A Judge Parker kidnapping (yawn)

Judge Parker mentions a map in their plotline about Neddy’s friend having been kidnapped in Niger. And, as is typical for soap opera comics, it's pretty boring. (why do they still exist?)

Mappy

This is a new animated web series entitled Mappy. Episode 4 here is about the only one so far that has mentioned anything map related. It's a team effort from the guys who do PVP and Chainsawsuit (Kris Straub) and PVP Online (Scott Kurtz). It seems kinda.... lame.... their respective webcomics are better.

The island of Count Wierdly

Sometimes I run across Skylock Fox by Bob Weber, Jr. at the Comics Curmudgeon site. The purveyor of the site utilizes a narrative that the Skylock Fox universe comprises of a world where genetically modified sentient animals co-exist alongside what ever humans still remain. So his narrative that accompanies this comic is rather dark.  But the simplistic scenario and solution are geographically oriented.

Maps and time

PBS's Nova gives us a useful web video that explains the importance of atomic clocks. Maps feature prominently in the explanation of course:

Nay-Dolf: The game

Is this an example of experimenting with Godwin's Law in Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal webcomic by Zach Weiner?

What's the world to do? (guest post)

Hello! Guest contributor Amanda Murphyao here. I'm putting up historical cartoons involving the world or globe for the next few Mondays.

This one's also from the Clifford K. Berryman Political Cartoon Collection at the National Archives of the United States:

"What to do with him is the problem," 18 September 1898

Popping it

Another fun illustration from Jaco Haasbroek.  And another link to more of his fun illustrations on his site.

High-and-mightier-lander.

Again, South America getting short shrift by its North American sibling in this t-shirt design from Busted Tees. Poor South America. 

This cartoon is from a typically contrarian article from Slate.com that I don't agree with even if it is written tongue-in-cheek. I recognize that there's a lot of cartoons on this blog that seem to show South America getting the raw end of the stick and I can see the humor in that. But US citizens' assumed monopoly on the term American is hubristic.  I recognize the ungainliness of the alternatives proffered and how difficult it would be to formulate one that could catch on.  The extreme idealist in me imagines a way that the entire hemisphere could come together in a way that unites the entire political construct into a single entity, whether it be a non-imperialistic expanded United States of America or some other arrangement that honors the cultures and histories of all hemispheric American peoples in a sociopolitical mechanism that serves this half of the planet. But in the meantime I've long stopped using the term American to refer to US citizens.

Ranch

I've posted something by John Deering before, but I'm surprised to find I haven't yet posted anything from his Strange Brew single-panel daily: That seems odd.  

American Dad

American Dad, one of 3 (or is it 37?) cartoons by Seth MacFarlane upon which the economic fortunes of the Fox network seems to depend. In this episode, which spoofs Shawshank Redemption, they're using a globe to escape jail. That's a common map joke ... and old?. 

Pangaea Nations

It's been making the rounds on the net: Pangaea as it would look with today's political boundaries.  My geology background tells me many of those nations would not be this recognizable. :

Folk lore

Late for Tuesday, but well get caught up,  Here's a map by social realist artist William Gropper to showcase the diversity of national myths and folk stories and was distributed abroad through the U.S. Department of State starting in 1946. (You can see it up close by clicking on the image below to arrive at a zoomable version, or by navigating to the map's page on the website of the Library of Congress..)

World War I Globe (guest post)

Hello! Guest contributor Amanda Murphyao here. I'm putting up historical cartoons involving the world or globe for the next few Mondays.

This one's also from the Clifford K. Berryman Political Cartoon Collection at the National Archives of the United States:

World: "Now it has Spread to the Other Side", 18 August 1914

The Device

So here's a fun SciFi short by Claude lee Sadik that has the hero grabbing armloads of maps the moment he figures out what the titular Device can do:

Rachel Evans rocks the spirograph

Rachel Evans makes Spirograph maps of the world:
  

Journey

The last time we checked in with Free Range by Bill Whitehead an angel was suggesting God make some new rules.  Here's a reference to a guy known for what happened when that was done previously.  Moses is a favorite subject for cartoons about navigation and getting lost.

Wired's Maplab

Wired Magazine has a map blog that it started just last month.  It's already got a lot of nice stuff in it.  A recent posting included old maps in the San Francisco library mostly from WWII and the Cold War.

Cartoony bird's eye view of the 1939 World's Fair of the West held on Treasure Island.

 
This Farsi map of the U.S. was made by the General Drafting Company under contract from the U.S. Information Agency, whose mission was to generate positive propaganda to be distributed abroad in the post-World War II era.

The Economist

The Economist magazine is a UK-based world news magazine.  So finding a map on an Economist magazine cover is not at all uncommon, especially with over 50 issues offered every year.  Below is a sampling from so far this year alone.  I will say this, though: If you do read any other news magazine, especially any US-based "news" magazines, do yourself a favor and stop wasting your time and insulting your brain cells.  A typical week's issue of The Economist is more informative than a year's worth of every other US-based "news" magazine combined:

California crime

Monte Wolverton finds the uptick in violent crime in California disturbing.

The World According to Lenin (guest post)

Hello! New guest contributor Amanda Murphyao here. I'll be putting up several historical cartoons involving the world or globe for the next few Mondays.

This one's from the Clifford K. Berryman Political Cartoon Collection at the National Archives of the United States:

"Lenin's Dream," 14 August 1920

NSA in the USA

Petar Pismestrovic of Croatia gives us this commentary on the NSA

Geeks should know some maps

There's 3 1/2 maps in this Geek quiz.  Being a geek is OK, I guess.  Being a map geek is always better (Click on the image to make it legible-sized):

Elevator weatherman

This is exactly the kind of map-based prank that the world needs more of:

XKCD's epic "Time" is map-centric

We've done a lot of xkcd by Randall Munroe on this blog (how could we not?).  But Munroe recently finished an overwhelmingly epic work entitled "Time".  It started with a simple image of a pair of people and a title text that said "Wait for it".  Then the image was updates, and updated again, and slowly, very slowing the people began building a sandcastle. One updated image at a time the story unfolded from a leisurely day at the riverbank into saga that was much more expansive and compelling, even including an entirely new language composed specifically for this extremely slow stop-motion work.  And as the plot developed the characters mentioned maps, and then the maps became a central plot device until maps were used in the big reveal near the story's climax.

For those who did not have the patience to wait for the almost 3,100 frames posted occasionally over the course of four months, Jack Pryor built a website xkcd 1190 - Time at your own pace that lets users interactively step through every frame one-at-a-time or automatically, even with pauses to read dialog.

Randall Munroe explains the backstory here. It's truly an impressive work. While he does that I'll post some of the map-related images from the story.  I'll leave the links only for the images that would be spoilers.

This is just before the big reveal. You can kind of see what it's all about if you know what to look for.  To avoid spoilers I'm only going to post the link to it.

California for beginners

This is a submission from my friend Rob. It was created by Julian Lozos who runs a blog on seismology that's very mapulicious.  I especially like the "basically Oregon already" region in the north and the "cow death camp" in the central valley

Life or death in Texas

Milt Priggee has a an editorial cartoon that comments on his views about recent legislative activity in Texas.



On a less somber note about Texas, a friend of mine recently gave me his idea for a fantastic practical joke that'd take some doing: In Texas, replace as many Texas state flags as possible:

...with Chilean flags:

...and see how long it takes for people to notice. The Holy Grail of that prank is to make the change at the state capital. Of course that'd be a blatant act of messing with Texas and it's been strongly recommended to not do that.

The Rocket

This submission by Amanda is from Frank Duggan about a famous hockey player. Canadians and their beloved hockey.

Gerrymander nightmare

This is probably the most disturbing comic about gerrymandering that you'll see (from Far Left Side by Mike Stanfill):

"Good" with maps

Adam Zyglis gives us this very appropriate cartoon about the eroding of voting rights and the complete lack of authority the major parties have on this issue.

North Carolina feels left out

Amanda gives us this one is from the 2008 presidential election with all the states jostling for position to be the first to hold primaries and North Carolina holding back.  Given all the incredibly discriminatory, dangerous, and downright stupid things the GOP-dominated North Carolina state legislature is passing these days, it's surprising there aren't a few more North Carolina maps showing up in the editorial pages.  48 down, 2 to go.  We're down to just South Dakota and West Virginia in terms of state maps that have been represented in this maps-in-comics blog.

Del-unaware

Amanda gives us an example from the webcomic Left-handed Toons by Drew Mokris.  If New Jersey is making fun of you things are bad.... or New Jersey is just sick of the jokes at its expense. 47 down, 3 to go.