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
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:
Steve Jones (Jonesy)
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.
Pete Dredge
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:
Rupert Besley
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.
Wilbur Dawbarn
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.
Cathy Simpson
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.
Roger Penwill
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.
Matthew Buck
Always enjoyed Philip Thompson and Mel Calman’s work together over many years.
Guy Venables
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.
Glenn Marshall
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.
Tags: Cathy Simpson, Geoffrey Willians, Glenn Marshall, Guy Venables, Jonesy, Man Bites Man, Martin Honeysett, Matt Buck, Matt Jones, Mel Calman, Pete Dredge, Private Eye, Roger Penwill, Ronald Searle, Ronald Searle's America, Rowland Emett, Rupert Besley, Russell Brockbank, Steve Jones, That Was The Week That Was, The Complete Molesworth, The Spectator, Timothy Birdsall, Wilbur Dawbarn 3 Comments »