What’s your favourite cartoon book?
March 2, 2019 in Comment, General
We’ve been talking in the inner sanctums of the PCO forum about favourite books on cartoons/cartoonists. Here I share some of our choices:
I could easily have gone with Sempe, Stauber or Ungerer – Steadman, in particular, was a really close call – but Matt Jones’ mighty labour of love blew me away. Ronald Searle should be worshipped as a god.
Apologies for blatant trumpet blowing and self promotion. It was a long time ago (1982). It won’t happen again. When my cartoon career first took off in 1976 I had quite a purple patch (now a long distant memory!) where everything I touched seemed to turn to gold (plate)! Today I’m scratching around (does the Weekly News still take gags??) but I can look back at those early successes with a nostalgic eye and be somewhat grateful that there was a thriving market where a half decent cartoonist could get his/her foot on the ladder.
To be included in that list of Hitler’s favourite (mainly US) cartoonists still gives me a thrill. Whatever happened to those other guys?
Here’s a sample page from that tome:
No question which for me. It’s the book I grew up with and where I first discovered the joy of cartoons. Four books actually (Down With Skool!, How to be Topp, Whizz for Atomms & Back in the Jug Agane). My father was a headteacher and a new volume arrived each Christmas, to be fought over by the rest of the family for the rest of the year. The cover below is from a later omnibus edition.
The Willans/Searle collaboration was that rare thing in books, a perfect meeting of brilliant minds, with text and illustrations equally superb, each enhancing the other. And just as funny 60 years on.
A Searle book was the first thing to come to my mind, too. We could probably do a blog post purely on Searle books!
To throw in something different, then, here’s a collection of the also brilliant but considerably underrated Rowland Emett. What I love about Emett is the way he caricatured not just people, but trains and other vehicles, buildings, trees… everything! An absolute master of composition and chaos. Richard Ingrams once told me he didn’t like Emett’s stuff, it was ‘too spidery’, I think he said. The utter heathen.
The Complete Molesworth is a strong contender, but perhaps ‘Bert Fegg’s Nasty Book for Boys & Girls’ does it for me. A friend gave me a copy of it when I was 16, and it was the first time I’d come across the work of the sorely-missed Martin Honeysett.
Russell Brockbank was a very early influence. He had a cartoon in the back of the weekly The Motor in the 50’s and 60’s. I read that mag every week as I was keen on cars (Dad worked for Ford’s) and loved the weekly dose of Brockbank humour. Over The Line is a typical collection, published in 1955.
Always enjoyed Philip Thompson and Mel Calman’s work together over many years.
This was bought for me on Christmas 1981 and the foreword is by Tom Wolfe. It is a definitive collection of the finest satirical cartoonists from all over the world covering from the 60s to the 80s. Bletchman, Booth, Descloozeaux, Feiffer, Francois, Flora, Gorey, Koren, Bill Lee, Le-Tin, Levine, Mihaesco, Myers, Osbourn, Rauch, Roth, Searle, Steadman, Sempe, Sorel, Ungerer and Wilson. The young cartoonists brain couldn’t want a better introduction to satirical cartooning than this book which explained to me the sheer width of styles and scale of ambition ideas and narratives could have. If you haven’t got it, you should get it. Without it I probably wouldn’t have become a cartoonist.
I could quite easily have plumped for the wonderful ‘Ronald Searle’s America’ book already chosen by Jonesy but instead I’ll pick this one on Timothy Birdsall (who Searle was a fan of) given to me by a friend. Shamefully I didn’t know his work at all, which appeared in Private Eye, The Spectator and The Sunday Times. He was more widely known for his regular appearances drawing live on the BBC show ‘That Was The Week That Was’. Here he is explaining how political cartoons are made.
I love his smudgy and yet detailed style. Sadly he died tragically young aged just 27 in 1963.
There should be a few suggestions here to send you scurrying to eBay but what are your favourites? Let us know in the comments section below.
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by Glenn Marshall
How to illustrate your point…
March 12, 2019 in Comment, General
Tim Ruscoe writes:
“At simply-communicate we know that cartoons are magnets to draw our readers’ attention so we can land messages with impact. And Tim’s work is both funny and memorable – whenever an article is illustrated with one of his jokes it gets twice the attention.”
Marc Wright, Publisher, simply-communicate.com
A phrase originally used by the well-known actor Roy Scheider in the 1975 blockbuster ‘Jaws’. He utters the line when he gets a good look at the size of the shark that is circling the small fishing boat he is on. Used in day to day life when a situation seems insurmountable. The film crew when making Jaws use this line all the time to indicate any problem that popped-up, a short cut to a description as to what is required to sort a job out but in a humorous way.
We use humour in so many ways, to emphasize a point, to change a relationship or a way of seeing the truth. Like irony! They say Americans don’t get it, ‘We’re going to need a bigger metaphor’
Getting your story told by communicating in words can have its problems with holding the attention of the reader, in film there is always something going on visually to hold the viewer until the interest returns, reading a dull section can switch you off and that is why illustrated text came in to being.
What do you get from this Six Nations Rugby blog banner with its French Title?
The blog described the way England play to the way the French move the ball around, making for an interesting battle, so the differences depicted are intriguing in many way to the reader. The idea of actually eating a snail is hilarious!
I illustrate with cartoons for Internal Communications, helping to tell a story, engage and entertain, by challenging the reader to interact with the writer as to what they have seen.
A piece on booking the right venue for a meeting-
Feedback-
‘’You think that’s funny I had that experience at…’’
‘’Is that the Matterhorn mountain in the background?’’
Being sympathetic to someone’s lot show your understanding of a situation, helping to keep morale up. Let the team’s feelings about the difficulties and changes that are going on be recognised, to say ‘’Hard luck but move on” won’t help these feelings and only result in employees becoming disengaged.
Pitching for a contract and not winning can be devastating, yet you must bounce back and do it all again and better! May be it wasn’t your entire fault…
Celebrate victories and examples of excellence both formally and informally. During times of difficulty, it is especially important for employees to feel like winners.
For some situations you have to be in the know to get the joke, it may be you have to be an employees to ‘get it’ this is a good thing as it shows your all united you all understand what’s been going on in the company, just made for Internal Comms with their finger on the pulse.
How the author’s brief develops into the cartoon, it can be a list of facts and fiction to combined in to one drawing, current goings-on’s, maybe you have a joke that needs illustrating. I start with a rough first draft, we talk, we change or add stuff, when you’re happy I make the artwork in black ink, I can colour it up if required, I can animate it to a sound track, this is a great way to bring a process or tutorial to life keeping the viewers attention.
A private joke that only one department will truly understand creating interest from everyone, prompting interaction and engagement from others.
Private joke – See what I mean?
Many different seasonal reasons to make people smile, linked to work so sharing a common ground, a reminder to what’s on in a witty or just silly cartoon to send you on the way home.
A writer can engage and inspiring people through compelling stories and analogies.
A cartoonist can illuminate, embellish, adorn, enhance, highlight.
I don’t think there is any subject that can’t be made into a cartoon?
Tim Ruscoe
t.ruscoe@btconnect.com
All cartoons © Tim Ruscoe
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