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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Cartoons to the rescue!

Cartoons can be used to lift any subject matter that is complex, serious, dry or any of the above. Here is a selection of recent cartoons from business publications that cover insurance, law, technology, corporate finance, waste management and the health service.

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And here's an excerpt from some live drawing during a talk at a business conference. The subject here was cyber-security, another potentially tricky one ...

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Halloween cartoon: Scary technology

Here's a halloween cartoon drawn for an article on the eeDesignIt website which argues that we should "forget vampires, ghouls and monsters under the bed. What’s really scary is the pace of technology hurtling towards us at 1,000mph."

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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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Technology cartoon: No time for downtime

"It's nice to come here and get a break from the office."

This cartoon is in the April issue of Prospect magazine. Yes, it's yet another tech cartoon. Sounds like another chance to plug Cartoons on Demand!

Fairytale cartoon: How to rework a joke

"You wake up after 100 years and the first thing you do is check your phone?"

Sometimes, though not very often, it's possible to write a new caption for a rejected topical cartoon. This one was originally about #wakeupcall selfies.

Remember that craze? I wouldn't be at all surprised if you didn't. It was billed as the new #icebucketchallenge but unlike that craze it seemed to fall out of fashion just as my gag was hitting the desks of cartoon editors. So it was dead on arrival.

However, I decided it could be reworked as a more general joke about the way we use phones and off it went again. It appears in this week's Spectator.

I also removed a "with apologies" from the signature, because although the drawing is clearly based on Disney's Sleeping Beauty, the fairytale is not an exclusively Disney thing and it felt like that was getting in the way of the joke somehow.

It is, of course, yet another cartoon about technology. You can see lots more in my book Cartoons on Demand.

Why Santa Claus's naughty and nice list is the Christmas gift that just keeps on giving

"He's making a list and checking it twice
He's gonna find out who's naughty and nice"

Santa Claus is Coming to Town
By John Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie

"They had their names removed using the right to be forgotten"

I'm very grateful to Messrs Coots and Gillespie, as those famous lines from their perennial Christmas song seem to be an endless source of inspiration for me as a cartoonist.

The gag above is one of the Private Eye Christmas cards this year. When trying to think of a cartoon about the right to be forgotten, which became a big issue this year, Santa's list of naughty children was the first thing that came to mind.

For me, it has long been a useful motif to apply to current events at Christmas time. Here's a Reader's Digest cartoon from last Christmas about the big story of that year, internet snooping by the NSA, as revealed by Edward Snowden ...

"OK fill me in – who has been naughty and who has been nice?"

Here's another from last year, a Private Eye Christmas card about the rise of Ukip ...

"I think UKIP have got to him."

Rewind to 2011 when phone-hacking was big news. What if "Santa" was hauled up before a commons select committee to answer a few questions? Actually, rather than the "naughty or nice" lyric, this one references words that come later in the same song.

"Perhaps you could tell us how you know if we've been bad or good?"

Another big news story of that year was the English riots. But the perpetrators, according to Tony Blair, were not naughty ...

It doesn't just work for topical magazine cartoons, here's one I drew for the Christmas card of a marketing company that builds websites for its clients ...

And a law firm that specialises in forensic accounting ...

Somehow, I feel sure that it's a theme I will return to!

Finally here are a couple of gags residing in the Not Yet Sold files, an oldie from when laddish lists became all the rage and the most recent "naughty or nice" one I've drawn, about the internet successor to those lists ...

"Whatever happened to the old 'Naughty' and 'Nice' lists?"

"I don't check the list twice any more, I just upload it to Buzzfeed."

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Magazine cartoons: Stone age to digital age

Here's a cartoon from last week's Spectator magazine. Cave paintings is one of those cartoon subjects that keeps on giving. And as I can still hear fireworks outside, here's my Bonfire Night cartoon from the current Private Eye.

"Cool bonfire app, man." 

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Magazine cartoon: Not driving in my car

Here's a cartoon from the current issue of Prospect magazine. A thesaurus was a vital tool in the making of this cartoon.

Appropriately enough, it accompanies this article in the magazine (though not online).

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Cartoons and the digital workplace

I was commissioned to draw seven cartoon strips for a company's staff-training programme, on the subject of adjusting to the "digital workplace". Here are two of them.

I've drawn so many cartoons about the technology that is such a part of our lives these days that I found the strips almost wrote themselves. A fun job then, and one that featured the cartoon debut of our cat Mike, above, pictured when he was a kitten.

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Computer cartoon: Make it stop

"It's the golden rule of the computer age: If it ain't broke, upgrade it."

I have just got a new computer, so I'm feeling the truth in this cartoon from last year. [Goes for a lie down ...]

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Christmas cartoon: Word of the year

"Does my nose look shiny in this selfie?"

Apparently "selfie" was named as the word of the year so there expect to see a few festive twists on it from cartoonists this year. Here's one from the December issue of Saga.

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Christmas cartoon: Secrets and lies

"OK fill me in – who has been naughty and who has been nice?"

Here's a Christmas cartoon from the current issue of Reader's Digest. I won't be posting a cartoon for each day of advent this year (as I did last year and the year before) but I'll feature a few throughout the month.

This is not the first time I've done a topical gag based on the "naughty and nice" idea. Or indeed the second! And it won't be the last either. It's the Christmas gift that keeps on giving.

Royston's cartoon book: The perfect stocking filler! 

A place in A Cartoon History

I've got three cartoons in the new coffee table book Private Eye: A Cartoon History, including this lemmings joke from earlier in the year.

It's a thumping great doorstep of a book, so make sure your coffee table is sturdy.

Waterstones took a unique approach to displaying the book, above. I'm fine with the "silly drawings" bit, but Private Eye might question the "pretend newspaper" part, bearing in mind how many genuine news stories they've broken over the years.

Last week I went along to the launch of the book where they got the assembled cartoonists drunk so they could take this photo. I'm in there somewhere. At the centre are the Eye editor Ian Hislop and the cartoonist Nick Newman, who edited the book.

Click to enlarge. Photo © Philippa Gedge

We all wore name badges. Here's mine. Luckily, as a cartoonist I am only known by my first name!

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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Private Eye cartoon: Twitter abuse

From the current issue of Private Eye, a cartoon about Twitter abuse, and the site's seeming reluctance to tackle the problem. This one comes with a celebrity endorsement!

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Private Eye cartoon: The only game in town

This was inspired by my wife, Kath, who has been a fan of playing Solitaire on computers as long as I've known her. She doesn't have an iPad but I know what its primary use would be if she did.

The cartoon can be seen in the current Private Eye along with a somewhat cynical one I drew about the new Star Trek movie, even though I haven't seen it yet. Cynicism is part of the job description when it comes to magazine cartoons.

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