Wuerker Gallery of Year’s Best Cartoons

From Politico.

The year ends on a positive note as I made it (at #13) on Matt Wuerker's Gallery of the Year’s Best Cartoons.

Another Canadian (at #47) made the list:

Aislin, MacKinnon and Mou on "As It Happens"

From As It Happens.

Carol Off interviews Bruce MacKinnon, Theo Moudakis & Terry Mosher on CBC Radio's As It Happens.

Click here to listen.

A few cartoons mentioned on the program:

Aislin's Year in Political Cartoons

Terry Mosher speaks to Mutsami Takahashi on CTV.

Merry Christmas!

"GQ's Dumbest Quotes of 2014" by Steve Brodner

From Brodner's Bicycle.

Here is a sample:

The Sketch Freedom‬ 2nd International Cartoon Expo Catalogue

The Sketch Freedom‬ 2nd International Cartoon Expo's Catalogue has just been published.

Paperback: 200 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1502503689
ISBN-13: 978-1502503688
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches

More about the exhibition here.

Adrian Raeside Issues Apology For Offending the Wrong People

Alan Gardner in The Daily Cartoonist.

Adrian Raeside has posted an apology for an interpretation of one of his recent cartoons that ran in The Times Colonist. The First Nations leaders felt they were put down by being compared or associated with bugs.

Editor Faces Possible Prison Sentence Over Cartoon

From Cartoonists Rights Network.

Stephff (Stephane Peray), the artist behind an ISIS-skewering cartoon published in the Jakarta Post that’s put the paper’s chief editor in the crosshairs of Indonesia’s blasphemy laws, has made his first statement concerning that controversy — by means of a cartoon.

“The Art of Richard Thompson”

Alan Gardner reviews “The Art of Richard Thompson” in The Daily Cartoonist.

This Tuesday “The Art of Richard Thompson” will hit book shelves everywhere. Within the span of 220 or so pages are hundreds of examples of his work along with interviews with Richard by notable individuals (Peter de Sève, Gene Weingarten and Bill Watterson ) who are well respected or masters of the craft themselves. 

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Last Saturday's cartoon in Le Droit is featured on the Yahoo Canada website.

Le Droit, Saturday December 13, 2014

Zap: An Interview with Robert Crumb

From the archives of The Comics Journal.

Zap: The Interviews, Volume 9 of The Comics Journal Library, hits stores this month, collecting all the Zap-related Comics Journal interviews, plus several previously unpublished conversations with the Zap cartoonists.In celebration of this release, we’re going to do something a little different. Instead of sampling the book with excerpts from the interviews, we will be supplementing the book with interviews that didn’t quite fit into the 264-page anthology. Please enjoy Gary Groth’s complete interview with Robert Crumb from TCJ #143,

Clay Bennett Wins 2014 Berryman Award

From the Times Free Press.

"Community Relations", August 15, 2014

The National Press Foundation has named Chattanooga Times Free Press cartoonist Clay Bennett as the recipient of the 2014 Clifford K. & James T. Berryman Award for Editorial Cartoons.

The Best of Britain's Political Cartoons 2014

From the Ellwood Atfield Gallery.

The UK’s leading cartoonists were eligible for two awards, the Political Cartoonist of the Year and the Political Cartoon of the Year. The results were announced by guest of honour Jeremy Paxman, at the award ceremony on December 2nd.

Backlash Over a Pat Bagley Cartoon

From ABC13 website.

Lynchburg, VA - A political cartoon published on the News and Advance has started a firestorm online. It's also posted on their editorial cartoon page and a lot of people are talking.

"Sketch Freedom" Exhibition in Gothenburg, Sweden

The second edition of Sketch Freedom, an international cartoon expo, will take place in Gothenburg, Sweden in early 2015. Organized by exiled Iranian cartoonist and activist Kianoush Ramezani, the expo is an official event of the Gothenburg Film Festival, and brings together the work of many great cartoonists from all corners of the globe.

Cartoonist Bas van der Schot wins Ink Spot Prize

From de Volkskrant.

-We must regain our ideological plumage.

Volkskrant cartoonist Bas van der Schot won the Inkspotprijs for best political picture of the year with his cartoon "A Brief History of the Labour Party".

Drawn & Quarterly Winter-Spring 2015 Releases

Bryan in Sequential.

Cover drawing by Tom Gauld

Montreal’s Drawn and Quarterly has officially announced its slate of books scheduled for the next six months. In addition to long-anticipated books by top-tier Canuck talent like Mark Bell (Stroppy), Jillian Tamaki (the collected Super Mutant Magic Academy), and a reprint of the groundbreaking Melody by Sylvie Rancourt, the company will be celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary with a “700-plus-page collection detailing the company’s history and featuring new and rare work from D+Q cartoonists and essays from Margaret Atwood, Sheila Heti, Jonathan Lethem,” and others. We can expect many of these by TCAF in May.

Translating Pow Pow Press

From Pow Pow's page on Kickstarter.

Pow Pow Press is a Montreal-based, French language publisher that specializes in comics. Since its creation in 2010, it has published over twenty graphic novels and has rapidly become one of the biggest independent comics publisher in Québec.

Pow Pow Press now hopes to translate some titles from its already extensive catalogue, but in order to do so, need your help. This crowd funding campaign has been set up in order to print their first three titles in English, after which they will translate their new releases, as well as some of their back catalogue.

UPDATE (December 8, 10PM)

We are very happy to announce we've reached our $20,000 objective earlier today! Thanks everyone! We now have 48 hours to reach our stretch goal of $25,000 and translate a fourth book, Vampire Cousins by Cathon and Alexandre Fontaine Rousseau.

"You Might Be From New Brunswick If…"

Dan Soucoup in Atlantic Books Today.

A good idea needs a great execution and You Might Be From New Brunswick If… certainly contains both. 

Michael de Adder’s crisp artwork and clever concepts takes the reader on a journey around the province showing us what’s distinctive and truly unique about New Brunswick. 

New Comics Festival in Columbus, Ohio

Dan Gearino from The Columbus Dispatch.

Columbus will be the site of a new comics festival that will seek to attract a national and international audience, organizers said yesterday.

The first Cartoon Crossroads Columbus — CXC for short — will be held in October 2015.

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Today's cartoon in Le Droit is featured on the Yahoo Canada website.

RIP: Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, 1971-2013

"It is with great sadness that we announce that Pelican's Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year Series, produced annually for the past 42 years, will no longer be published."  

- Kathleen Calhoun Nettleton, Publisher

National Gallery of Art Welcomes First Comic Books to Its Permanent Collection

From ArtNet News.

Mr. Crumb goes to Washington. The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. has been given an extensive collection of underground comic books and they are the first comic books to enter the gallery's permanent collection.

Terry Gilliam: "Things Happen"

To celebrate his 74th anniversary, an interview with Terry Gilliam from The Talks.

Photo by Alex de Brabant

Mr. Gilliam, you’ve been given the nickname “Captain Chaos” because of all the things that have gone wrong on your film sets. Do you need chaos on set to be creative?

(Laughs) It isn’t really that. I don’t want chaos, I actually want order. I really want it ordered very well and I want to surround myself with really well organized people so that when we’re on the set and an idea comes in we can play with it because we’ve got a really good structure. So it’s not chaos. Between me and the actors, or between me and the director of photography, it’s more like, “Oh, what if we did that? Okay, we can do that.” So the organized people think it’s chaos, but it’s not. I just build a structure that’s really solid so even if the lead actor dies, we can finish the film. (Laughs)

"The Art of Richard Thompson"

Screenshot 

The link:

Art of Richard Thompson from GVI on Vimeo.

British Political Cartoon of the Year Awards

You can cast your vote for the Political cartoonist of the year on the Ellwood Artfield Gallery website.

Steve Bell, The Guardian

Another favourite:

Seven Top Portrait Artists

Steve Brodner interviews Edward Sorel, Burt Silverman, Joe Ciardiello, John Cuneo, Jason Seller, Anita Kunz and Victor Juhasz in the Society of Publication Designers' website.

What is your first conscious or unconscious act in sizing up a face as you begin a project?

Edward Sorel: Since we work from photos rather than from the person, the first question is, "Does this photo look like the person?" If it doesn't, you either need another photo or, if you like the expression, get other pictures from other angles--profiles are helpful. Then you exaggerate the feature that is at variance with the ancient Greek ideal of the face. 



The complete article here.

Dušan Petričić Profiled

Uffe Andersn in TOL.

Cartoonist Dušan Petričić has inspired generations of children to stick to basic rules. He’s now applying the same methods to grown-ups.

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This drawing was featured yesterday on the iPolitics website.

Ben Lafontaine 1963-2014

Jean Chrétien by Lafontaine

It is one of the great tragedies of our times that the daily press only publishes illustrations on rare occasions. Thus talented cartoonists such as Benoît Lafontaine, Patrick Dea or Fred Sebastian are forced either to scrape a living, do commercial work or make a career in education.
The other tragedy is to die prematurely. So it is with sadness that I learned of the death last week at age 51 of a colleague who deserved greater fame.
I hope these few examples of his work prove my case:

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Liberal MPs Scott Andrews and Massimo Pacetti had been suspended from caucus based on harassment complaints lodged by two unnamed New Democrat MPs

My cartoon in today's edition of Le Droit is reprinted on the National Newswatch website.

Bill Watterson draws the Angoulême 2015 Poster

Drawing by Bill Watterson

Here is my translation of his interview in 20 Minutes:

Publicité Sauvage at L'Affichiste

Susan Schwartz in The Montreal Gazette.

If you happen to drop by L’Affichiste, Karen Etingin’s Old Montreal poster gallery, some of the posters in the exhibition she’s mounting in November will perhaps look familiar.

World Press Cartoon 2014 (my cartoon)

I received the 2014 catalogue of the Cascais, Portugal World Press Cartoon competition.

The jury this year included Antonio Antunes, creator of the contest and exhibition, Adriana Mosquera Soto [Nani] (Colombia), Rainer Ehrt (Germany), Ferruccio Giromini (Italy) and Jaume Capdevila, [Kap] (Spain).

Here is my drawing in the editorial cartoon category:

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This drawing is featured today on the iPolitics website.

Ralph Steadman: Into the Gentle Darkness

From The Comics Journal #131 (September 1989)

From George Orwell's Animal Farm

In this 1989 interview, Gary Groth picks Ralph Steadman’s brain on the topic of his growth as an artist, changing interests, loss of faith and times working with Hunter S. Thompson in a career-spanning conversation that always finds its way back to politics and all that’s wrong in the world.

Erdogan cartoons: how artists responded to case against a Turkish colleague

Milana Knezevic in  X Index.

Cartoon By Martin Rowson

When Turkish political cartoonist Musa Kart faced nine years in prison for “insulting” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his colleagues from across the world fought back in the best way they know how — by drawing their own #erdogancaricature.

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Thursday's Le Droit cartoon was featured in the iPolitics website.

Bruce MacKinnon’s war memorial cartoon touches hearts worldwide

Editorial cartoon by Bruce Mackinnon

The Chronicle Herald's editorial cartoon after the shooting at the National War Memorial prompted an emotional response from around the world, the tender image garnering mentions in North American and European news sites, Twitter, and other forms of social media.

Read more here.

Ben Wicks Pub RIP

BK Munn in Sequential.

The Ben Wicks Pub has ceased operations. Founded in Toronto in 1980 by popular cartoonist Ben Wicks and decorated with large murals of his cartoons, the basement bar and restaurant is now The Local Gest. One of only a half-dozen Canadian cartoonist landmarks in the country, the bar’s comics connection was maintained by its use as an informal meeting place for the Doug Wright Awards organizing committee for many years. The pub last made news in 2013 when its owner and his manager where ordered by the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal to pay $18,000 for the manager’s sexually harassment of a bartender in 2008.

The nominees for the 2014 Governor General’s Literary Awards

BK Munn in Sequential.

The nominees for the 2014 Governor General’s Literary Awards have been announced and several well-known comics and comic creators have made the cut in the children’s literature categories. Jillian Tamaki and Julie Morstad are nominated in the English illustration category, Mariko Tamaki in the English writer category, and Pascal Blanchet and Marianne Dubuc in the French-language illustration category. The winners will be announced November 18 and the winners each receive $25,000 (the rest of finalists receive $1,000 each).

World Press Cartoon 2014

1st PRIZE- CARICATURE AND GRAND PRIX

Shankar

Sakshi (India) - 07/12/13

Mandela

World Press Cartoon faces in 2014 the most dramatic challenge of its history. At the last minute, when the selection process was already on track, the Municipality of Sintra unilaterally decided to break the agreements established for the organization of the 2014 exhibition and awards ceremony. 

"You Might Be From Manitoba If..."

MacIntyrePurcell has just published "You Might Be From Manitoba If..." by longtime Winnipeg Free Press editorial cartoonist Dale Cummings.

Here is a small sample of what is in store for you:

Saul Steinberg at 100

Ian Frazier in The New Yorker.

If Saul Steinberg were still alive, he would be a hundred years old. He was born in Romania in 1914, just before the start of the First World War. In 1942, escaping from Italy, where he had been an architecture student, he came to the United States. For the next six decades, his amazing work levitated this magazine; here was a major twentieth-century artist who also possessed an unmatched gift for the magazine page, especially The New Yorker’s.

Poster for Tomorrow: This Year's Top Ten

From Poster for Tomorrow.

Onur Aşkın (Turkey)

EVERYBODY'S RIGHT TO FAIR AND EQUAL EMPLOYMENT.

The right to work isn’t the right to employment. Nobody has the right to a job. But everybody has the right to work in a secure, safe, fair working environment.

Interview with Afghan cartoonist Mehdi Amini

'The longer the beard, the smaller the brain.'

After losing a long and bitter electoral battle, President Hamid Karzai is stepping down. Opinions about his legacy are divided. Mehdi Amini is an architect, but he's been making political cartoons about Karzai for years, in secret. Now, he is speaking out against the regime for the first time: 'Karzai has protected dangerous warlords. It is the Taliban who profit.'

The complete article on The Cartoon Movement website.

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Last Saturday's Le Droit cartoon is featured on the Yahoo Canada website.

"Sketch Freedom 2nd International Cartoon Expo" (Gothenburg, Sweden)

The "Sketch Freedom 2nd International Cartoon Expo" will be held in Gothenburg, Sweden, from January to February 2015.
The exhibition will feature the work of Franck Moulin, Peter Broelman, Vladmir Kazanevsky, Nathalie Bödtker-Lund, Fifion Ribana, Angel Boligán, Liza Donnelly, Iiris-Lilja Kuosmanen, Riber Hansson, Karl-Magnus Johansson, Damien Glez, Jaume Capdevila, Victor Bogorad, Johan Asplund as weel as my own.