Our resident toon-tearer, Donny Dietz, does his thing. 

Well, this was certainly a “what the hell” sort of week, and not just in cartoons. The slow but steady rise in tired thesis and MCAT jokes (”Like, OMG, we’re such nerds!”) are a surprisingly accurate measurement of general fatigue and apathy as the semester wears on, both of which were clearly exacerbated this week by post-Spring Break depression. Another emerging trend: it seems that Hillary-Obama cartoons are funny roughly once per week, as many Ivy dailies (Penn is excused for having two, as Obama was actually in Philly) have been running just that (Monday, Brown; Tuesday, Columbia; Wednesday, Penn; Wednesday, Harvard; Thursday, Penn). I just wonder whether the papers actually coordinate to make sure they don’t publish on the same day.  Our friendly op-editors nevertheless provide us with some awesome stuff this week - both awesomely good and awesomely bad.

Daily Princetonian (Tuesday 4/1): I CAMEMBERT THIS SHIT ANYMORE!

I hope and pray that the publication of this cartoon and April Fool’s Day were not mere coincidence… but the fact that it is more or less unrelated to ANYTHING RELEVANT TO ANYTHING seems to suggest otherwise. I contemplated spotting my critique of this cartoon with more lame cheese puns, but I actually couldn’t bear it.

Harvard Crimson (Monday 3/31): Harvard Girls Are Unbelievably Generic

Every day I look forward to the moment when I open up the abyss of apathy that is the Crimson’s op-art page. The Crimson never fails to publish a sloppy, pencil-drawn cartoon that looks as if it was thrown together moments before press time and slapped with a random caption pulled from the editor’s “I don’t give a shit” emergency caption stash. This one was particularly noteworthy for its contributionlessness. In fact, you can track this cartoon on Stuff White People Like: Apple products, flip-flops, “The Notebook,” chatting on the phone while doing nails (although that one may transcend the SWPL demographic), and, of course, spicing up their conversation with sassy terms of endearment (”You go, girl!”). Also, do we really need to see her pantyline?

Daily Princetonian (Monday 3/31): Where Did Mariah Min Go Wrong?

When Mariah Min began cartooning for the Prince, she was a breath of fresh air. Her JuicyCampus cartoon, published on 2/22, was a personal favorite. So what went wrong? Her cartooning style remains crisp and original… But this cartoon just makes no sense. I’d like to meet the professor who can shoot dotted-line arrows out of his finger. But laying aside the awkward grammar (”drowning in despair”?) and the immense gap between the imagined world of this cartoon and reality, the only coherent thought I can really pull together is, “Man, where did that guy get his awesome argyle sweater?”

Daily Pennsylvanian (Monday 3/31): Dueling Allegorical Figures with Geographical Phalluses, Part 2 

After last week’s battle between Juicy Campus and New Jersey, I thought that we had reached the pinnacle of this cartoon genre. It turns out I was wrong. Here we have the two largest cities in the northeastern United States wielding their tallest skyscrapers as dicks in a titanic “mine is bigger than yours” contest. On the other hand, according to Gottman and Wikipedia, Philly and New York are really part of the same urban area… so maybe this is a little glimpse of some pre-mount gay city porn… and New York is learning what it’s like to be a switch.

–Donny Dietz