itt: cartoons abt uk politics that are bad cartoons

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/be476d2728f682570af639492ab3b385818c0389/18_186_2470_1482/master/2470.jpg?w=965&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=e02549e244d999afe85d454ed45bfa40

I have a theory that the Daily Telegraph catoonist "BLOWER" is in fact BRANCO (see the bad US politics cartoons thread) doubling up on his income by working under a pseudonym

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2017/05/30/cartoon-30052017-large_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqgCXocDQF5kP7s3jSjli3eCH0-jRUT4rHK8EgtaGoQwQ.gif

is drawing a tortoise really that hard

I'm trying to parse that first cartoon, but no, it's not happening. I assume that it suggests that whatever Brexit happens it's bad for business, but suspect I've got that all wrong.

grudging respect for the shamelessness of not bothering to work out a way to complete his Abbott and Costello pun and just drawing a big picture of Corbyn covering up the rest of the name

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2017/05/09/blower170507-large_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqeo_i_u9APj8RuoebjoAHt0k9u7HhRJvuo-ZLenGRumA.jpg

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello? More like DUD ABBOTT and LOSER CO(rbyn)STELLO, right? *submits cartoon to Daily Telgraph, slopes off to spend rest of the day in pub*

haha yes i have a full-size version of the first cartoon open in my tabs, i keep going back to see if the penny's dropped, but no, it is more mysterious than ever

most of his other cartoons are just ugly clumsy and obvious -- he's been getting work for years! -- but there's a sort of wtf poetry to this one

wot no Mac?

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/06/08/01/41350AB800000578-0-image-a-34_1496880366602.jpg

90% sure he has just recaptioned an old cartoon there

ok not to be caot defend-a-mac, but that is a serviceable and well drawn* cartoon making a political point i disagree with

*obviously he's always been a giles knock-off so i hate him for that reason**
**my mum drew my attention to how well mac draws curly telephone flexes, which is an odd thing to notice, but once you do, she was right, he was good at it, and perhaps still could be were there a need

How to tell if you've drawn a really good cartoon:

http://i.imgur.com/GkhuTA9.png

Blower is esp. terrible.

it's weird, i know people irl whose mental landscape re: politics is accurately illustrated by these guys

and the arguments are near identical to the stuff Tressell mocks in The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, lickspittles are tenacious

a year old now yet suddenly relevant AND badly drawn
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCC-IwAW0AAGPcj.jpg:large

Brookes also drew this oddly terrifying Boris/Gove cartoon:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CmQw0nlUsAAOmra.jpg

Boris bearing uncanny resemblance to Rod Liddle in top panel.

Not enough Martin Rowson on this thread.

posting cartoons from low circulation trot newspapers feels a little like breaking a butterfly on a wheel, but I was impressed by the number of captions on this one

http://i.imgur.com/BjRupxd.png

gerald scarfe is bad not good:
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/media/images/81420000/jpg/_81420916_geraldscarfe.jpg

britain's last-ditch stunt: the davis-yeltsin switcheroo

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCoaEnuXcAAcbe1.jpg:large

i think that's victor garber at the eu end of the table

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNTQxODYxNzE3NV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTM4MTMwMg@@._V1_UY317_CR20,0,214,317_AL_.jpg

posting cartoons from low circulation trot newspapers feels a little like breaking a butterfly on a wheel, but I was impressed by the number of captions on this one

http://i.imgur.com/BjRupxd.png

― soref, Saturday, June 17, 2017 4:09 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

some fine art brut here

polly toyn

i like how the cartoonist just went ahead and wrote "shit" on the pile of things he hated

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/methode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Fa09e347c-dcf5-11e6-b8ce-5a639b2dfcaa.jpg?crop=3460%2C1946%2C263%2C147&resize=685

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DDAKNPxWsAAEKGR.jpg:large

bit sad abt nosferatu, he did bad things but he doesn't deserve this

bad cartoon about Europe from 1989

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/2f/6d/49/2f6d49ea9ea51c4bd0ab05b1b7fbea2d.jpg

Hallmark of bad cartoons = everything has to be labelled. I know this has been said before, but they keep doing it. Are there editors out there encouraging this?

Also, am yet to see a successful rendition of Michael Gove. He is somehow beyond caricature,

did you not see the cartoon above portraying him as a fish eating Boris Jonson's head or

brookes is just drawing pob

drawing him as pob is ok because he does look quite like pob, but it's not enough because he is also much more repulsive than pob. I can see them going for a cross between pob and a human, whereas the real thing looks like a cross between pob and a body from the haunted swamp.

This is surely the canonical Gove?
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oHfzDFoVDvk/UEYRaaaY5EI/AAAAAAAAF9M/afSgSxxnk_0/s1600/Stephen-Collins-17-March--001.jpg

Basically Pob crossed with Mr Bean.

Steve Bell belongs on here, though some will I'm sure defend him on the grounds of perserverence: "They don't get it... It's funny because it's not really a monkey, it's really George W Bush... Oh well, maybe next time."

Hallmark of bad cartoons = everything has to be labelled

It's more that ppl like Cummings were steeped in the history of political cartooning, where labelling was as much a part of the style as thought balloons were in comic books. And as with thought balloons, labelling in political cartoons nowadays is very hard to pull off - it's become an 'ironic' device that yes, signals 'bad' cartooning.

Not to defend Cummings, whose work always lacked Mac's visually pleasing cartooning skills - though I guess the dour ugliness of Cummings' drawing style is editorially appropriate for the Express.

I do think Cummings deserves some credit for the look of "never in all my days" indignation on the Sovereignty Dolphin

Thatcher in a swimsuit is really disturbing me

cummings has a style, i always liked the thickness of his line (not well shown off in this example)

i will defend bell: he has a highly original symbolist imagination, which i think is a hard thing to retain after decades of turning out cartoons to order several times a week

(if he has flaws they are rarely the flaws of reach-down banality: i wd honestly rather an artist is drifting the outer reaches of his/her unconscious for insight and intuitive connection than hunkering down in the ante-room of cliche) (true he's sometimes very bad on the power dynamics of sex stuff: there be dragons in the outer reaches of yr unconscious)

i always enjoyed the pleasure cummings took in drawing brezhnev

I always stand by Steve Bell as an uncompromising angry leftist in a world of scumbags.

I also think that his bigger images often show him painting really well and evocatively. He has a good appreciation of art history and artistic method. And he is also a lucid and intelligent writer, better than many other people who write for the Guardian but can't draw.

he was rubbish on university challenge (alumni edition) though.

still have fond memories of the complete set of the collected 'If...' as a kid, 7 or 8 volumes, probably long term borrowed from my older brother or parents.

... there was a quotidian, almost cosy quality to its anarchic silliness, not unlike the young ones.

man at bar: lager lager lager lager lager lager lager 'n' a babycham
penguin: congratulations on your brilliant impression of a bus breaking down!

^ quality original material

Steve Bell is not bad as an artist, surely. I mean he has his own very distinctive style which works well.
He does keep doing things like this though

https://edinburgheye.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/stevebell_incest.jpg

I like If and Maggie's Farm

Steve Bell's debt to Robert Crumb + American underground comix seems more or less unique for a UK editorial cartoonist?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DEIO1g0XYAAJfvk.jpg

terrible + disablist cartoon in Osborne's Evening Standard shocker.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DGOEdB6W0AAHrQr.jpg:large

quite like adams' angular style, this isn't a bad cartoon in the sense the o/p is a bad cartoon

obviously his politics are as bad as his grasp of what's going on in venezuela or indeed the labour party

has jennings ever done a good one?

some of the others try and fail for depth but his stuff seems so surface that it actually hurts the point he wants to make if you try to read it as satire or metaphor

That really really needed the Brazil flag there.

it's ironic, because Bolsonaro liked to cut down trees, you see

lol gonna go against the grain (ha!) here and say that one's ok

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/methode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Ff0fbf998-7b20-11ed-bcd8-855e06175970.jpg?crop=2749%2C1833%2C595%2C164&resize=685

rip off of an episode of Hancock's Half Hour I just listened to

THE RMT DOES NOT REPRESENT TRAIN DRIVERS are you listening Peter Brookes

are Nicola Jennings and Ben Jennings related or is it just a coincidence that the Guardian employs two cartoonists with the surname Jennings who can't draw?

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d616ec63a2ecc8c5248246cd71dfdf8ac77f4f90/0_0_3035_1819/master/3035.jpg?width=940&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=90a6ca27afc37378c065620b642f5150

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/dcaecabca370f89cb48cdb5ca0478438eaecdae4/3_0_3030_1819/master/3030.jpg?width=940&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=9afcc8486cad1b88978bf8d198994a3b

going by their ages they might be mother and son? if so, they're no Matt and Edith Pritchett

wait, there's another one https://www.theguardian.com/profile/seamus-jennings

(this guy's cartoons don't seem to be quite as bad tbf)

If Ben is Nicola's son then I'm kind of impressed by the audacity of this one

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/04e2386fb0fdb31c80d7fb104a5d7ba5e8caab31/18_9_2998_1800/master/2998.jpg?width=1920&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=828ad5bb95d35b27564f96ed54bdc081

just such ugly drawings, painful to look at

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b663ff82ef304db5840231743aa8322e73e7c071/0_0_5126_3287/master/5126.jpg?width=1300&dpr=2&s=none

could be a whole separate thread for cartoons about UK politics that are weirdly horny

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/05/28/TELEMMGLPICT000379719588_17169392212900_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpeg?imwidth=960&imdensity=2

I like it when they do these 'state of the nation' type ones

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2022/11/30/TELEMMGLPICT000318043273_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqnY32puTRmJBD0IQz1kt_ZW6qMEuv0qSVyX1bNcDmagk.jpeg?imwidth=960&imdensity=2

I'm a bit disappointed that so far I haven't seen any cartoons depicting the tories as dinosaurs gazing haplessly at an advancing meteor (labelled GENERAL ELECTION) but maybe there will be some before polling day

Interestingly, in that one dated 30/11/22, Blower seems to be predicting England's world cup exit at the hands of France, ten days before it happened

"smash the past"

That's right

There's a weird innocence to that second street scene cartoon. Though that partly might be because I misread it at first, thinking the people with the "OMG ITS THAT INFLUENCER" were referring to the vicar and/or Jesus and were running away

lol CENSUS is IN THE BIN

also what's going on here?

https://i.imgur.com/qV6O1e0.png

(studing this rich text to decode 2022 all over again)

society is in the gutter

HARD looking BLOKES with POOFY DOGS

XL bullies hadn't been invented yet

... EU colours too.

(xp)

I thought maybe the dog walker was a self-portrait of the artist, and he looks angry because he's appalled by all the tawdriness and vulgarity he sees around him, but I found a photo of Blower and he doesn't look like that

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/64d54f746909bb7341402bfe03b3e84c7ffa7788/2_0_3031_1819/master/3031.jpg?width=1300&dpr=2&s=none

please ma'am crush me under your gigantic shoe

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f53a86ea76bacdda742df8f039b9cd08afb58298/0_0_3035_1819/master/3035.jpg?width=1300&dpr=2&s=none&crop=none

that ship
called
dig
neigh
ty

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/37f1ca8a17571ae1f1296d3acdf1cb172e350914/0_0_3543_2834/master/3543.jpg

ugh sorry, it's this one https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/jun/10/rebecca-hendin-labour-reinstatement-winter-fuel-payments-cartoon

why is this labelled as a cartoon?

She is terrible.

consistently shocked by how visually ugly the work from the new roster of guardian cartoonists is

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b0320813b3309298166b9cfa44ba02e203bf7af9/0_200_3500_2800/master/3500.jpg?width=1900&dpr=2&s=none&crop=none

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/5bce10fb3091e65d3c3797d47cbfe450334c6e08/0_0_5000_4000/master/5000.jpg?width=1900&dpr=2&s=none&crop=none

Jesus they're getting kids on a Media Studies BTEC to do these for free right?

Come back Steve bell all is forgiven (don’t, it isn’t)

bell and rowson can draw. while i have no expectation for or interest in politically sound or coherent newspaper cartoons, i do believe they should look better than something I could muster up on microsoft paint.

Nicola Jennings has been a professional cartoonist since the 80s! (Although tbf her stuff didn't always look quite as bad as what she's currently drawing for the Guardian, she used to mainly do sub-NYRB style caricatures)

I might be wrong but I feel there is a distinct difference between an illustration and a cartoon. Like a cartoon is done in a witty distorted comic style, or at least they try and do that.

xp here's her caricature of Nelson Mandela on the front page of a 1994 edition of the Guardian

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/1/26/1422266647644/6ce3af77-27e8-46d6-9f4c-891727dea8de-1481x2040.jpeg?width=980&dpr=2&s=none&crop=none

"it was a different time" etc.

Disputing that Rowson can draw

I want to get all nerd huffy about the whole presentation of the PlayStation one but what's the point, it's beneath contempt

Sorry those are XBox controllers maybe

it's weird because the Guardian has some really good strip cartoonists (I like Stephen Collins, Tom Gauld and Edith Pritchett), but their editorial cartoonists are all uniformly terrible. I don't know why they bother publishing editorial cartoons anyway, beyond it just being something that newspapers traditionally do

Yikes @ that Mandela one.

maybe some of this horrible garbage will begin to look perfectly acceptable to a new generation, whose senses have been overwhelmed with AI slop from day one.

trying to disable the MATTgpt cock-and-balls prompt