The PCO Cartoon Review of the Year 2020
December 28, 2020 in General, Links, News
Cartoon by © Andy Davey.
Glenn Marshall wrote:
Once more my friends it’s time for the PCO Cartoon Review of the Year, featuring work from members of the PCO (speech) bubble. It’s been a difficult year to find humour in, although it would be a nightmare for cartoonists if any year was filled with just love, joy and kittens! I ended last year’s review with “So what fresh horrors will 2020 have in store?” – how little did we know!
As we chase off 2020 (envisioned above by Andy Davey for The Telegraph) one story seems to have dominated this year’s review over all others. Just for fun, see if by the end you can spot which one it is?
Cartoon by © Dean Patterson
To start us off the this cartoon by Dean Patterson sums up the year in one image.
Cartoon by © Andrew Fraser
Some family entertainment by Drew in Private Eye.
Cartoon by © The Surreal McCoy
This cartoon by Ms McCoy was from Lockdown 1.0 but works equally well now for Lockdown 2.5 (and counting)
Cartoon by © Matt Percival
…and from check-in let’s move on to the baggage area with a Percival cartoon reclaimed from The Spectator.
Cartoon by © Nick Newman
Nick Newman in the The Sunday Times on the looooong running Dom Com. In a questionnaire in The Sunday Times Nick recently cited this cartoon as a favourite he’d done this year.
Cartoon by © Glenn Marshall
Some testing times for Cummings back in May.
Cartoon by © Rebecca Hendin
Rebecca Hendin’s very own lockdown guidelines appeared in the New Statesman.
Cartoon by © Jeremy Banx
Masker vs Anti-masker featuring Batman and Superspreader from Banx in the Financial Times. Jeremy was recently voted ‘Pocket Cartoonist of the Year’. You can see a report on the awards by PCO Chair-human Clive Goddard on the PCO YouTube Channel.
Cartoon by © Clive Goddard
…and talking of Clive Goddard.- in other news (was there any other news I hear you ask?) here’s Harry and Meghan doing some extreme social distancing from the family by Clive.
Cartoon by © Steve Bell
Can’t a have a cartoon review of the year without some Donald – hopefully not so much in next year’s! This splendid reworking of the Delacroix painting ‘Liberty Leading the People’ (more like ‘Liability Bleeding the People’) is by Steve Bell in The Guardian. Steve was voted ‘Political Cartoonist of the Year’ in the afore-mentioned awards.
Cartoon by © Andy Davey
…and in The Daily Telegraph Andy Davey poured ‘Scorn’ (other bleaches are available) on Donald Trump.
Cartoon by © Sarah Boyce
The Black Lives Matter movement started after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Here is a creative twist on the phrase from Sarah Boyce published in PE.
Cartoon by © Rupert Besley
INTERLUDE: As a diversion from relentless bad news stories here’s a lovely, soothing cartoon and drawing from Rupert Besley.
Cartoon by © Chris Williams
School days are supposed to be the haPPEiest of our lives! Here’s Dink on the return to school in September.
Cartoon by © Tat Effby
The taking down of public statues also led on from the birth of Black Lives Matter. Later in the year there was a furore about the Mary Wollstonecraft memorial sculpture by artist Maggi Hambling. Tat Effby successfully clashes the two stories with a nude Clive of India.
Cartoon by © Steve Jones
In lack of live Entertainment News: Jonesy reports for Private Eye on the new rules for theatre goers…
Cartoon by © Kipper Williams
…and Kipper Williams took us to the cinema in The Spectator.
Cartoon by © Royston Robertson
Excellent cartoon from our technology correspondent Royston Robertson. I think we’re all suffering from a bit of this, indeed I’m sure I have ‘Long Zoom Fatigue’
Cartoon by © Martin Rowson
Didn’t have to have my arm twisted to use this pretty bullying cartoon by Martin Rowson for Kevin Maguire’s The Mirror column.
Cartoon by © Graeme Bandeira
In sports news Graeme Bandeira puts his hand to a caricature of Maradona for The Yorkshire Post. For some bonus content you can see Graeme’s cartoon that won ‘Political Cartoon of the Year’ in the awards report mentioned earlier,
Cartoon by © James Mellor
In more sports news James Mellor takes to the fairways. Like many I took up indoor grouse shooting.
Cartoon by © Guy Venables
Back to Trump who, at time of going to press, STILL hasn’t lost the election. This by Guy Venables in his regular slot for The Metro.
Cartoon by © Ed Nay
Clever drawing by Nay. Can you see what is yet?
Cartoon by © Steve Bright
A contender for Man(iac) of the Year, the dyed-hair Trumpublican attorney Rudy Giuliani. I loved this caricature by Brighty.
Cartoon by © Pete Dredge
A substantially funny cartoon from Pete Dredge served up in The Spectator.
Cartoon by © Pete Songi
A fabulous homage to Hogarth’s ‘Gin Lane’ by Pete Songi culled from Martin Rowson’s twittersphere #Draw2020challenge.
Cartoon by © Dave Brown
Talk about Johnson being out of his depth with everything from PPE, Cumming’s eye tests, track and disgrace etc etc etc, You feel Boris just hasn’t got it….well he did get it, but you know what I mean. This from The Independent by Dave Brown really sums up Boris’ year.
Cartoon by © Roger Penwill
Roger Penwill takes to the road for ‘Roadway’ (the magazine from the Road Haulage Association). It’s about the Kent lorry parks post Brexit, but became even more relevant with the closed border before Christmas.
Cartoon by © Wilbur Dawbarn
This BBC balanced offering from Wilbur plucked from The Spectator…
Cartoon by © Zoom Rockmann
…and more Christmas fun. This taking the Santa knee from Zoom Rockman in the Private Eye Christmas special..
Cartoon by © Chris Burke
Let’s end the year with this lovely festive offering from Chris Burke, it’s what we all wanted in our stockings this year.
So a Happy? New Year from all at PCO megacorp.
Now, I wonder what fresh horrors 2021 will have in store?
Cartoon by © Martin Rowson for The Mirror Kevin Maguire column.
Latest Blog
by Glenn Marshall
How to draw a virus: spare a thought for the Covid-19 cartoonists
June 9, 2020 in Comment, General
Written by Guy Venables originally for The Spectator (with a smattering of bonus content cartoons):
While stumbling the 30 yards from bed to work, the freelance gag cartoonist is usually trying to decide which of the hundreds of news stories to draw a hilarious cartoon about that day. It used to be one of the most difficult decisions of the morning. Now, however, that question has been replaced by “are there any new angles to be had from the one, same, monolithically large single news story of the decade?”
My mother, similarly, at the end of the second world war, asked her own mother whether the newspapers would keep going because, obviously, there would be no more news to speak of now the war was over.
Cartoon © Guy Venables
Cartoonists evolve, like finches, on separate islands and rarely meet. That said, in the first week of lockdown each of us imagined we were the only ones to think of the link between the “man on the desert island” visual cliché and social distancing, so much so in fact, that the Private Eye cartoon editor asked us all politely to go back to bed and try to think of something else. So we all switched our attentions to loo rolls and stockpiling.
Then Easter came around and we all individually sent The Spectator “Jesus being told to roll back the stone and get back in the cave.” Then we all drew Joe Wicks. Then baking. A new type of mental filtering process had to be adopted, and cartoonists aren’t good at “new” (although a strangely large proportion of us have been adopted. Some several times). A proportion of us decided to concentrate on non-topical cartoons.
Cartoon © Guy Venables
But as Pete Dredge asked us all: “Do we draw everybody two metres apart even if it’s nothing to do with Coronavirus?” We didn’t know for sure but decided against it, as it would use up too much paper.
As things progressed and the death count rose there was a shift from looking at the situation to looking at the virus itself. Attack the villain of the story as we always say (We don’t always say that but we COULD). But how do you draw a virus? Somebody drew the virus. It was round with knobbly bits on. Right. We all drew gags about round things and added knobbly bits so you could tell it was biting satire. Then Matt from the Telegraph did it better and we all went back to bed again.
In my own personal sphere, it was a problem of pretence that bothered me. Now that my wife was at home all day the withering truth was slowly dawning on her of just how little work I actually do. I spend the afternoon trying to convince her that a hammock is a legitimate workplace.
I think of an idea but realise Nick Newman has already done it in the Times. Then I realise I’d just read the Times.
Long gone are the cocktail parties and trendy gatherings to which the cartoonist is never invited. Now he must rely on his own wits and hard work. Having never done this before we revert to our standard emergency operation of copying old Punch cartoons and hoping nobody notices.
Cartoon © Guy Venables
Another angle is of course to throw withering scorn at whoever’s in charge. This can limit the people to whom one can send the actual cartoon. Politically it’s a good idea to choose a point right in the middle of politics and shoot outwards. That way, come the revolution you can pin your badge on whoever runs the firing squads.
Cartoon © Guy Venables
I draw a gag about Dominic Cummings that gets lots of likes on Facebook and go back to the hammock, blissfully unaware that an hour beforehand, from some distant garret, Banx had sent a similar but much better Cummings gag to the Financial Times.
With thanks to The Spectator for allowing us to reproduce the piece.
Tags: Banx, cartoon, cartoonists, cartoons, Corona Virus, Coronavirus, Covid 19, Dominic Cummings, Guy Venables, Matt, Nick Newman, Pete Drege, Punch, The Daily Telegraph, The Financial Times, The Spectator, The Times No Comments »