wall, we display a couple recent examples of Bors’ superlative perversity.

            "It's an honor and was completely unexpected," Bors told Cavna. "I'm humbled to be included in the group of previous winners" — a list that includes such recent recipients as Politico's Matt Wuerker and the Washington Post's Tom Toles.

            The honor comes with a $15,000 "after-tax cash prize,” which, Bors said, is “more than I've ever made in a year from my editorial cartoons.” An editor at the Cartoon Movement website, Bors plans to use the money to redesign his site (MattBors.com) and find ways “to keep this going for the long haul."

            Bors's cartoons are "relevant, smart, surprising, wickedly funny," said Toles, who was one of the judges along with the Philadelphia Daily News' Signe Wilkinson and Jenny Robb, curator at OSU's Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. Wilkinson cited Bors's memorable Jobs "obit" cartoon, which she said was "the most masterful cartoon of this masterful collection."

            This year's finalist for the Herblock Prize is another altie-editoonist, Jen Sorensen, whose Slowpoke she syndicates herself. Sorensen, who will receive a $5,000 cash prize, said: "It's so nice to see our genre of political cartooning acknowledged after so many years in the wilderness. I'm, of course, deeply flattered,” she said to Cavna.

            The Herblock Prize honors "distinguished examples of editorial cartooning that exemplify the courageous standard set by" legendary Washington Post political cartoonist Herblock. Bors and Sorensen will receive their awards May 10 in a Library of Congress ceremony, at which Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau will deliver the annual Herblock Lecture. One of Sorensen’s Slowpoke cartoons appears over the $ubscribers Wall; ironically, it was pulled, like a week’s worth of Trudeau’s strips on the same subject. Said Sorensen:

            “As you might have guessed, this one is about last month’s [“I thee rape”] Doonesbury strips, which over 50 newspapers refused to print. Personally, I'm surprised the number was that high. I may be an easy audience, but I thought the strips were witty and tastefully done. Thursday's comic was intense, but it was hardly in poor taste. Have these editors not seen reality television lately? Compared to that, Doonesbury read like a Lewis Lapham essay.

            “Notably, this week's cartoon marks the first time I've had a strip pulled in over a dozen years of drawing Slowpoke. One of my weekly papers is owned by a daily paper that decided not to run the Doonesbury strips, so the editor, who actually liked my comic, had to ask for a substitute. The layers of irony here are impressive.”

            The last cartoon in the exhibit on the other side of the $ubscribers Wall is by Jack Ohman of the (Portland) Oregonian, who won the Scripps Howard Award for editorial cartooning and received $10,000 and a trophy chiefly in recognition of the effectiveness and initiative shown in his multi-panel cartoons on Sundays. In nominating Ohman, his editor, Robert Caldwell, wrote: “Jack addresses issues of child abuse, the death penalty, and the unemployed in Oregon; he goes out into the community and reports in a spare, stark style. He has pioneered this local approach to the point that readers view this as the equivalent of a popular local column. ... Jack’s style excels because of his boldness, his attention to detail, and his topic selection. He doesn’t go for the typical gag approach, and you can see the fine line of irony instead of the sledgehammer. ... His work is highly original, he doesn’t employ cliche, and he claims that he has forgotten how to draw Uncle Sam. There are no labels. ... His caricatures are dead-on.”

            I concur on all counts, adding only that Ohman is perhaps the most skillful caricaturist working in editorial cartooning today. And on the other side of the Wall here are a couple of those Sunday extravaganzas with national targets.

Berryman Winner

The Houston Chronicle reports that its editorial cartoonist, Nick Anderson, has been honored with the Clifford K. Berryman and James T. Berryman award for national cartooning “for work that exhibits power to influence public opinion, plus good drawing and striking effect.” Anderson won the Pulitzer Prize in editorial cartooning in 2005; in 2006, he joined the Chronicle, where he has pioneered a method of coloring his cartoons using a computer program that creates digital paintings characterized by subtle textures and striking images. We’ve posted examples on the other side of the $ubscribers Wall.          

            The Berryman Award started in 1989 when Florence Berryman, former art critic of the Washington Star, endowed an annual award in memory of her late cartoonist father and brother, both Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonists. The winner receives a $2,500 prize and an engraved crystal vase, usually presented at the National Press Foundation's Annual Awards Dinner in Washington, D.C.

Fan Starts Medal Campaign for Garry Trudeau

Michael Masley, a 59-year-old Los Angeles-based musician, has launched a Facebook campaign to get the cartoonist the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Writes Patrick Gavin at Politico.com: “The campaign, which currently has more than 1,800 members after a week, praises the totality of Trudeau's career” as one of “democracy’s closest friends, whose protean originality, courageous breadth of thought, generosity of spirit, great sense of justice and uniquely brilliant wit, have so well served American Culture for decades.”

            "Trudeau has balls," Masley told Politico. "He's one of the most responsible celebrities out there. He's an icon. He's a national treasure."

            Gavin closes by noting “a bit of irony when it comes to mixing Trudeau with the Medal of Freedom: when Frank Sinatra was given the honor in 1985, Trudeau ended up in hot water for using the occasion to rib Sinatra's alleged mob ties.”

A Wretched Lorax

I haven’t see “The Lorax” yet. And I may not—if  I am to be guided by a local Mile High critic, Jonathan Lack, who, writing in a giveaway weekly tabloid, calls the film a “wretched insult” to Dr. Seuss. The book, Lack remembers, “is a sad, uncompromisingly bleak story of a world desolated by greed.” In the book, a boy living in this barren waste seeks knowledge to restore the environment and make the world right again. In the movie, the kid is living in luxury in a thoroughly modern city. When he leaves to wander the wasteland beyond the city’s borders, he does so merely to impress the pretty girl next door. “Instead of a serious, down-to-earth fable about the environment, the film is a broad, pandering comedy, filled wall-to-wall with terrible jokes, endless slapstick, pop culture references, horrifyingly awful musical numbers, and long, complicated car chases. Yes, you read that right: ‘The Lorax’ now includes car chases.” The animation is “stupendous,” Lack says---”lush, gorgeous, immaculately detailed and beautifully colored. In every other regard, the movie is an utter failure. ... If there was one thing we know Dr. Seuss believed in, it was that children are worthy of the best. Ignoring all its other sins, ‘The Lorax’ film violates that crucial principle, and that alone makes it an abject failure in my book.”

READ AND RELISH (A Short Break From Rampant Seriousness)

Three Rules for Old Guys (from the autobiography of Piers Anthony):

            1. Never pass up a restroom.

            2. Never trust a fart.

            3. Treat every erection like a gift from the magi.

THE GRAPHIC NOVEL & CARTOONS IN PLAYBOY

Also Sex

Playboy has lately taken to glorifying the graphic novel form. Almost. In the January/February 2012 issue, 6 pages are devoted to “Superjail!,” a static rendition of Adult Swim’s animated series of the same name by Christy Karacas, which is now in its third season, commemorated, perforce, by this episode in Hugh Hefner’s magazine. A little too manic in both art and concept for my taste. More to my liking is the offering in the April issue: by Walking Dead’s Robert Kirkman, “Michonne’s Story” recounts a turning point in the life of the katana-wielding survivor. More ambulatory dead people, but appealingly interpreted by artist Charlie Adlard in his best Caniff-like manner, enhanced by Cliff Rathburn’s gray tones.

            And while we’re pausing here at the body shop, let’s take inventory of Playboy’s cartoon content as we’ve been wont to do occasionally as the magazine sinks slowly in the West. Despite the snark, Hef’s not doing bad with cartoons. The number of full-page color cartoons remains approximately constant, about 5-6 per issue; and the smaller cartoons are slightly more numerous in these two issues, 10 in each. Not counting the Olivia pin-up page, which carries a caption so it effectively doubles as a cartoon (but I’m not counting it, as I said). Both issues also continue to offer Bobby London’s half-page strip Dirty Duck and Meaty Myths by an indecipherable signature that looks a little like Schin.

            Less important than the gross number, however, is the ratio of cartoons to page count since the number of cartoons is likely determined to some extent by the number of pages available to print them on. The January/February issue’s ration of full-page cartoons is 1/30; April, 1/28 (that is, one full-pager for every 30 pages; ditto every 28 pages). For the smaller cartoons, it’s 1/21 in the January/February issue; 1/14 in April. The January/February issue also offers a two-page retrospective of Erich Sokol cartoons, 8 in all, but since they’re reprints, I’m not counting them in the calculation. (Sokol’s cartoons showed up in Playboy just about the time Jack Cole offed himself, and because Sokol’s wimmin looked somewhat like Cole’s, I always thought Hefner recruited Sokol as a replacement for Cole. But years later, I discovered that the time sequence doesn’t support this fond notion. If I remember aright, Sokol had started appearing while Cole was still alive.)

            One of the full-pagers in this issue is by editoonist Bill Schorr, who enjoyed a brief career at Playboy some years ago when he helped in the brief revival of Little Annie Fannie. Since Schorr lost his newspaper perch a few years back, he probably has a few more spare hours a week than previously, so, one assumes, he fills them by doing gag cartoons to submit to Playboy. Not an altogether safe assumption. He also continues to produce a daily newspaper comic strip, The Grizzwells, and does some editorial cartoons for syndication through Cagle Cartoons, so I’m not sure how many erstwhile idle hours he may have. (Another fond notion evaporates.) In any event, it’s fun to see him in Playboy.

            That the January/February issue has more full-page cartoons than the April issue (7 versus 5) should not surprise: it’s a “double issue” and it has more pages, 210 versus 142. But as a “double issue,” it isn’t, as you can plainly tell, twice the size of a “normal” issue. It’s only 32% larger. So it has 32% more full-page cartoons. But not, alas, 32% more of the smaller cartoons: both issues have only 10.

            This is a feckless quibble, of course. The “double issue” has two Playmates, after all—two gatefolds—plus the usual 11-page round-up of the year’s Playmates and a stunning 10-page pictorial featuring Lindsay Lohan as Marilyn Monroe, posing naked on that legendary crimson cloth in nearly perfect imitation of Marilyn’s appearance in the first issue of Playboy, 59 years ago. We’ve posted the pertinent picture over the $ubscribers Wall (see what you’re missing if you’re not a $ubscriber?). I say “nearly perfect” because Lindsay is somewhat more voluptuous in the upper story than Marilyn was; we forget, as I’ve pointed out in these precincts before, that Marilyn’s reputation as a sex symbol derived more from her flagrant double entendre about sex and her derriere than her bosom. She was no Sophia Loren or Gina Lolobrigida, and she achieved fame by walking away from us, her buttocks in rhythmic undulation, not by bending over in a low-cut gown. Lindsay, however, could easily supplant this historic fact with the fiction of her imitation.

            The “double issue” also includes the customary year-end report on “The Year in Sex.” Here again, Playboy is playing fast and loose with the language: just as the “double issue” is not twice the size of the usual issue, “The Year in Sex” is less than complete by at least half. Nowhere in the six pages of photos do we find any pictures of naked men. Barenekkidwimmin abound, bosoms flaunting. But no naked men. One male, however, saves the sex: Vladimir Putin appears bare-chested. Judging, as we must, from this plethora of pendulous female pulchritude, we must assume that for Playboy, “sex” has come to mean, simply, “naked women.” Perhaps only a linguistic perversion, but a perversion nonetheless.

*****

OUR VOCABULARY is perversely puny on matters of sex. Take the word fuck, for example. Fuck, a perfectly serviceable word for sexual intercourse, has been replaced by right-thinking people who talk about their bed-rattling adventures as “having sex.” Having sex? Having a donut? Having a dish of ice cream? Having a night out? Can’t we do better than that? We don’t “have” sex: we experience it. Sometimes we wallow in it. And in the height of that transcendent experience, we are nearly overwhelmed by it. “Having sex” is much too effete a term for what transpires. “Making love” is better, a teense poetic, but two words, not one and therefore not, strictly speaking, a good passionate alternative to fuck. ... To Find Out Whether There Is a Sufficiently Evocative Alternative, to Enjoy Nicole Hollander’s Wit and Wisdom, to Feast on Some of the Month’s Best Editorial Cartoons, to Witness Paul Krassner’s Outrages Once Again, and to Encounter Andy Capp’s Sobering Up, Corey Randolph’s Retirement of the Elderberries, Brooke McEldowney’s Latest Daring in 9 Chickweed Lane (Unwed Motherhood!), Cartoons in Playboy, and the Resolution of the Disgraceful Case of Canadian Border Guards Seizing a Computer and its Owner for Allegedly Possessing Child Porn—not to Mention (But We Will) Reviews of Naughty and Nice, Barney Google, Hark! a Vagrant, Comics and the U.S. South (Scholarly Essays), Two Krazy Kat Books, Nancy Is Happy, Stan Lee’s Secrets Behind the Comics (1947 Reprint), the Complete Peanuts (1983-1984), and Stan Lee’s Mighty7, and Musings about Catwoman, Franchesco’s She Dragon, Fatale, Lobster Johnson, Batman, Mud Man, and All Star Western, and Obits for Rex Babin, Moebius, Fran Matera, and Mike Wallace, a Dramatist Whose Connection with Cartooning Is Obscure (But We Explain)—and More, Much More—To See All That, You Must Hie Thee Thither to the $ubscriber/Associate Section, Where You’ll Get More of Our News Reports and Penetrating Analysis. To Get There, Click Here.  And If You're Not a $ubscriber/Associate—

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