Media-Asia: Editorial Cartoonists Turn to Pens – and Mice

• by Lynette Lee Corporal (Bangkok)
• Friday, July 31, 2009
• Inter Press Service

Against the backdrop of challenges ranging from the global financial crunch to the popularity of new media, editorial cartoonists are drawing up ways to be creative in more ways than one.

Many cartoonists and artists in Asia’s media are going through a transition. The iconic image of an artist hunched over a cluttered desk in a corner of a busy newsroom still rings true for many of them – except that they now hold close both their pencils and computer mice.

Technological innovations and online access have enhanced rather than ‘endangered’ their work, say these artists, who produce cartoons that go with editorials and articles in newspapers and magazines.

Nepal gets its own Laurel and Hardy

By Maharani Lamsal

    KATHMANDU, July 29 (Xinhua) — In the early 20th century, two America-based actors managed to capture public imagination though at first appearance, they had nothing star-like about them.

    While one of them, Stan Laurel, was thin as a reed, the other, Oliver Hardy, was fat.

    However, the pairing up of the two created one of the most popular comic characters of Hollywood, the Laurel-Hardy movies, whose success inspired animation cartoons and then comic books.

    Now almost 60 years after the first Laurel and Hardy comic books were published, Nepal, located in another part of the world, has got its own Laurel and Hardy comic book.

    Sher Publications, a Kathmandu-based Nepali publishing house, Tuesday formally launched the first Nepali comic book.

Cartoon king Ranan Lurie aims to conquer Everest with art

Durga Baral (Vatsayan), Ranan Lurie and Rajesh KC

Kathmandu, Nov 11 (IANS) Described as the “Caesar of cartoons” and the “king of American political cartoons” by newspapers across the world, 75-year-old Ranan Lurie now plans to make his biggest conquest – Mt Everest.The American cartoonist-painter-inventor, who is the most widely syndicated political cartoonist in the world with over 100 million people looking at his cartoons daily, starts his campaign in Nepal Tuesday to take an astounding project, begun 40 years ago, to the summit of the world’s highest peak.