Was sitcom inspired by cartoons?

A series of World War 2 cartoons that may have helped inspire British sitcom Dad’s Army have surfaced. The cartoons are part of a pamphlet published in 1945 about the Home Guard and featuring a bumbling group of ill-equipped soldiers. Writers Jimmy Perry and David Croft started to write the TV show – a classic – in […]

Cartoonist patches things up

Sometimes cartoonists find that their lovingly crafted drawings don’t look quite as intended when they appear in print. When PCOer Wilbur Dawbarn opened the current issue of The Dandy, he was slightly confused by one of the frames in his strip “Mr Meecher, the Uncool Teacher”, above. It seems that a Mr Meecher from a […]

Simon’s Cat adopts a new home

The UK Press Gazette reports today that the Mirror Group Newspapers have signed Simon Tofield, creator of internet cartoon sensation, Simon’s Cat to bring his regular cartoon feature to their products. There is an interview with the four cat owning cartoonist in the Mirror here. You can also hear the man speaking in this video […]

Offence and context

Cartoons and offence go together as naturally as cartoons and laughter. Reactions to cartoons depend greatly on the context in which the images are first seen – and this is usually out of the hands of the cartoonist or illustrator. This week a national news publisher paired an image with a piece of writing by […]

Love and survival at charity exhibition

Valentine’s Day seems like an appropriate time to mention an exhibition of drawings created by a cartoonist out of love for his wife. Les Très Riches Heures de Mrs Mole, which features cartoons by Ronald Searle drawn for his wife Monica during her chemotherapy, opens at the the Cartoon Museum in London this Thursday (February […]

The female cartoonist who isn't

The world of cartooning is dominated by men, and political cartoons in particular seem to be almost exclusively a male preserve. So there was much interest when a new political cartoonist called Rachel Gold (cartoon portrait, right) emerged in Austria, seemingly out of nowhere. But all was not as it seemed. Rachel Gold is a […]

Cartooning on the Frontline

Photograph: Antje Bormann PCO member Martin Rowson delivered a talk on Caricatures and Commentary to the Frontline Club in London this week. In discussion with Radio 4’s Laurie Taylor Martin spoke about subjects ranging from his caricatures of patrons at the Gay Hussar restaurant to the abolition of the Licensing Act in 1695 and taking in […]

How one woman was saved by cartoons

Here’s a great video from the New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly that shows how cartoons can make serious points and provide hearty laughs at the same time. In an illustrated lecture for Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED), a non-profit organisation dedicated to “Ideas worth spreading”, which it makes available through talks posted on its website, […]