Cartoons from the "culture wars"

Wherever you stand in the so-called culture wars -- on the left trying to forge a better future through the use of pronouns, or on the right insisiting that "wokery" will bring about the end of civilisation as we know it -- it's clear that it is a rich subject matter for cartoonists.

Here is a selection of cartoons on this subject, published in various magazines.

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Re-live the joy that was 2016 via topical cartoons

It's time for my traditional look back at the past 12 months via the medium of topical cartoons. And it's 2016 ... what a year to look back on! 

We begin in space, where British astronaut Tim Peake started the year. But he seemed to spend rather a lot of time on his phone, tweeting ...

There were new "nanny state" guidelines on alcohol limits ...

Over-sensitive university students continued to baffle and annoy in equal measure ...

The crime trial of the year could become a film, we were told ...

The EU referendum dominated the news ...

Then came the shock result ...

Amid all this, there was only really one "silly season" story, Pokemon Go ...

And a little good news with the Olympics...

But there were problems amid the Opposition (again) ...

And I've not even mentioned the endless parade of high-profile deaths in this year ...

And then, as if all that wasn't bad enough ...

2016 was a year in which how terrible and relentless the news was became news itself ...

Who knows what 2017 will bring? Have a happy new year, but remember ...

Music cartoon: Return of the HMV dog

"Bloody students."

This cartoon, which appears in the July issue of Reader's Digest, was the result of a deliberate attempt at getting more mileage out of a well-worn cartoon theme!

I've had a few HMV dog cartoons published over the years, so I decided to see if I could come up with some more. I opened one of them on my computer in Photoshop and played about with the elements of the drawing – the dog and the gramophone – moving and rotating them, resizing them, copying and pasting etc.

It's an unusual way of developing gag ideas, for me anyway, but I came up with a few. Once I was happy with each one, I printed off the cobbled-together image and redrew it on my lightbox, so it looked more fluid. This is the only one that has been published so far, but you may yet see more HMV dog cartoons from me.

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