Matt Buck's Hack Cartoons

A new political magazine cover image. Of course, a lot of these things actually missed their targets...but it only took one.

Exciting news (for me), I've cracked the long-running Britblog roundup, which you can read here. Many thanks to Matt Wardman.

A recent commissioned drawing for the Times Educational Supplement about the inspection regime for higher education teaching.

Drawn about the threat of the Heathrow climate camp eco-warriors (well, it's sort of a threat...more of a mild dissent really.It's published here - and below.

The World of Hack, or, megalomania beckons, as my significant other calls it.

Time to think about leaving the country.



Image drawn for No2ID

Anybody who makes editorial or commercial content knows innovation is hard to do.

It's time-consuming, usually unpaid and even when complete as a product, is often still difficult to bring to market.

But of course, it is also essential to the economic and creative survival of the people making it.

Neil McIntosh explains the paradox and its importance nicely here by examining a couple of high-profile attempts at innovation from the world of journalism.

The contrast between Neil's stories about two institutional views of innovation and my own experience as a sole practitioner might make a whole new series of posts...but maybe not today...

Poor bloody cows.

This new political animation is published here.

My colleague, Morten, also has some more interesting news on developments in America.

Here's the latest 3D animation from Kevin 'Kal' Kallaugher. KAL formerly of the Baltimore Sun, whom I wrote about here, back in April. It's interesting to see how far he has pushed his new methods.

To be honest, I'm not a big fan at present, as I think it loses the bite of what he can deliver as shown, here and here, but that's probably just bitterness talking. At least, he is trying to do something new with the artform.
(A hat-tip to friend and former colleague, journalist James Watson for the link)

UPDATE: Re doing new things with the artform or here, below. Our former prime Minister, Tony Blair has been made a Peace Envoy to the middle east. This after all we have learned about his role in the invasion of Iraq! the annopuncement coincided with the tenth anniversary of Diana, Princess of Wales.


UPDATE:

There's a reaction to Kal's work by The Times's Morten Morland here . Morten makes a good point that the animated drawing above, is still, clearly a portfolio piece and isn't yet, a proper, functioning, animated cartoon. There isn't much evidence of Kal'ism, or his opinions in it yet. It's simply a drawing of Bush doing daft physical things - or prat gags as I know them.

Morten puts it better than me;

Despite the fact that it’s a promo piece however, the self-importance that is such a prominent feature in this, and of much of what the KAL animation team has published to date, is becoming somewhat tedious.

Our national flag carrier airline, British Airways (or BA, as it calls itself now) has been fined for manipulating the price of transatlantic air tickets.



Foolishly, it had trusted that its partner in crime, Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic, wouldn't snitch to the US regulators about the price-fixing cartel they were running. But Beardie's chaps squealed and now BA are facing some very hefty fines.

Amazingly, Virgin got let off for telling... and there are some very unhappy customers of both companies around now.

Free market economics, my arse, to paraphrase someone intelligent.

Channel 4 News

Several examples of 'snap' from the newspaper cartoonists this morning after the death of film director Ingmar Bergman and the visit of Gordon Brown to George Bush at Camp David. (What a sentence that is, when you reread it.)

Peter Brookes of The Times has this - and so does Jas, who is covering for Nick Garland at the Telegraph.

Dave Brown in the Indy has more of a gag treatment for the same image - and it's the one that made me laugh.

Steve Bell's done a variation on the theme. His drawing of Brown is particularly lovely, with his head in his hands and I bet it is too.

If you read nothing else today, read this.

Courtesy of the well-informed Rod McKie. Having read his post, I like to think that a good idea will survive the end of the person who had it.

In the list of the-gone-someplace-else that Rod has compiled, I have a particular fondness for Doug Marlette, an American editorial cartoonist, who had bags of attitude and which fuelled his powerful, provocative and well-informed drawings.

In Doug's own words, 'If Elvis had drawn, he would have drawn cartoons.'

This morning, the media coverage has reached Oxford. I wonder how the recently flooded people of North Hull, Rotherham, Barnsley, Sheffield, South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire generally are feeling.

This drawing is for Tribune.

After the deluge, me. And some facts from the Channel 4 web site.

Here is a brilliant piece of interactivity from graphics journalist Paddy Allen.

And, if you wondered what the political and economic effect of the floods was going to be, here are two You Tube videos of the Vodafone Headquarters near Newbury. They are clearly, going to be out of commission for a while.

As Paddy's graphic explains, the water is heading downstream from Wiltshire and the headwaters of the Thames towards major cities like Oxford and Reading.
The Guardian are also reporting that the nuclear weapons establishment at Burghfield in Berkshire is already affected by the flooding.

Courtesy of photo-journalist Sean Smith and The Guardian. As a short analysis of why nobody wins a war, this is hard to beat.

This weekend's publishing event. There is some interesting detail on the economics of the Potter phenomenon here, courtesy of Danuta Kean.

Dr David Kelly was found dead on this day in 2003. This cartoon never saw the light of publication at that time.

How could anyone miss the retired John Prescott when Boris Johnson is still so much a part of our public life? The efforts made by our finest cartoonists today, in honour of Bonking Boris's intended run for Mayor of London, shows the esteem in which this dangerously wily creature is viewed.

Peter Brookes in The Times - Steve Bell in The Guardian and Dave Brown in the Indy

And on something completely different, a hat tip to Nick Garland at the Telegraph for a nice joke - click the picture link under comment too see it.

Anything that helps you get the idea down clearly is attractive to someone who draws

Published here - and below. A 'green' jet plane was launched on the world this week.

Gordon Brown's highly trailed use of cabinet government appears highly selective already - Britain's first supercasino in Manchester is apparently doomed.

Published here.

Drawing porn.

Now this, promises to be terrific - although a bit irritating if you shelled out for a book copy of his complete drawings ...

A drawing about the use of increasing use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) inside the NHS.

An elegant piece of interactive content from the Guardian. The prologue of the Tour de France in a beautifully car-less and sunny London was fantastic too.

Joel Mishon, owner of Cartoonstock, has kindly made a thoughtful contribution to the long-running debate about syndicates and stock artwork. His comment, (which is No.9, No 9...) is well worth a read.

And it was good to be told we were having a balanced debate. Cheers Joel.

This week's animated news cartoon for Channel Four News - living in the age of terror.

We've tried to do a contemplative piece about some of the things, apart from human lives, we are all busy trying to protect...

Published here.

Chichi Parrish has a beautiful joke about the new smoking ban here. Double-click on the image at the other end for a good view.

An interesting week for people who enjoy drawing and jokes because of two excellent exhibitions which are due to open.

The first, on Thursday, is a huge Heath Robinson show at the Cartoon Museum on Little Russell Street, near to the British Museum. Robinson is most famous for his quirky mechanical contraption jokes and this will be a very popular show.

And on Friday, the irrepressible Tim Benson launches Iraq in cartoons. This show will be packed with the best of editorial talent in the country, including Tanya Tier - a highly talented and hardworking satirist who organised the recent Birds of War show.

Courtesy of Rod McKie's blog, comes sad news of Bud Handelsmann's death. He was a fine and funny US cartoonist. Rod has posted some excellent examples of his work from Freaky Fables, a long-running and excellent set of parodies of well-known tales and myths. It's well-worth a look. And a laugh is a great way to remember someone.

One published animated news cartoon on the end of smoking in confined spaces - and Mr Blair.



UPDATE: There is also much activity today on the Tribune Political Cartoons blog where, Alex Hughes, Martin Rowson, John Jensen and I, are reacting to the new cabinet as fast as our pencils will let us...

We have another new Scottish Prime Minister - and to celebrate Channel Four have kindly decided to publish one of my animated cartoons.

To celebrate, I'm going to go outside, smoke a lot of cigarettes and drink considerable amounts of champagne, while I still can.

Published here. Oh, and below now too.

There's an elegant review at the Nether-World blog of Taking Liberties, a new film about some very serious changes the government have made in UK law. These effect every person in the country, negatively in my opinion. Unfortunately, the film, unlike the laws, is a very limited release but hopefully it will soon be due for a DVD release.

The drawing was recently commissioned by Computing newspaper.

At this rate, the Keswick pencil museum is going to be even more important than it is already. :-(

...for my colleague Dave Brown's art exhibition which is still on at the Political Cartoon Gallery in central London.

It's a fantastic and large display of wit and technical skill in mashing up (I think that's the vogue'ish term) classic paintings and current political comment.

Absolutely, don't miss it. It's on until the end of June - or, if you cannot make it, at least,buy the book!. I have.

Hat-tip to Dave and Tim Benson who runs a fantastic gallery, which is always worth a visit.

Published here

Poor old prudent Prudence - who'd be representative of public spending when there's very little cash around - and Gordon has already promised inflation busting rises for health and education. Where does that leave national spending on other 'priorities' such as leisure services, transport, the environment and the emergency services?

'Tis (almost) the season for strange and interesting news which some folk call the silly season. My colleague Mark Crail has started the ball rolling with an interesting little stash of treasure. It's - a Beano album for a union conference. Talk about cartooning as an art form for the working classes!

Something charming and upbeat to usher away those minutes as the working week winds down. The entertainment is courtesy of Tim Ireland at Bloggerheads. I think the PM might describe him as feral.

There has been much coverage of Mr Blair's extended moan about the media - lots of people have quite rightly pointed out this is the pot calling the kettle black and so forth. It sent me off in search of an old drawing from 2004 when the rows over Iraq were fresh(ish) to the world and Tony could still dream of a nice legacy. Usually, I'm horribly embarrassed about old work but I still like this one - although, I'd never draw it that way now...

UPDATE
There's a more elegant summing up of what the PM said and why it was nonsense here. A hat tip to Adrian Monck for remembering and digging up a fine bit of written thinking.

There's a post here where some of the UK's best cartoonists and visual creators are discussing issues around the ownership and selling of art. The resulting comments are well worth a read - number four excepted.

To start the thread, I pulled a newspaper trick of posing a deliberately contentious idea - that all stock libraries of imagery are a bad thing for creators of images.

I used to believe this absolutely - and indeed, one of the contributors and I spoke at length at a public meeting against adding content to stock libraries almost ten years ago. I guess I'm getting older because my (and our) ideas are changing now. At the time, I could only see that very cheap access to quality imagery would destroy existing markets for people like me - and I would still argue that over the past decade it has.

However, the marketplace and its demands are remorseless and at some point you have to stop banging your head and start using it. So, read on ... and a hearty thanks to my friends, colleagues and contacts for piling in so willingly.

Beau Bo D'or on the issues surrounding photomontage and mashups
Morten Morland on self-syndication
Alex Hallatt on the problems of self-syndication
Royston Robertson on the usefulness of image libraries to the gag cartoonist
And Matt Wardman on a possible solution for every creative - multiple income streams.

Will anyone ever invent a digital micro-payment system that works and gets large scale customer buy in? Perhaps, someone already has ... I'd like to know!

Well, who doesn't see this as a challenge and an opportunity?

Image syndicates are essentially, third party agencies controlling, buying and selling the work of creative people for a premium.

It's a perfectly respectable and highly successful business model but I would argue that in the long term, this relationship crushes a great deal of creative innovation, ensures the business status quo is unchallenged and is not in the long term interests of its customers.

(Can anyone spot the wounded artist in all this? :-)

I would cite as an example of this what has happened to the work of print photographers whose trade has been decimated by the emergence of the stock picture library. Prices per unit (picture) have been wrecked and it is increasingly rare for independent providers to work in the media at all now.

And as far as I can see, the same thing is now happening to illustration and drawn products.

The trend really started in the UK with the emergence of large scale agencies based on the photographic model - of these the best known one to me is Cartoonstock run by the kind and extremely cartoon friendly Joel Mishon.

He and I have a friendly disagreement about this, he argues that any sale of a cartoon is good - and he has a point, up to a point. Indeed cheap sales of drawn imagery should be encouraged to low level publications, local magazines, newsletters and so forth. However, in doing this, it also allows big businesses to procure high quality content for a relative pittance.

Of course, they aren't going to refuse that, but this slowly destroys the market for anyone talented, keen (and stupid) enough to try and break into large traditional media markets which used to pay for high quality and original content.

What do you think?

A link lifted from Mindy McAdams, but it's so good, I had to do it. Marvel at the work of Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Now available and published here

A new drawing for campaign group No2ID.

Oh, the frustrations of technology...

The Times Educational Supplement is reporting this week that schools are being asked to get all their pupis to fill in a personal qestionnaire on the behaviour of their parents. I'm reproducing the intro to the frontpage story below - and also the cartoon I was asked to draw about it.

> Heads shun ‘Big Brother’ Ofsted survey asking 10-year-olds if they get drunk and if mum works.
Pupils as young as 10 are being asked personal questions, including how often they get drunk and whether their parents have paid jobs, in an Ofsted survey.
The education watchdog has told teachers they do not need parental permission before children complete the online questionnaire because it is anonymous.
But pupils are being asked for their full home postcode.

Anyone else find this slightly worrying? Ofsted are supposed to be an educational standards board - not an arm of social services.

... is published here.

Here's a short video interview with Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker. Generally, cartooning isn't big on prestigious things, but being cartoon editor of the New Yorker is probably about as close as it gets. Please try and ignore the fact that the clip is at least in part, trying to associate a IT firm with the essential coolness of getting to draw for a living.

Here is a link to a fantastic interview with one of Britain's most outrageously gifted cartoonists, Martin Honeysett. Obviously, rather than getting admired here, he had to go to Japan to get interviewed.

I particularly enjoyed this Jules Feiffer quotation that Honeysett cites;

"Jules Feiffer once said that 'outside of basic intelligence there is nothing more important to a good cartoonist than ill will.' "

>-)

A letters page cartoon on the traditional employment problem of ageism.

The UK will be building a new generation of nuclear power stations.

My colleague Royston Robertson has kindly posted details of some links to pictures and video of the recent Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival at which we both worked.

There are some details on what I did there here, here and here.

Although I'm told I ought to warn you about the hat which appears.

British Airways are running a green audit for their information management team.
[Story from Computing newspaper]

Now this is a scary thought if you've spent anytime working in the traditional print media. A link that is well worth a read

I have a new political animation posted here - all about the next unelected political leader in a major western democracy. Oh, and here's a link to the last other one.

The government has climbed down on its attempt to reform the way doctors are employed by the NHS. Remedy UK, a lobby group of junior doctors, has stopped a major power grab by central government in the way young medics are trained.

Here is a link to a campaigning viral animation I did for them this spring.

Continuing the launch of Britain's first regular digital cartoon diary, today, cartooning master John Jensen has posted his first digital drawing.

Forthcoming attractions include the debut of Martin Rowson and a new animation from me.

The artwork is available under a Creative Commons licence which means it can be used and spread across the web, but not for commercial purposes and it must not be altered from its original form. You can read more about Creative Commons here.

Well, the comment spam has started to arrive (I'm one to talk :-) so I'm afraid I have had to turn moderation on. Sorry.

I blogged here about a large row that's going on in the US about the worth of animating political and news cartoons - and implied that was coming about because of the economic changes which are challenging print journalism - of all sorts.

One of the people I referenced, cartoonist Clay Bennett has kindly sent the details of an interview with him which has been published in the American Journal of Political Science this month. It's well worth a read for anyone who works in the print industry. I'll link to the whole pdf of the interview here, but here's one of the accurate points I think he makes about one of the reasons for the decline in newspaper circulations in industrialised western societies.

Clay > The bulk of the [job] positions lost over the past thirty years have been as a result of the virtual extinction of two-newspaper towns in America. <
And
> Our problem now is not the newspapers were lost, but the ones that remain. No longer engaged in a competition for readers, a newspaper loses the ambition and aggressiveness that rivalry inspires. Without a cross-town rival, the features that once made the paper unique, and the journalists whose work most distinguished the publication from its competitor became expendable.<

I think this is an elegant summation of what has happened to our printed media (and cartoons in them), inspite of the variety of national press we have. I believe there will be a role for unique and distinctive content in the digital age, but we all still wait for business to work out that in order to get good content (and branding recognition) for the multiplicity of digital devices, one must be prepared to pay for the people who can make it.

The cartoonists from Tribune (not quite the men from Uncle, but nearly) launched a digital cartoon diary last week - and have started to get some reactions to it. One in particular made me laugh as political blogger Tim Worstall replied with some vigour to the PR effort ... I quote ...

Tim > My suggestion would be to start by promoting to blogs that share your view of the world.<

Trib>It would be a very boring and sterile debate if we only spoke to people we knew we
were going to agree with wouldn't it?

Tim > Well, if you could manage to get closer to agreeing with reality that would be interesting....

But, a gentleman, he posted a link anyhow, so thanking you Mr Worstall (doffs cap, tugs forelock etc etc).

There is a large row going on in the world of American editorial cartooning - and it concerns one of the preoccupations of this diary - animated cartoons and the new media.

Put simply, the print media industry is going through massive and seismic change in the US - and cartoonists of all sorts have been employment casualties just like so many other journalists. Cartoonists have even campaigned againist job cuts (hard to imagine in the UK! But perhaps more on this later :-)

Some US cartoonists have looked at the situation and attempted to diversify into the new areas of media provision in spite of all the difficulties and worries that this brings with it. A brief namecheck would call Mark Fiore (the daddy of the new animated editorial cartoon), Walt Handelsmann, Kal (who I've blogged about before) and more recently Matt Davies.

But it is only recently that all this activity has really hit the fan with Walt Handelsmann's recent Pullitzer prize win for cartooning, which the judges said was in large part due to his work in animation. My colleague in the UK, Morten Morland has got some very interesting thoughts about this too.

There has been a fierece reaction to Handelsmann's Pullitzer victory, not least from his professional colleague, Scott Stantis.

There's some excellent background on all this in an interview with the former President of the Association of American editorial cartoonists, Clay Bennett. Check out his work too - it's fantastic.

As regards the row, I don't wish to get into the detail about whether or not animated art is a legitimate part of a winning Pullitzer submission, but I do want to post a few thoughts on the reasons why all this is happening - and you'll be unsurprised to hear, they refer back to the ongoing industrial issues in the print media. So watch this space...

In among all the excitement yesterday, the government chose to release a long-delayed set of figures on the start-up costs for ID cards. There has been a fair bit of coverage of this, which is great because the figures are hair-raising - and these costs do not include little delights like the millions and millions of scanners which will be required acoss the country to make the system 'function.' The Home Office eestimates carefully 'divides' the project costs down into seperate areas, claims them as unrelated and in this way disperses the bill.

You can download the Home Office's artful report here - or get a fisking of it here.

Today, I and my fellow cartoonists at Tribune are launching a digital political and news cartoon diary - I'm also announcing my intention to publish Britain's first regular animated political cartoon there every Wednesday.

Today, I have made an animation on ten years of Tony - and his relationship with that most difficult of concepts, the truth.



Also, on the news front - there's a small interview with me underneath a very large (and fine) drawing by Dave Brown in today's Independent newspaper.

I have two drawings published at the Channel 4 News website. They are for the channel's almost-the-end-of-the-Prime-Minister art gallery. I was commissioned for art which summed up the Prime Minister's time in power and of the three drawings that I sent, the two below made the final cut.

The Blair legacy.

I drew the original image way back in 2003, when the insurgency only existed on all the briefing papers which Tony Blair, George Bush and Dick Cheney failed to notice.

The Prime Ministerial character.

Here, I was trying to draw the man - and I think that after all the posturing and image-making he has undertaken over the years that perhaps there isn’t perhaps really much to him at all. What do you think?

There's also some very nice work from Morten Morland, Royston Robertson, Beau Bo'D’Or and The Spine.

Stranger things may have happened...

Weekly refuse collections are very popular - unnecessarily extended periods are not.

If the rumours are to be believed, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair will step down as Prime Minister on May 9th - about five days after his party suffers a very bad set of results in the local elections.

And I am going on holiday for a week, which means I shall miss a lot of the multitude of supplements and memoirs of Tone which are heading our way right now.

The editorial drawing above is from 2003 - and I still think it sums up his legacy pretty well.

But if you would like further evidence about Blair, the government of the United States and Iraq, I offer several stories fom the past week;

1. Former war 'heroine' Jessica Lynch testifies to Congress about what exactly happened to her when she was captured by Iraqis during the 2003 invasion. My colleague Andy Buncombe (of The Independent) reported on this back in 2003 - sadly, precious little of his excellent work was followed up at the time. Still, better late than never.

2. One of our big tanks is broken

3. Getting us ready to leave in a hurry

4. The cost (conservatively estimated.) Try comparing it to the size of your nearest local market town)

Sometimes news stories are just a gift to a cartoonist in search of a useful image for election coverage.

Here's a to-scale-shot-of-the-cartoonist and his Big Board with the fear I wrote about previously replaced by hope that my chosen image about trade was going to hold up over such a big space.
I started off by blocking in the shapes of the image I wanted to draw with a tin of Homebase's finest grey exterior paint. This was surprisingly effective and the rough surface of the hardboard meant that dry-brushing was very effective. This was very handy for the image I chose to paint.
After I had established the shapes and the layout I could then add black and white and further tone to help bring the image up and into a better and more powerful focus. The whole process took about eight hours and was hard work but great fun.

I survived my trial by 8 by 6 foot drawing board - and I'll post some more photos this evening.

A commissioned piece for a magazine cover. The headline feature is about welfare reform and the extension of means testing over the past decade. This theme sent me off in search of a good strong image and a simple strapline. I landed at an excellent ad campaign run by Barnardo’s which kicked up a right stink back in 2003.

I'm getting frighteningly close to the start of the Shrewsbury cartoon Festival and the big board drawing, I was describing here. There's a healthy degree of fear beginning to circulate now - especially as the good citizens of Shrewsbury and surrounding districts will be peering over my shoulders as I work.

As I explained last time, the theme is business and I've been thinking about which way to approach it - I'm going to outline a few approaches and some of their benefits and drawbacks, below

1) Gag - the most traditional or funny of the sort you might see in Sun Fun, Prospect or Private Eye in the UK. These are typically black and white lineart drawings with or without a caption. Really good practitioners of this art I know include Rod McKie, Royston Robertson and Tim Harries.

2) Illustration - a beautiful or striking image usually dependent on its context, or the things around it to help give it meaning. This is the most common form of cartoon in print. The Association of Illustrators have lots of members, but sometimes I'm not sure about their sense of humour.

3) Editorial - an image with a point. A column or opinion piece in pictures - this is my own particular specialisation. Colleagues like Alex Hughes, Morten Morland and Andy Davey make this a challenging environment.

Drawbacks with all of them - when considering an 8 by 6 foot board.

a) Fear!
b) Having a powerful enough joke or comment to translate over such a big space
c) Materials - a 2B isn't going to manage it alone ...

I'm veering towards approach 3) because it's what I know best - but what do I really think about business - time is running out, I'm supposed to start painting on Friday!

Gordon Brown's official Prime Ministerial inheritance campaign has rumbled into life this week. A book, Profiles in Courage has been published and friendly media outlets are indulging in a frenzied bout of the-man-we-don't-know-itis. After the best part of two decades, I think most of us have a fair idea of what Gordon Brown is about. The more interesting question is how he will cope with what being Prime Minister involves.

My fellow blogger, Chicken Yogurt has a nice line on the Chancellor's new seriousness - click this mini blog title to read it.

UPDATE:
Another forward-thinking blogger, Devil's Kitchen, has offered some thoughts on my faltering attempts to animate editorial cartoons. He asks why do it? And it's a good question.

I'm doing it because increasingly the industry I knew, print journalism is in some sort of crisis of confidence. Readerships have been falling for years - and younger potential readers are taking their eyes to digital reading.

This means that a lot of traditional markets for people like me are contracting very fast - and that means change for us too.

This is why, I shall continue to try and animate the original image that I'm attaching below - with mixed results! And a thanks to Devils Kitchen for making me think about what I am doing and why.

For anyone who's working in a trade which is undergoing massive structural change.

And also a link to an interesting blog about the way we, the pseudo-employed, work.

I haven't listened to the radio or watched the telly much this weekend - and the reams of cod analysis in print are going to be too hard to read this week. But having seen the photographs of our future king in several Bournemouth clubs, I fear he just fancies grabbing a new pair of breasts in the way that young chaps do.

A hat tip to Paul Sorene for the link to the pic.

The drawing references John Betjeman's A Subaltern's Love Song. This work was famously described by my partner as 'poetry for those who don't like poetry.'

Perhaps, but it scans and ryhmes very well for this contrived joke - avec mammaries.

Here is a brief and slightly belated, visual report on a very interesting evening at the Telegraph Media Group. It was a meeting arranged by members of the old media, who are very interested in the opportunities presented by the new. Kudos to all who arranged and attended, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The changes to the industry and the way it has operated are going to be huge.

The gag above owes much to the great British cartoonist Larry - Terence Parkes - who had a wonderful and extremely long-running series of visual jokes based on the statues made by Auguste Rodin. Sadly, Larry died a few years back, but there will be a pint or two sunk in memory of this brilliant craftsman at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival at which I'll be appearing later this week.

When the inhabitants of a country start blowing up bridges across physical dividing lines like rivers, you know that country is falling apart.

Don't miss Birds of War if you are in London anytime until the 17th of April. A fantastic exhibition of art by people from Iraq, Jordan and for some old-style Brit angst, Northern Ireland.

It's an excellent exhibition.

The well-intentioned arguments for attempting to regulate the web are daft.

There's a great fear in some news businesses and they aren't willing to accept both the good and the bad about human behaviour and favoured methods of communication.

I shall be drawing at the Shrewsbury cartoon festival during the weekend of April 20-22.

This is a fantastic annual event organised by a group of Britain's very best cartoonists and very kindly supported by Shrewsbury and Atcham District Council.

This year, I have to draw in the town square on a very large board, 8 feet wide by 6 feet high - with lots of folk peering over my shoulders. The theme is trade and business.

Here's a small diagram giving you an idea about the relative proportions of this board and as you can see, it's going to be an interesting challenge. My colleague Royston Robertson is also on Big Board duty this year and you can almost see the fear in his recent blog entry about it.

I'll keep you posted on how it goes!

The Ministry of Defence is (hastily) reviewing the situation about allowing members of the armed forces to sell their 'unique' story to the media. There has been an awful lot of negative coverage of this decision.

Here, there are two links to either side of the argument - and a thoughtful comment piece from Peter Preston, ex-editor of The Guardian, about why any of this matters.

The Guardian
The Telegraph
Preston

UPDATE:
An excellent post on the hypocrisy surrounding the condemnation of the 'sell-out' sailors is available courtesy of Mark Crail.

Also, the Iranians officially 'celebrated; (and promoted) increased production at their Natanz nuclear plant. This is basically a great big up yours to the UN, the rest of the world and particularly, George W Bush.

The modern British murder

The benefits of talking

But I wonder how likely they are to release their influence in Baghdad? Yup, not very.

I don't draw gag cartoons very much - as one of my professional colleagues kindly put it, you've never been funny - he may well be right.

The drawing here was an attempt to 'make humour', which unusually, I did actually submit to a magazine. I'm told the editor said it was too political. It was about the time everybody was very worried about enriched uranium in Iran.

The 'Get Gordon' campaign continues. The Tories appear to believe that David Cameron will stand a better chance of victory at the next election against David Miliband and are busy encouraging Labour to try and self-destruct completely by encouraging him to run against the chancellor.



The Labour party seem to be torn between a fear of Brown and desperation to be somewhere, anywhere, beyond Blair.

Elsewhere, I believe Mong Campbell has recently acquired a new pair of slippers for the local election campaign.

I hesitate to describe the situation with Iran as light relief, because it certainly isn't for the 15 navy personnel, but if you try to see it in the context of the arguments over Iranian nuclear ambitions, the major war going on next door in Iraq and the fag end of George Bush's presidency, you begin to see how complex the situation is.

Your weekly guide to all that's new and interesting in how to tell the news.

Ian Reeves

This one's got a lovely clip toards the end about an American cartooning colleague of mine, Kevin Kallaugher or Kal.

In traditional fashion, after hard service for the Baltimore Sun, Kevin's job became surplus to editorial requirements. He responded in the best (fingers up) fashion, by going off and doing something altogether more interesting. Watch the video Ian has put together to find out what.