Steve Bell in the Guardian

I have been a longtime fan (see threads passim). What can I say, they make me laugh.

Steve bell continues in the great british tradition of the grotesque cartoonist. See also Ronald Searle, Gerald Scarfe, James Gilray etc.

-- Ed (dali), Tuesday, January 13, 2004 12:42 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

ed im going to have to ask you to stop posting such ugly cartoons in my thread!! maybe if they were right wing but they dont even fit the original question

-- %%, Tuesday, January 13, 2004 12:44 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

people should fiddle with their ILE settings to only show the last twenty posts so we don't have to clutter ile with more of these threads

-- Ed (dali), Tuesday, January 13, 2004 1:01 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

yeah well fuck you too

-- %%, Tuesday, January 13, 2004 1:03 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

That's funny, because I went for two whole threads of this shit thinking that %% was making fun of the cartoons he was posting. Seriously, in every single case -- "PLZ KILL ABORTIONISTS" or "the dumbocrats and their smellfare program" or "OMG AIDS CURES FAGS" or "DEMS ARE FULL OF PEE" == I was convinced wholeheartedly that he was taking the proverbial piss. I could not imagine otherwise. Now that I understand that he was serious in his commentary, I think I may hate him more than any other person who has ever posted here.

Fuck yourself with a fencepole. You're the type of person who will eventually be the end of us all. Fuck you fuck you fuck you.

-- Kenan Hebert (kenan), Wednesday, January 14, 2004 2:49 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

I think he's one of the greatest political cartoonists ever.

Reminded of Viz's description of Bell's cartoons as having "Tony Blair's trademark big ears which he doesn't actually have"

Have we got so far without mentioning John Major's underpants?

I recall thinking his early-80s stuff was pretty badass, as a teenager in the mid-90s. I dunno which of us that says more about. He still raises a smile from me, every so often. See previous sentence. Was he ahead of the curve on the 'lol chimpy Bush' meme or did the world basically discover that as one?

His Blair got more and more demonic as the years went on, by the end it was this insane green redeyed green gremlin thing.

much like Thatcher on Spitting Image

this one of mugabe is good:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,,2269893,00.html

mostly his stuff looks kind of graceless and doesn't say much

I think 1980s and 1990s- Bell are slightly different beasts. The former had various characters who don't appear much now. The latter has done lots of big splash satirical paintings in the Guardian which I think have often been superb.

I am surprised that this thread is not full of people acclaiming him as one of the greats, a major figure of the era, etc; never mind.

What is it about his work that you like so much the pinefox?

lol george bush looks like a monkey lol

this manages to miss everything about the politics and substance of petraeus' time as head of mnf-i, in favor of "lol generals = murderers and bush = chimp also"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,,2271951,00.html

the big splash ones are definitely not as bad as the strip in G2, it's that specifically that I find woeful.

"I call him Tony B-liar, because he's a liar. And a bee."

like I said, I think his big pictures are terrific - the colour, painting, ability to pastiche others, etc.

I suppose he has a fearlessness, a directness, that I find sympathetic, especially as his targets are often ones I deplore or dislike. I like his brashness and boldness.

he is also a historical figure, by now, one who did his bit for the iconography of the 1980s. Yet he doesn't look or seem very old.

I haven't read the G2 strip in quite a while, but penguins are cool.

I think he's great. Unsubtle as anything, of course, but the manic energy and frequent digressions into serious weirdness make up for that.

There's an amazing serial from the 80s in which Prince Phillip gets a bump on the head and wakes up as a belligerent, drunken Glaswegian.

It's probably useful to think of his strips as being broad, unhinged comedy first and satire second. He delivers laughs over cleverness and insight.

See I don't find any laughs, just fairly blunt political messages. It's not anarchic enough I don't think!

Steve Bell is probably best known for the daily strip called If..., which has appeared in The Guardian newspaper since 1981, and since the mid-1990s he has also been that newspaper's principal editorial cartoonist. One of Bell's most traditional caricatures is of John Major as a dire superhero wearing his Y-fronts on the outside of his clothes. The Y-front caricature first appeared in a special 2 page cartoon in the Saturday "Guardian Weekend" supplement in early December 1990, a couple of weeks after John Major became Prime Minister. It was clearly inspired by the Superman comic, wherein Superman wears sleek red briefs over a blue body stocking. John Major, in the form of a SuperUselessman, bursts out of a telephone kiosk wearing aertex Y-fronts over the top of a grey suit. A number of journalists subsequently claim to have seen John Major's shirt tucked into his underpants, including Alastair Campbell, the former Daily Mirror political editor who became Tony Blair's chief spin doctor. He claims that he gave Steve Bell the idea. This is entirely untrue as the cartoon appeared before the first rumours about shirts being tucked into underpants ever surfaced. Major has never confirmed or denied that he tucks his shirt into his underpants and naturally refuses to answer questions on the subject. Of the whole question of underpants he is reported as saying, in the Anthony Seldon biography of Major, that: "It is designed to destabilise me so I ignore it."

As a child I loved his strip "Gremlins" in, I think, Buster (or was it Whizzer and Chips?) in the 70s

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/06/10/belly512.jpg
George Bush looks like a monkey! George Bush gets foreign names wrong! George Bush wants to start a war!

He really is horrendous. Like a political Nemi.

low blow

i spend monday to thursday thinking "god steve bell is awful" and then i see what the publish on the friday and i think "god bring back steve bell":

http://karriefransman.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/stripwhooo-mama.jpg

http://karriefransman.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/strip10-year-olds-dreamcopy.jpg

Nearly as bad as Em.

is she using ball-point pen for these???

onion-level badness going on there

Worse than Roasted.

but hey guys george bush looks like a monkey

I have all the collected IF... strips up to the Major years, first four or five books at least are top notch character comedy. Forget about the politics; The Penguins, John the Monkey, Kipling, Monsier l'Artiste, Chief Constable 'Badger' Courage... classic sitcom stuff.

I have not heard of Karrie Fransman before and I'm not sure why I have now. I really don't know what's supposed to be good about those cartoons. They remind me of San Antonio Rock City but with even more aggravating drawing. Googling her brings up this corker: http://idlechild.co.uk/1/?x=conv_bristol

Sunday heralded the arrival of comics pin-up Karrie Fransman, who kept all three of us entertained most of the day by crawling under her table every five minutes with the tiniest pair of shorts on, and I must say that her hair was looking lovely too (I must say that because she threatened unmentionable things upon my unmentionables after I was rude about her in my last report), her comics showed no signs of having lost touch with their underground origins, and I was glad, cos no way was THE
MAN getting his hands on her before me.

christ that's creepy.

The one redeeming feature of that link: some nice views of the country's best-preserved Brunel railway station wooden roof in the background. Yes, I'm a geek.

today's karrie fransman spectacular:

i.
CARRIE 'KARRIE' FRANSMAN and ONE OF HER VAGUELY FEMALE INDISTINGUISHABLE BUG-EYED FREAK PEOPLE are sitting in a café, watching a muslim family with wife in full hijab walk by outside

ii.
BUG-EYED FEMALE THING
"That's awful! It must be so uncomfortable dressing like that, and it's all for a man!"

iii.
KARRIE and SERIOUSLY, WHY DOES EVERYONE SHE DRAWS LOOK LIKE THE COVER OF FUCKING 'COMMUNION' are now walking on the pavement outside the café. We now see they are wearing UNSEASONABLY SKIMPY CLOTHES and FANCY HIGH-HEELED FOOTWEAR

ALIEN-LOOKING FRIEND
"Hold onto my arm — these shoes are killing me!"

'K.'
"oooh — it's freezing!"

on-topic, steve bell won some kind of cartoonist of the year award, this week, but i don't care about that, particularly, so much as i care about the awfulness of the above

The strip title "My Peculiar World" is the most insulting...

"My stories are about everything from psychopaths in ballet slippers to intimate relations with duvets, and are mostly autobiographical comics…believe it or not."

HOT DAMN U LIVE IN SUCH A PECULIAR WORLD U STRANGE QUIRKY WOMAN HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE LOL U SO WACKY AND CRAZY

How are they not deluged with complaints about this awful toss?

One strip a while back had a dad or grandad character trying to take a family photo, and everyone got grumpy 'cause he took so long! LOL! HOW CRAZY IS THAT! Also her depiction of 'grumpy' faces - i mean 'faces' - was fucking shit.

Roasting the hell out of everybody with his pomposity pistol:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/12/8/1291850413851/Steve-Bell-9.12.2010-001.jpg

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2010/dec/09/steve-bell-tuition-fees-votes

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pixies/2011/5/17/1305667459020/18.05.11-Steve-Bell-on-th-008.jpg

fuck it, have a leprechaun.

WTF

http://www.coinlink.com/Articles/images/lavery_note_2.jpg

^ something to do with this obv, dunno what

peculiar

did anyone find 'if ...' last week a bit off

can't stand this backward creep tbh

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/5/5/1304613883233/Steve-Bells-If...-090511-001.jpg
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Admin/BkFill/Default_image_group/2011/5/9/1304956338080/Steve-Bells-If...-10.05.2-001.jpg
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Admin/BkFill/Default_image_group/2011/5/10/1305040264614/Steve-Bells-If...-11.05.2-001.jpg
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Admin/BkFill/Default_image_group/2011/5/11/1305124626621/Steve-Bells-If...-12.05.2-001.jpg

smith was 'outed' as a kiddie abuser after his death so i am guessing this is steve bell's vision of hell or summing

my vision of hell = being forced to read 'if' forever and ever

steve gone-off-the-boil, morelike

why would the guardian print cartoons of leprechauns...it's daily mail level.

Fucking despise this cunt.

I'm yet to read a strip by this guy that has made me laugh or even makes much sense. And I "get" to see his stupid strip every single day.

read the Falklands stuff

i think he is pretty good
even just for his settled caricatures of like osbourne as bondage piglet or w/e

He was on top form during the Thatcher years imo, but I haven't followed him for a long time. The constant scatology can get pretty tireome.

Occasionally, the digestive obsession becomes a bit too much even for left-wing papers. Rowson tells me that his fellow Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell always files as late as possible to make the staff grateful that the picture has arrived at all. “There’s a wonderful story about Georgina Henry, when she was deputy editor, going past the comment desk at about eight o’clock one evening and Steve’s cartoon had just come in,” he says. “It was a wonderful one of [George W] Bush as a monkey, squatting on the side of a broken toilet, wiping his arse with the UN Charter. And there’s all this shit splattered on the wall behind it, and she looks and says, ‘Oh God, no.’ [Alan] Rusbridger had put down this edict saying less shit in the cartoons, please – you know, the editor’s prerogative – and she and Steve had this eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation.” What happened? “He finally caved in. In one of the greatest betrayals of freedom of speech since Galileo, he tippexed out three of the turds.”

http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/religion/2012/08/ink-stained-assassins

Some of the caricatures provide a focal point for figures where the actual dislike is too enormous. So there are a million billion reasons to hate George Osborne, but him as a masochistic pig can be useful shorthand (and can also elide some of the other good reasons of course).

That's still a one good hit every ten year average, mind.

"It was a wonderful one of [George W] Bush as a monkey, squatting on the side of a broken toilet, wiping his arse with the UN Charter."

Reminds of this:

https://twitter.com/BanksyIdeas

martin rowson is the worst cartoonist ever

*applauds georgina henry*

my word those fleet street vets have some tales to tell

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/11/15/1353018180510/Steve-Bell-16.12.2012-002.jpg

jews controlling the world, interesting theory, not been tried before i doubt, steve.

hmmn yeah well you expect that sort of insight from steve bell, but how the fuck the editorial team thought that was suitable for publication

http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-940/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/3/24/1427229997905/e5211e2b-1b64-48c5-9c2a-e049795acdad-620x423.jpeg

Fucking hell that one before last from 2 years ago takes some beating, it doesn't even seem to be a parody.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2017/jan/26/steve-bell-uk-us-theresa-may-donald-trump-cartoon?CMP=share_btn_tw

loathe to defend theresa may but typically, this is both sexist and completely facile/unfunny.

I assume he's riffing on her "opposites attract" statement from yesterday but Steve Bell is awful anyway.

^^^^

'After Gillray'. I hate Gillray.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dHxotgD84sE/U2i_uOZbbJI/AAAAAAAACtg/OKBkpX_dKFE/s1600/Fashionable_contrasts_james_gillray.jpg

not sure I was supposed to laugh at "thanks to Kipper Williams" but there y'go

if you want to zing Trump, you need to take advice from the master

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2160acd6b4f215fb7f9f73b93344d8ba65c35027/0_0_1604_2003/master/1604.jpg?w=300&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=ca4b07129cfd725e9ea40cb904cf23a4

sick burn

yeah i knew about the opposites attract stuff but nonetheless it is surprising the guardian prints this. tho not as surprising as the anti-semitic one a little upthread.

If it wasn't referencing an older work you'd be right to dismiss it without a 2nd thought as sub-Sunday Sport crude site humour. But still it is just unfunny and shit site humour - whatever older work it is referencing. I can't believe some people actually rate Steve Bell, he is consistently terrible.

edit:I meant you might have 2nd thoughts about outright dismissing it, if it wasn't referencing an older work. but never mind

steve bell is a scum.