30.11.15

Paris attacks: Cartoon déjà vu

"You hate music, football, eating out and drinking? Might as well kill yourself now."

The current Private Eye magazine features a page of cartoons headlined "After Paris..." and this is my contribution.

As with the cartoon I drew after the Charlie Hebdo attack (from the Eye in January, see below) I felt like it would be better to do the kind of joke cartoon I normally do, rather than attempt something more symbolic.

So I used a similar format to that cartoon i.e. a face-to-face encounter between terrorist and victim. Somehow imagining an actual conversation between the two makes me think about the absurdity of the attacks and allows ideas to form. Obviously neither are gag cartoons in the "laugh out loud" sense, but hopefully they still work and make a point.
"Make sure you get my funny side."

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25.11.15

Bookshop cartoon: Celeb culture

I can't recall what the autobiography was that I was looking for in a bookshop, but it inspired this cartoon as I remember being frustrated that all I could find was piles of books by Alan Carr, Michael McIntyre, somebody from Bake Off etc. Another inspiration was noticing that a library's Biography section had, bizarrely, been renamed People's Lives.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not totally against celeb biographies and, in fact, I'd heartily recommend Danny Baker's Going to Sea in a Sieve, which is a joy to read.

This cartoon is in the current edition of Prospect magazine. 

18.11.15

Private Eye cartoon: Easily distracted

Technology continues to inspire as the dominant subject matter in my cartoons these days. This is from the current Private Eye, a joke about the Steve Jobs film. No, not that one.

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11.11.15

Returning to work: A parody cartoon

This cartoon for the Law Society Gazette, which accompanied an article on how to return to the legal profession, typically after taking time out to raise a family, references a famous US wartime poster.

With all due apologies, of course, to the artist J. Howard Miller.

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