Oh my! Pinky called the other zoo residents Loser Animals! I don’t know if they will let her get away with this! And no way Mommee Mei is going to let her “Phexit” the Panda House! Has Pinky been channeling Mittens the Cat?
Mommee Mei puts her foot down.
I guess Pinky will have to come up with a new plan.
Be the Bear
Bob T Panda
Well…did you really think that the Meihems could get away with inviting Bubba to their party and that Pinky would not find out about it?
No, I didn’t either.
Not Banky Pig!!!!
Mei Xiang will be so relieved when this presidential stuff is all over. (like the rest of us.)
Be the Bear.
Bob T Panda
Because things don’t always happen in real time here at the Panda Chronicles, we have to go back in time a couple of weeks, because with all of Pinky’s shenanigans, the Meihems got shortchanged on their birthday cartoons. Um…actually…I think Pinky hijacked this ‘toon too. Well, who ever is in attendance, it’s Party Time!
Is anyone having the flashback to the wicked fairy not being invited to Briar Rose’s christening party?
Meanwhile, in the real world, history is being made, baby pandas are being born, and Mr. Wu is about to turn 4. Maybe Mei will go to the party there instead of waiting around for the Pinky fireworks.
No rant today, y’all!
Be the Bear,
Bob T Panda
Oh… the world has been too much with us lately. So many bad things happening in so many places. All I want to do is crawl under the covers, binge watch entire seasons of The Gilmore Girls (how did I not know of this show’s existence before???) and eat a really big bowl of ice cream. What we need now, more than ever, are pandas being pandas.
For those of you who are fans of watching the actual pandas via the panda cam at the Smithsonian National Zoo, you know that the grown up pandas daily get a treat of frozen fruit juice with fruit and carrots and other vegetables frozen into them. Mei Xinag is well known for not sharing her treats (and you wonder where Pinky learned the “no sharing” thing? It was Mom, all the way,) and not only does she not share her treats, she will steal the treats of any panda cub under her control.
Well, two can play at that game.
What goes around, comes around…
Be the Bear
Bob (paws off my ice cream) T Panda
Something happened at the debate between Pinky, Bob and Mittens and nobody will tell us what happened. Where IS Mittens? Investigations are now underway, in an attempt to get to the bottom of his mysterious disappearance. Pinky isn’t talking and Mehitabel is claiming debate moderator privilege. Is that a real thing?
Uh oh. Is Bubba about to rat someone out?
If you have any information leading to the return of Mittens, we hope you’ll just keep it to yourself call the #WhereIsMittens hotline at 1-800-BAD-CATZ
Bubba better hope that Pinky is not listening in on the Panda House Party line. I don’t think Pinky will take kindly to any perceived disloyalty.
If you are enjoying these cartoons and wish you could read a whole lot of them at once, even during a power outage, consider adding The Panda Chronicles books to your personal collection! you can find them here! Your book purchases help support The Institute for Contemporary Panda Satire! (That’s me!)
Be the Bear,
Bob T Panda
Did you see what happened at the last debate? I was out in the kitchen, checking to see if the cookie fairy had brought me some cookies during the night and I looked away from the television just at the crucial moment, and when I looked back, Mittens was gone! Poof! Just like that! And meanwhile, back at the Panda House… Mei was doing some fast thinking and making calculations on how she could keep her daughter out of hot water.
Last week over in the Twittersphere, some people were having fun with the names of Beatle’s songs and panda fan extraordinaire Anne Lane Witt came up with this one, which I…um…borrowed for this ‘toon:
What happens at the debate, states at the debate…
I hope everyone is planning to have a safe and sane 4th of July, and NOT follow the example of the panda kindergarten, who are anything but sane.
uh. oh.
I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday weekend. Not that artists/writers/cartoonists get 3 day weekends. Oh no! But you all go and have a good time. Don’t give it a second thought. (But if you could send some cake my way, I would take back that pissy little rant. Really.)
Be the Bear!
Bob T. Panda
And lest I forget our neighbors to the north, Happy Panada Day!!!!
Oh Panada, Oh Panada, how tasty are your maple leaves….
I know it has taken a little too long for the return of Mr. Bun but in ‘toon time, it has been no time at all. And isn’t it wonderful that Pinky is so technologically tuned in? Do we know where Mittens has been poofed to? Do we care? No, all we care about is that Mr. Bun returns to the place he belongs…with Pinky.
Of course, if Pinky DOES become president, how will it look if she brings her stuffie bunny to the inauguration?
Oh, Mr. Bun! Where have you been?
As a side note, we’ve been having a few technical difficulties over here, which for the moment seem to have resolved themselves. (That’s how I usually resolve technical difficulties: shut down laptop, go to dinner, have a cuppycake and hope that whatever was wrong no longer is when I turn on the computer again. ) For some reason I was not able to upload today’s new cartoon, and I was afraid I was going to have to figure out some low tech work around – print and deliver personally to hundreds of people around the world, perhaps? But while that might have been lots-o-fun, the time required and the cost of world-wide personal delivery was beyond my resources. So I am happy to report that the problem seems to have gone away by itself. Huzzah!
We will have more from Mr. Bun this Wednesday, and then who knows what I will have prepared for you for next week. The Tour de France is coming up soon, so we will revisit the danger of selfies at the Tour, as well as other selfie hazards in Fabulous Furry Friday’s encore extravaganza!
Don’t forget to…
Be the Bear
Bob T Panda
What better distraction is there to world events, the 2016 presidential election, and the lack of cake at my house, than BABY PANDA SEASON ??????? Pandas are popping out all over, and while we wait to see if Lun Lun (mom of the Meihems) or Lady MacBear of Edinburgh are going to gift us with bouncing baby pandas, we must be satisfied with reports and pictures of panda kiddies in China and Belgium.
So to celebrate Baby Panda Season, we here at The Institute for Contemporary Panda Satire and Fabulous Furry Friday bring you some of our favorite cartoons about….baby pandas! (What? you thought it was going to be about the gross national product forecasts or the effect on global economies if Britain leaves the EU?)
“Howdy do! I’m Mr. Wu! Who are you?”
Yo ho ho and a bottle of BooBeer!
And then just one year later, Meihem ensued!
Oh, those southern Belle pandas!
And then along came PINKY!
Such a little darling! How could her big brother resist spoiling her?
Princess Pinky is drawing a line in the sandbox. Even as a baby, she was a force to be reckoned with.
But then we had no new baby pandas till 10 months ago when Pinky’s little brother Bubba arrived…although that event was a mixed blessing…
PP: um, dis is not going to interrupt my presidential campaign, is it?
One of Mei Xiang’s twin cubs did not survive, and Pinky dealt with the loss as only Pinky can…
Mr Bun has a question, daddee.
I love Pinky’s resilience! But we would not be doing our job here if we did not include one of my favorite baby Bubba ‘toons.
Bubba’s first feature role!
He’s small for now, but Bubba Bei Bei is shaping up to be a whole lot of panda!
I hope we have distracted you sufficiently from the trials and turmoil of the real world.
Be the Bear, everyone!
Bob T Panda
I love Roz Chast’s memoir Can’t We talk About Something More Pleasant?, and while she was recounting the story of her aging parents, I think the phrase is particularly appropriate today. Today, we are not going to talk about any of the appalling news that has happened in several parts of the world, or about political candidates and the stupid, insensitive things that they may or may not have said.
We are going panda panda panda with some of the cutest panda cartoons of all times.
Like this one from the way back files…
This cartoon appeared in Henry Nicholls’ book The Way of the Panda
You can’t just DO stuff. You need instruction from an expert!
How IS this different from Pinky’s normal bossiness?
What the well dressed panda cub is wearing this season!
When I first started drawing panda satire, I went through this intensive period of what I called, “Learning From the Masters” and immersed myself in books of collected cartoons by Bill Watterson, (Calvin and Hobbes) Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury) Steven Pastis (Pearls Before Swine) and Darby Conley (Get Fuzzy) among others. recently, I received the exhibition catalog from a 2014 show of Bill Watterson’s original cartoons at Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. I’m in the middle of reading an interview with Watterson and it is full of Calvin-ish wisdom. Have I mentioned Calvin and Hobbes is my favorite cartoon series ever?
Oh dear, the Mei-hem twinkies have made Pinky mad. Uh oh.
Anyway, although I was making notes on some of the most significant points in the interview, I seem to have misplaced the paper I wrote them on. (this happens a lot around here) but if I may paraphrase some of the statements I loved best:
On the difference between editorial cartooning and comic strips: You get to make stuff up.
What characters say: When you are really in tune with your characters, it’s not so much writing dialog, but listening to the characters own voices.
Yeah, see? it IS Pinky saying all that stuff! I think I need to go on a road trip to all the cartoon museums in this country.
And because this will always be one of my favorite Wu-toons,
Dis. Will. Not. Stand!
Mittens will return on Sunday. Stay tuned.
Be the Bear,
Bob T Panda
It’s no wonder some people (such as myself) have a little bit of a hard time separating fact from fiction. As you will see in next week’s ‘toons, when Mittens takes to the stage, there was so much of his dialog that I could pull from actual news items, that I really didn’t have to make much up. In some ways, it makes my life easier, but in other ways… I’d like the world we live in to be kind and fair and…um…have so many pandas that they become a pest: invasive rather than endangered. They could go into neighborhoods where people have foolishly planted bamboo, which has now gotten out of control, and take care of it, providing fertilizer in addition to pesky plant removal. The Putting Pandas to Work program could go global!
Putting Pandas to Work goes global!
Along with all the political news of the week, I’ve also seen a few references to “sock puppet” accounts on various social media outlets. I don’t know what the big deal is. I’ve always loved puppets.
But they’re so cute!
And as various politicians toot their horns about their popularity, as opposed to that of their opponents…
See? I told you it was broken!
(Ha ha! That one has become one of my all time favorites!)
But as we head into the home stretch of this very long campaign season, let me leave you with a ‘toon that reminds us, that the most important positions in the world should not be awarded through stoking the fears of some, but because of what we can bring to a table where there is room for all.
Consider this my Werld Peez Pandifesto
Be the Bear
Bob T Panda
And now for a word from our sponsor! If you enjoy these cartoons and want to support *me* the creator of the aforementioned cartoons, consider visiting my Book Page and buying my books for yourself or for friends! A portion of my sales also goes to support our friends at Pandas International, who support actual pandas!