These are the champions

We're actually going to be topical today, which is odd because the topic is sports and I'm nut much of a fan.  But hockey and basketball are in their championship phases so here's an interactive map from Slate.com that shows all the championships ever won in every city in the US from 1903 (1971 shown below). Enjoy:

Turn-by-turn-by-gas

This is from Jeff Stahler's single-panel comic Moderately Confused.

Transit two-fer

Let's do a transit two-fer.  We'll start with a Nyan Cat sticker somebody put on the transit map for the BART rail system in the Bay Area.  What's Nyan Cat you may ask?  Know-Your-Meme can explain.

And the next one is from last fall when cartoonist Tom Toles made a comment on public transit on the other side of the country in Virginia:

And if you want to get into it very deeply, there's this article in Wired about a scientific paper that suggests that all public transit systems around the world are converging into an ideal form:

Doonesbury wedding planning

In the very-long-running Doonesbury strip by Gary Trudeau there's a wedding looming between the Doonesbury daughter Alex and an Iraq vet Leo "Toggle" DeLuca who was wounded while serving with Mike Doonesbury's friend B.D's friend-and-military-buddy Ray.

Here they plan their wedding to be at a secret location with secret map coordinates. It's kinda funny 'cause the last wedding-related comic that I posted also had to do with coordinates.

Game of Thrones weatherman

I have not seen Game of Thrones nor read the books.  I suspect that I'd very much enjoy both.  However in the meantime there's this mash-up which I still find humorous, though true fans might be actually LOL-ing:

Here's an article, actually, that discusses whether the years-long seasons in the Game of Thrones world might somehow be meteorologically/astronomically possible.

Chipotle's award-winning mappish ad.

Every year advertisers have an awards ceremony to give awards to what they think are the best ads. This year's winner was an ad for Chipotle that uses a stylized animated map view in the middle part of their ad:
 

One could make a comment here about the irony of the farmer depicted having a moral crisis about the comfort and well-being of the animals he's raising on the farm that will all be slaughtered to become Chiotle burritos, but I like Chipotle so I'll not make that comment. And the ad's kinda cute.

Denver on the map

Here's an editorial cartoon by Mike Keefe from a few months ago when quarterback Peyton Manning was traded to the Denver Broncos at about the same time that former Illinois governor Rob Blagojevich was sent to Denver to start his prison sentence.

Romney two-fer

Today's two-fer is Romney-themed... and two are also vice-presidentially-themed... even possibly Palin-themed (you decide).

The first is by Matt Wuerker commenting on Romney infamous Seamus the dog incident and the GOP's ambivalence towards the Romney nomination inevitability.

This is Matt Wuerker again commenting on either Romney's geographic prowess or his material/realty wealth.  

And because the first one references Palin (and possibly a recent comparison in some media outlet between Romney and Palin) they could both be Palin-related if the woman in the chair might be Palin. This is by Clay Bennett  Notice the map in the background though.  The pins in the map don't mark Alaska, but they do seem to mark South Carolina, where veep short-lister Nikki Haley is governor, so maybe that's who she's supposed to be?  But the other guys there aren't entirely recognizable and don't necessarily match up to the states marked.  Is the guy on the right supposed to be Chris Christie? Is that New Jersey marked on the map?  Is one of the other guy's supposed to be Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty? It does look like Minnesota could be marked.  My best guess for the last one is Indiana's Mitch Daniels.  But there also looks to be a fifth marker on the map that could be South Dakota for John Thune... but there's a fifth marker but not a fifth person... unless the woman holding the straws is also a potential veep and is supposed to be New Mexico's Susana Martinez, but there's no marker on the map for New Mexico.  [Un]Fortunately the veep guessing game will be playing for months so there's plenty of time to keep speculating.

Underwater Millennium Falcon

About once a year the gang from Sherman's Lagoon strip by Jim Toomey go on a global adventure that often involves a map of some sort.  This time they decided to go looking for a UFO that was found at the bottom of the ocean.  

This idea is ripped from actual headlines.  Earlier this year CNN reported that a team of shipwreck hunters found a strange shape at the bottom of the Baltic Sea that actually looks a lot like the outline of the Millennium Falcon.  It's anybody's guess as to what that thing could be:

Google Mapped 2

This is not the first time that we've had an example of people using the Google Maps marker as public sculpture/art.  I still think that Google should be handing these out to people who put together public events.

Learn Geography with Zombies

Here is a Kickstarter project by one David Hunter who wants to use zombies to teach kids about geography:
 

Mentor without a map

This is Cow and Boy by Mark Leiknes.  I've mentioned it only once before on a list of comics which have the boy/girl-and-friend premise.

Climate Change many-fer

Why not do another climate change two-fer?  They're easy enough to come by and frankly no other topic lends itself more ideally to the use of maps in comics.  

The first one is by Paresh Nath of The Khaleej Times in Dubai and is a bit dated as it references the Cancun round of the climate change talks from a few years ago:

The second one is an illustration that accompanied an article in Slate, an online news magazine.  Unfortunately I neglected to note the artist.

There's another one from Slate for a different article (ending fossil fuel subsidies accomplishes half the carbon reductions needed) by artist Robert Neubecker:

Another Slate article illustration (article: it's hard to figure out how much warming will happen). Not sure the artist again, but I think I've posted this artist's work before.

Another Slate article illustration (article: water vapor is biggest global warming culprit), again, artist unknown:

And finally one more Slate article illustration (article: Supreme Court case about global warming)

Weather bailout

What with JP Morgan Chase giving us a reminder of the 2008 bank bail out crash, I figured we could have this installment from from Dan Piraro's Bizarro.

Bed Cartography

Here is a map of a bed. Many of you know this area intimately:

Bugs Bunny: Domestic Terrorist

Today's animated map is from the 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon entitled "Rebel Rabbit" Bugs Bunny goes on a national vandalism rampage because he's upset that the bounty for rabbit pelts is so low. At about the 5:10 minute mark there's a caricature of a southern senator in Congress demanding that action be taken to stop Bugs. Mel Blanc is using his Foghorn Leghorn voice for this character and Bugs appears with classic Foghorn catch phrases to drive that point home:
 

Police maps

Here's one from Get Fuzzy by Darby Conley.

The Mac character they're talking about is a marginally comprehensible cat from Manchester, England who is frequently involved in confounding adventures. 

Fountain of Age two-fer

In this wonderful excerpt from a short storyline from Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson we meet mainline character Petey and his possibly-imaginary aged-far-beyond-his-years associate Ernesto.  Ernesto has discovered a map to the fabled "Fountain of Age". Enjoy.

Google Earth: cat

Ben by Daniel Shelton giving a shout out to Google Earth:

Post-it world

Because this is was sticky notes were ultimately designed for.

Time to take over the world

This kid Harlan and his dad made a control panel for displaying the world map, perfect for the budding global dominator:
 

Out of luck

Over at Virus Comix there is this item called: Things they don't tell you (but should), a short series of cartoons that could be an iconoclastic children's book. This is on the same site that hosts Subnormality by Winston Rowntree.  I think it's the same artist too, but I'm not entirely sure.  At any rate, here's the item from the collection that uses a map:

Climate two-fer

We're still close enough to Earth Day for this pair of climate change themed cartoons to be relevant:

This first one is one of the many designs available over at Busted Tees.

This one is from editorial cartoonist Mike Keefe.