Another year over: 2015 in topical cartoons

It's almost the end of 2015, must be time for the traditional look back at the past 12 months via the medium of topical cartoons.

The year was just a few days old when the first major tragic story of 2015 happened. One that had particular resonance for cartoonists ...



Free speech became a thorny issue, particularly at universities, where some student unions appeared to have a problem with it ...




Here in the UK, we had a general election ...





We saw the return of some old knitted friends ...



The demonisation of certain elements of, er, society ...



It seems we are now in an age where social-media sites introducing new buttons is news ...



... and tech company bosses are the subjects of movies.



Gadgets continued to rule our lives, of course ...



There were the usual health scares (delicious processed meats this time ...)



And -- seismic change alert -- a 5p tax on carrier bags was introduced in England ...



More tragic news from Paris almost bookended 2015 ...



But, here in the UK at least, we had some positive news as the year drew to a close ...



Have a happy 2016, all!

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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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