Season's greetings ...

This cartoon is one of Private Eye magazine's Christmas cards this year. Throughout December I have been posting Christmas cartoons old and new on my Twitter page.

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Merry Christmas to you all.

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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Social-networking cartoon: Like or dislike?

Here's a gag about Facebook's recent experiments to introduce emoticons to express sadness, sympathy etc., rather than just providing the usual Like button.

I'm not sounding the death-knell of this blog with this cartoon but I think we have to accept that since the rise of the likes of Twitter and Facebook, there is more "conversation" happening on social-media than on blogs these days ... hence this is my first post of the month!

I will continue to post stuff here, seems a shame to stop after more than ten years, but you can also find me on Twitter and Facebook ...

Private Eye cartoon: Not exactly topical

I've just got back from a family holiday, during which I was mostly offline, so it was good to go online and find that this cartoon, which was in this week's Private Eye, got a very nice reaction and lots of retweets on Twitter (including here and here).

It was a little surprising as the cartoon refers to a song from 1979 (ask your parents, kids) so it's not exactly topical. But it seems to have tapped into a nostalgia vibe.

UPDATE: The cartoon made it into Pedantry Corner in the most recent Private Eye (13 June):

Being a bit of a pop music pedant myself, I was actually fully aware of this but I thought putting "Pop Musik" would get in the way of the joke, a view backed up on Twitter by someone who knows a bit about comedy.

UPDATE UPDATED: Here's my follow-up letter in this week's Private Eye (27 June):

Errr ... but someone pointed out that I put "Musik" instead of "Muzik" so this could run and run. Hoist by my own pedantry!

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Jesus cartoons for Easter

"Oh no, I lost two followers."

As it's Easter this weekend, here's a cartoon about Jesus, which can be seen in the current issue of Prospect. I used a similar colour palette to the cartoon below, which was in the same magazine in 2011.

"He only got this job because of who his dad is."

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Topical cartoon: Matters of opinion

"We believe this woman to be a witch as she is known to have expressed an opinion online."

This topical cartoon about the abuse of women online (a kind of follow-up to this Private Eye one) can be seen in the January issue of Reader's Digest.

UPDATE: A letter about the cartoon from a subsequent issue. Looks like Reader's Digest needs to start a Pedantry Corner like Private Eye ...

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Topical cartoons: A look back at 2013

Time for a look back at some topical cartoons of 2013. Game on ...

The year always starts with those oh-so-serious Oscar contenders ...

You heard that Margaret Thatcher died, right?

The "Onesie" was everywhere (but not on me, I should add!)

There was a high-profile job vacancy ...

Mainstream media struggled to keep up with social-media ...

But many found themselves victims of verbal abuse online ...

Unbelievably, we had a long, hot summer ...

The royal birth was covered as if it was the Second Coming ...

The 3D printer went mainstream, for those that can afford them ...

At the cinema everything was also either 3D ...

... or a familiar franchise returning (or both!)

Boris Johnson faced testing times ...

MPs were told they'll get a whopping pay rise ...

There was a clear winner for word of the year ...

And finally, here's one for the NSA, in case they are reading this ...

Happy new year to you all!

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Ten cartoons about Twitter

It occurred to me recently that I have done rather a lot of cartoons about Twitter. Here are ten of them. You can follow me on Twitter: @roystoncartoons

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