Magazine cartoons

A selection of recently published magazine cartoons for your amusement. I hope they raised a smile in these difficult times ...

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Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival 2019

I drew a Big Board at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival last weekend. That's me, above, with John Landers in the background. This year we were all indoors, at the Darwin Shopping Centre, a last-minute change as a result of so-called Storm Hannah. 

This is the finished board. Click to enlarge. The theme was "Animals" so I drew some animal-related cartoons with, inevitably, a Brexit slant. People laughed, always the hoped-for reaction, because I think everyone is quite exasperated by Brexit whether Remainer or a Leaver. It's not the first time I've done a board full of Brexit cartoons. Here's one from the Herne Bay Cartoon Festival in 2017. I may well do more, the way things are going ...

We made it to the Shropshire Star! Including a reappearance for my Dog's Pollocks cartoon, bottom. Click images to enlarge.

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Magazine cartoon: Man's best friend

"Yes, we're very dog friendly! Such clever animals ..."

Here's a cartoon from the current issue of Isle Magazine, a local what's on/listings publication. It accompanied an article about dog-friendly restaurants and pubs.

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Private Eye cartoon: Fine-tuning jokes

"That's a little unfair, I just haven't found my niche."

I've got a couple of cartoons in the current Private Eye, here's one of them.

It's a reworking of a gag I sent round a few years ago which was rejected. The original drawing was a similar set-up but the cat looked depressed and said "I wouldn't say I was lost, it's more of a disaffected malaise".  I think I did another version where he spoke of "ennui". It's more than possible that I was over-thinking the joke.

While re-working it I removed the repeated use of the word "lost" in the caption and decided that making the cat look depressed was over-egging the joke. These were both crucial to making it all work, I think. Cartoons often need a little fine-tuning to get them right.

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Pet subject: More dog and cat cartoons

"It's a battle of wills – I'm refusing to do anything funny for his YouTube page ..."

Fashions come and go, governments rise and fall, but yer humble gag cartoonist carries on drawing jokes about cats and dogs. People love 'em! The cartoon above can be seen in the current issue of Reader's Digest, the one below was in the last Private Eye.

"They're the dog's Pollocks."

Cartoonists are often the worst judges of their own material – you never know what people are going to go for – I had few hopes for this cartoon.

My surprise that it was taken by Private Eye was nothing compared to the surprise that since it appeared two weeks ago I have had emails almost every other day praising the cartoon and asking for the original, prints and redrawn versions (including a request to rework it "with the dog as identifiably an Airedale Terrier".)

Expect more dog and cat cartoons ...

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Not Yet Sold: Yet another HMV cartoon

"I've pimped your sound system."

As regular readers of this blog will know, I've done many, many HMV dog cartoons over the years. It's like an illness. Quite a few have been published but some, such as this one, are languishing in the Not Yet Sold files.

Click here for more in this series of rejected cartoons: Not Yet Sold.

As is often the case with my rejected cartoons though, this makes an unpaid appearance in the Foghorn, magazine of the Professional Cartoonists Organisation. I even coloured it in for them.

You can read an archive of the Foghorn online, just click the button on the right-hand column of this blog (scroll down). To buy a print subscription to the mag, which comes out six times a year, go here.

Not Yet Sold: Cat and dog cartoon

"I couldn't imagine life without my little getaway in the country."

This cartoon has it all: a dopey looking dog, a sly cat, and the satirising of contemporary middle-class mores. Yet cartoon editors failed to see its charms, so I present it here in my occasional series on rejected cartoons: Not Yet Sold.

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