Kim Tomsic, the author of middle-grade novels like “The 11:11 Wish” and “The 12th Candle,” and nonfiction books like “The Elephants Come Home,” has teamed up with "Off The Mark" cartoonist and author Mark Parisi for the new she-said, he-said illustrated diary book “The Truth About 5th Grade,” published by HarperCollins. And what a book it is! Find out all about it when the pair appears on the latest episode of Strip Search. Also, Dave goes behind the scenes at the latest Rhode Island Comic Con.

Since getting her start with her hilarious single-panel comic “Half Full,” which is syndicated nationally by Andrews-McMeel, Maria Scrivan has thrown herself into her graphic novel work, and the result seems to have been as much fun for her readers as for herself: 2020’s “Nat Enough” was an instant New York Times bestseller, and the series’ popularity has only grown since. We sat down with Maria to talk about cartooning, graphic novels, and surviving middle school. Plus: Dave's review of the "What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine" at Norman Rockwell Museum!

If a panel cartoon is good enough, it can wind up adorning kitchen refrigerators, office bulletin boards, and social media feeds for years on end. So how do panel cartoonists do it, with artwork that can sometimes amount to no more than a few scrawled lines, and text that might comprise just a few words? It’s a question that, apparently, haunted Phil Witte and Rex Hesner — so much so that they wrote a book about it, “Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons.”

Well, the impetus was actually a little more complicated than that, as you'll hear when Dave London and Pete Chianca sit down with Phil and Rex for the latest episode of "Strip Search." Also, find out the latest about the rollout of the latest "Pet Peeves" collection by London & Chianca, "Nerd Dad!"