itt: cartoons abt uk politics that are bad cartoons

i recently read a book where he was described as the "greatest UK political cartoonist" since david low.

I quite liked this one:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2019/apr/10/steve-bell-on-benjamin-netanyahus-election-victory-cartoon

Which is notable because he's shite.

I think his depiction of Trump's head as a toilet is one of the most effective cartoon renderings of Trump, something about toilets as a liminal space between what is ok to acknowledge and what everyone is aware of but has to deny because it's foul and taboo etc works as a representation of Trump's position as a conduit between the world of mainstream respectable politics and this netherworld of racism and misogyny etc thatcan't be mentioned - Trump retweeting far-right memes as a backflowing toilet

Is that Nixon manhandling Assange?

LOL I almost posted the same question last night.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D37vy-GUcAEXqEF.jpg

if you look at the pic it is appropriated from the goon behind him looks nothing like Nixon, but the fat-necked cop with the self satisfied grimace in the bottom left corner has a similar self satisfied grimacing countenance to the Trump toilet head!

badly written post but i'm multi-tasking!

Steve Bell was good in the 80s.

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)

― mark s, Friday, July 7, 2017 10:24 AM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^

i still basically like bell's dogged willingness to develop a transformative dream-figure for ppl he has to draw several times a week and then work with it and stick with it: no one else that i can quickly think of does anything like this (except for NAILED IT MATT drawing willies on literally everyone's face, but then i like that also tbh)

not all these figures work! at all! bush-as-chimp was poor! and bell definitely also routinely tumbles off into ugly lazy slur territory with some of his targets, which is bad not good -- but i will stan for toilet-head trump and for condomhead cameron and for pierrot theresa comments are closed

his strips were generally a lot better than his big paintings tho

i mean gilray mostly belongs on this thread and low sometimes does also (i like low's line tho, i don't like gilray's)

that Netanyahu one he did a few years back was dodgy as fuck (ithink it was linked on ILX SB thread). It was obv more ill-judged + stooopid rather than intentional anti-Semitic slur, but ironic appropriation of ZOG imagery isn't ever a good idea.

I appreciate that the pressure to have to deliver every day is slightly more than if you were baking doughnuts or something. But lots of his work is dreadful imo. Sorry comments closed i know!

baking doughnuts is man's highest endeavour and i am offended that you would compare it to the frippery of cartooning for a daily newspaper

http://i.imgur.com/6bOX9Uo.jpg

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fc8.alamy.com%2Fcomp%2FE7YENK%2Fdrive-thru-donut-hole-in-la-puente-california-E7YENK.jpg&f=1

bell's dogged willingness to develop a transformative dream-figure for ppl he has to draw several times a week

I've been trying to think of other examples of cartoonists who do this with real-life figures - Garry Trudeau maybe (I haven't kept up with Doonesbury in years)? It seems more like something impressionists or stand-ups do, rather than cartoonists, which I guess points up the uniqueness of Bell's work, and also its limitations - ie he can be as bad as a stand-up comedian!

Also hard agree about his black and white line strip cartooning being far superior to his single panel colour illustration work; I think it would have been interesting, and maybe better for Bell, if he had produced longer narrative comics, even autobiographical ones - his life in leftism would prob be quite interesting.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f14eec7d74baad95c666103f0103ceb7e371ed8b/0_0_4805_2983/master/4805.jpg?width=940&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=5d33fe94f1c7fb4bfa65ddbe7c967f9c

everyone done to the scale of their current next PM standings it seems, long-winded "ACME" joke and skip labelled "dustbin of history". Proper amateur shit is this.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D8ZDr7wXUAERDlr.jpg

(the new yorker ffs)

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d8322d2fa4e30ce281780a873100a8d9a8f66ed6/0_0_4882_3069/master/4882.jpg?width=940&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=84e79be0bfa6a4c02c428911456dbf65

from last Sunday's observer. I think because he already is a crude + crass, gaudy cartoon character, he brings out the worst in lazy cartoonists who are already very bad at what they do anyway.

I'm having a bit of u-turn on this cos a farting shitty nappy is pretty lolsome tbf!

That is startlingly bad.

yes it is, I have come to senses again after an evening constitutional.

Was sure we had a thread for over explained cartoons in general but couldn't find so putting this here

https://scontent-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65/62117358_10214303142924877_2516822325463089152_n.jpg

https://scontent-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65/62117358_10214303142924877_2516822325463089152_n.jpg?_nc_cat=108&efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&_nc_eui2=AeH84Tfbsxk5nLU73Cn_WNHRLnT5SQAByW82v_YpXAJT21wX4gcpERhLcP2qSY0e2_KIUZcpwt3K6BWgecGPBE5iNi0mrH-P3z2YotBvLEuG0g&_nc_ht=scontent-lht6-1.xx&oh=64c6811f9611db7f16eeb1578d4861b2&oe=5D959681

Chris Riddell can draw at least.

better evidence needed imo

His kid's illustrations are nice.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D9wlGdCWsAEe12Q.jpg

at least the unsmiling guardianista stasi neighbours have a better purpose than fucking netflix in their lives!

Just can't stand this guy's style, looks ugly and captures nothing

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/91505101a80a0e7ee373a723c94b945256f87178/0_0_2023_1213/master/2023.jpg

This - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2019/jun/23/ben-jennings-on-the-pressure-facing-boris-johnson-cartoon - for some reason can't hotlink.

Jennings drew this cartoon about the Extinction Rebellion protests a few weeks ago and I don't understand it

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/bab061d76b116c855fb9b078f2428b8ef3bad89c/0_0_3035_1819/master/3035.jpg?width=940&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=bc939cf0fb2e08504dc32f49737b79e6

I know ER protesters were gluing themselves to structures, so the woman gluing her hand to the man's head is a metaphor for how they are making the public think about climate change, I guess? Is there any significance to the fact that the man looks like Pep Guardiola?

Yes... I don't... what is... I don't get what that is trying to say... does she fancy the guy and, er, that explains the lascivious grin... no, sorry, I give up.

Doesn't look like Pep to me but yeah, this is incomprehensible.

Is he trying to say he can only think about climate change now that a protester is glued to his head? idgi

Ben Jennings is the absolute worst.

The 496 (!) comments on that one aren't making it any clearer either.

he did that fucking awful Hockney swimming pool pastiche with Gove with the knife. A combination of bad ideas allied to bad drawing talent is a recurring theme in all of his work, but sometimes the bad ideas get even worse.

If I'm being charitable I'd guess that he's implying people are being indoctrinated by climate change rhetoric, but yes it's pretty lame.

I think it's just a silly joke rather than a statement? But a crap one.

What's the joke?

you'd think a climate change protestor would know better than to glue themselves to the solar panel for a sex machine

lol

we have a winner (i have no idea what's going on here)

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

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D-eliN7UEAM-sN2.jpg:large

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D-eliN7UEAM-sN2.jpg:large

its hard to know, rly, whether we are seeing the two fools and their impression of ireland and a miracle deal, or whether idk its just a lazy shit effort

and ofc it can be both

i mean yes it's an "away with the fairies lol unicorns" message mocking both of them and arguing that their conception of ireland is fantastical at best

but it's also a v bad cartoon (bcz the leprechauns aren't doing riverdance)

they clearly are?

flatley rules clearly state that the arms must n