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
Why does no one want to be a cartoonist any more? The lack of new blood doesn’t bode well for the industry’s future
July 25, 2020 in Comment, General
Written by Nick Newman for (and courtesy of) The Spectator with bonus cartoon content.
‘Nightmare!’ is how The Spectator’s cartoon editor Michael Heath has been describing cartooning for at least 30 years, but it’s truer now than ever. Eighty years ago, cartoonists were so celebrated that waxworks of Low, Strube and Poy were displayed in Madame Tussauds. Today, all that remains of Low is a pair of waxy hands in Kent University’s British Cartoon Archive. We are a vanishing species.
A © K.J. Lamb cartoon from Cherwell Magazine done during the time Kathryn was still at college.
There is a lack of new blood in the industry that doesn’t bode well for the future. When I was a student, getting published in Punch and Private Eyewas seen as the pinnacle of a career in humour. Many tried —and succeeded — from an early age. K.J. Lamb was selling gags to the Eyewhile still at Oxford. Ken Pyne was published in Punch when just 16 — as was Grizelda in Private Eye. The FT’s Banx was also a Punch stalwart by the time he was 20. That was then. Now we are all middle-aged and there are few youngsters snapping at our heels. The last time six cartoonists met at a Spectator party we had a combined age of over 350. In a recent photo of Eye cartoonists, featuring 45 of the top names, only one was under 30.
Punch cartoon from 1983 by a youthful © Jeremy Banks
Yet there’s every indication that cartoons are as loved by the public as ever. They are tweeted, shared, posted on Instagram; they go viral and get printed out and stuck on fridges. Pocket cartoons, pioneered by Sir Osbert Lancaster in the 1930s, are a particularly British art form and one that is still prized. Editors place topical gags on the front pages of newspapers, a practice rarely seen in France, Germany or America.
So why the dearth of new cartooning talent? The simple answer is that the opportunities have narrowed. Since the death of Punch, the main outlets for freelancers are Private Eye, The Spectator and the Oldie — and competition is fierce. Private Eye receives more than 500 submissions per issue and publishes up to 50. Every newspaper used to have regular pocket cartoonists — now only a handful survive. In straitened times for print media, the cartoons are often the first to go. Many of us lost work when lockdown was announced.
Another problem is financial. Some publications haven’t raised their rates since before the fall of the Berlin Wall, while others pay as little as £50 per cartoon. Compare that with the New Yorker, which is reported to pay between $700 and $1,400 per gag, depending on the artist’s ‘seniority’. One British publisher once asked me: ‘If we pay more, will the jokes be any funnier?’ I wish now I had said yes.
It isn’t just the lack of money that’s deterring new talent. There is also fear of failure. Rejection is a way of life for even seasoned cartoonists and today’s snowflakes can’t cope with it. I recently encouraged a promising young cartoonist to try The Spectator, which he did with immediate success. I still warned him: ‘You will get rejected. Everyone gets rejected.’ After two issues of ‘no thanks’ he has abandoned cartooning.
We veteran cartoonists do try to encourage the next generation, although it’s akin to committing professional suicide. The Cartoon Art Trust’s Young Cartoonist competition — judged by Fleet Street cartoonists — receives 1,000 entries a year. We joke that the objective is to identify the talent and then break their little fingers, but we stupidly don’t, and instead celebrate new stars and extra competition. Former winner Will McPhail is now a New Yorker regular; Rob Murray draws for Private Eye and the Sunday Times; Ella Baron for the TLS. All were in their twenties when they won, which suggests the talent is out there.
© Rob Murray’s first cartoon in Private Eye.
Oliver Preston, chairman of the Cartoon Art Trust, thinks alternative outlets distract comic artists. Graphic novels such as Kingsman, which was turned into a successful Hollywood movie franchise, are a more enticing means of earning aliving. Also, the ability to self-publish online cuts out editors who say, in the words of Heath: ‘You are not funny, Mr So-Called Funnyman.’ Ruby Elliot is a young illustrator better known as ‘rubyetc’ on Instagram, where she has 277,000 followers. Through her website, she sells merchandise, artwork and subscriptions to her cartoons.
Jon Harvey, the creator of Count Binface (who stood against Boris in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat in the last election), is the sort of sharp-minded political gagster who in another era would have drawn up his ideas and sold them to publications. Instead, he puts his jokes on Twitter to boost his online profile. It’s quicker, the response is immediate and, as he quips: ‘The editor of my Twitter page is more likely to take it.’ The theory is that getting noticed online may lead to commissions for radio and TV. He describes the internet as a ‘Wild West’ of opportunities for those who know how to self-promote or nurture a following.
For those of us brought up on dead wood who still find magic in newsprint, it may be too late to grasp these opportunities. So we continue to live the ‘nightmare’. How long the nightmare continues remains to be seen.
With many thanks to The Spectator for allowing us to reproduce this piece.
You can see an item featuring Nick on this story from BBC Newsnight (around 37 mins in)
Tags: Banx, British Cartoon Archive, cartoonists, cartoons, Count Binface, Ella Baron, Grizelda, Jeremy Banx, Jon Harvey, K J Lamb, Ken Pyne, Low, Michael Heath, New Yorker, Newsnight, Nick Newman, Oliver Preston, Poy, Private Eye, Punch, Ruby Elliot, Rubyetc, Sir Osbert Lancaster, Strube, Sunday Times, The Cartoon Art Trust, The Oldie, The Spectator, TLS, Will McPhail, Young Cartoonists of the Year No Comments »