Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

For people like myself who may have missed it when it originally aired in 2006, Paul Conrad: Drawing Fire, the film documenting the career of three time Pulitzer winning political cartoonist Paul Conrad, is online for you to enjoy.

Update:
In case you aren’t able to watch the film on Hulu, you can also find it on YouTube here.

Matt Bors is my favourite editorial cartoonist. He is one of few in his field whose work redefines what an editorial cartoon looks like. Often in comic strip form, you will find none of the traditional labeled (and laboured) metaphors that you might find in other cartoonists’ work.

As a fan of cartooning as an art form, what I appreciate most about Matt is his critical eye and vocalness about the state of editorial cartooning. In the same way that Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show lampoons and takes a critical look at news media, exposing its shortcomings, so Matt does with editorial cartooning via his blog.

Matt warns us with a Crying Turd Alert when an editorial cartoonist phones in an obituary cartoon by drawing a fill-in-the-blank shedding a single tear. Then there’s the Excessive Labeling Award to cartoonists whose work is plagued with labels on every figure or element in the cartoon. And Matt’s not shy to call someone out on the lazy choice to use Photoshop in lieu of an actual drawing.

When Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and Billy Mays died back in June, Matt whipped up a parody of the tired and lazy celebrity-at-the-pearly-gates trope, which turned out to be a sad premonition of things to come.

And today on his blog, Matt reposted a cartoon from last year to warn us of what we might expect from other cartoonists come Halloween:

Here’s an interview with Matt, conducted by Daryl Cagle at this year’s American Association of Editorial Cartoonists Convention:

You can subscribe to Matt’s blog where he posts his cartoons, but you can also subscribe via Comics.com. The latter requires user registration to access the RSS feed, but the feed images are larger than on Matt’s blog, and you can add any of the other comic strips and editorial cartoons from the site as well. Finally, Matt is also on Twitter as @mattbors.

Patrick Brown sends in a link to the first part of series of posts detailing the history of Irish comics, including:

…everything I know about 18th and 19th century Irish cartoonists, from Henry Brocas drawing British atrocities in the wake of the 1798 Rebellion, to William O’Keefe and John Doyle in London, to the anti-O’Connell cartoons of ‘the Presbyterian laureate’ William McComb in Belfast in 1841, to John Fergus O’Hea, J. D. Reigh and Thomas Fitzpatrick (grandfather of fantasy artist Jim Fitzpatrick) in nationalist papers in the 1880s, to Jack Yeats’ early career in British comics.

The Globe and Mail has posted a video of cartoonist Brian Gable creating today’s editorial cartoon. I never would have guessed that Gable was working digitally in Painter.

It’s still several hours before any results pour in for the U.S. presidential election, but that hasn’t stopped editorial cartoonists from making predictions and readying their submissions. Daryl Cagle’s online hub of editorial cartoons has already started compiling cartoons depicting Obama’s victory.

MAD cartoonist Tom Richmond also recently posted a look at MAD’s efforts to not predict election results, but to prepare two versions of features or cover art that feature a winning presidential candidate.

Here’s a treat. In promotion of his new retrospective book Monsters, The BBC has posted a short, but altogether enjoyable slide show of the work of political cartoonist and savage caricaturist Gerald Scarfe. Scarfe talks about the politicians and personalities that act as inspiration for his trademark wickedness. I didn’t expect him to sound so… pleasant!

Related:
John Kascht: Videos Behind the Caricature
Barry Blitt and Controversial Cartoons
The Naked Campaign: Watch Brodner Draw

These are so cool — who knew that this was even a genre? Over at the always-impressive Bibliodyssey, PK offers up some brilliant satirical maps from World War One that double as political cartoons.

Maps that featured regional stereotypes, animals and assorted symbolic imagery and mythical and historic figures associated with particular countries became a popular vehicle in which prejudices, humour and political commentary could be assembled in a visual format.

The rise of the serio-comic map caricature genre, that had really begun in about 1870 (although the roots of the tradition stretch back at least to Munster’s ‘Geographica’** from the mid-1500s), reached its peak of popularity at the beginning of World War One.

The humorous propaganda maps stirred nationalistic fervour, mocked and belittled enemies and even served as a mnemonic tool for students to learn their geography. In many of the above maps you can see that the more distorted or grotesque depictions are saved for the least favoured nations while the home side is of course rendered as normal or heroic. The style declined in popularity as the war dragged on and film and posters became the more dominant media of propaganda.

The latest New Yorker cover, by pop-culture visual commentator Barry Blitt, is stirring up considerable controversy. Apparently Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters don’t agree that satire helps their cause – see the story at the International Herald Tribune. That’s a pretty tricky line for a Democrat to take. Where would we be without cartoonists and caricaturists – the court jesters of our times – to speak the taboos that cover up hidden agendas and to question, hence improve and refine, cultural values?

At least two illustrators are defending The New Yorker’s willingness to keep imagemaking relevant and thought-provoking. The indefatigable DB Dowd (previously) – who brought this dust-up to my attention – has an excellent essay about it, while Person-of-the-Day caricaturist Steve Brodner has a call-to-action on his Drawger blog.

Now if only The New Yorker would stop being wimps and post about this on their new Cartoon Lounge blog, and put in message threads!! THAT would make their new blog something to bookmark, a place to regularly discuss freedom-of-sight. Instead, they are conducting all the juicy discussion over on The  Huffington Post.

…or at least that’s what Kate Beaton would have us believe. Now that both Canada Day and The 4th of July are behind us, Kate takes a break from her own delightful historical (and sometimes not-so-historical) comics to share some great old political cartoons detailing early Canada/U.S. relations.

Previously: Kate Beaton.

Canadian cartoonist Bob Bierman (Previously blogged) died in hospital two weeks ago, following a massive stroke. His death was announced this past Tuesday by his family. He is survived by his wife Angelina, their two sons, and two grandchildren.

Here’s a excerpt from yesterday’s Globe & Mail that talks about the famous 1978 cartoon which shot Bob into the national spotlight:

In 1978, a statement by the province’s human resources minister inspired what would become a notorious cartoon. Bill Vander Zalm said young people should be cut off welfare, adding that aboriginal youth should leave the city and return to their reserves.

Thinking the statement cruel and dismissive, Mr. Bierman drew a cartoon depicting the minister leering as he deliberately snaps the wings from five helpless flies. The cartoon was published in the Victoria Times.

Mr. Vander Zalm sued the newspaper and the cartoonist for libel, complaining he had unfairly been shown to be a person of a sadistic nature. (…) Mr. Justice Craig Munroe of the B.C. Supreme Court found the cartoon to be defamatory (and awarded) Mr. Vander Zalm $3,500 in damages. (…) The B.C. Court of Appeal overturned the decision in 1980.

(…) The original cartoon was purchased by the National Archives of Canada for $350. More than 500 other Bierman cartoons are held by the W.A.C. Bennett Library at Simon Fraser University.

Yeah, $350. I balked at that price tag too.

You can still order Bob’s book, an anthology of his work titled “1984: A Collection of Political Cartoons” from Amazon and other bookstores.