Norwegian Daily Faces Backlash Over Modi Cartoon

From News 18.

Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten faced massive backlash after it published a racist cartoon depicting Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a snake charmer with a fuel-station filling pipe as the snake. 

The image was used for an opinion article titled “A sneaky and slightly annoying man".

Scott Adams 1957-2026

From AP News.

Scott Adams, whose popular comic strip “Dilbert” captured the frustration of beleaguered, white-collar cubicle workers and satirized the ridiculousness of modern office culture until he was abruptly dropped from syndication in 2023 for racist remarks, has died. He was 68.

His first ex-wife, Shelly Miles, announced the death Tuesday on a livestream posted on Adams’ social media accounts. “He’s not with us right anymore,” she said. 

Similar Concepts

Tjeerd Royaards in Substack.

Let me start this editorial by stating that I am not accusing any artist referenced here below of plagiarism. 

Editorial cartooning isn’t exactly a get-rich-quick scheme, so in my opinion there aren’t many cartoonists who plagiarize (why would you?). 

There are, however, a lot of instances where cartoonists come up with similar concepts.

Newsday Apologizes for Printing Chip Bok Cartoon

From The Daily Cartoonist.

On Sunday afternoon, Newsday issued a written apology, calling the cartoon “insensitive and offensive.”

“We deeply regret this mistake and sincerely apologize to the family of Charlie Kirk and to all. 

We made an error in judgment. The cartoon has been removed from our digital platforms,” the statement said.

When MAGA censorship hits home

From Felipe Galindo's Facebook page.

The White House published the article: "President Trump Is Right About The Smithsonian", to my surprise, an artwork of mine, displayed at the Smithsonian American History Museum is on a “list” of objectionable artworks (selected by The Federalist, a conservative publication,) stating that the image is "promoting open borders by depicting migrants watching fireworks through an opening in the US-Mexico border wall."

AI is Killing Illustration Art

From The Daily Cartoonist.

There she was: a woman in a pose that suggested she was either about to sell me shoes or ask me to subscribe to her OnlyFans. Her legs spread in a way that made me wonder if Skechers had pivoted from athletic footwear to gynaecological equipment. The shoes—ostensibly the point of the advertisement—were an afterthought.

But this wasn’t just bad advertising. This was the death of commercial illustration happening in real time, one algorithmically-generated subway poster at a time. It isn’t new. I’ve written about it before— but this time it’s getting even more ubiquitous. More companies are doing it, and it’s getting gross.

Jason Chatfield discusses the passing of an art form: Death of Illustration by a Thousand Prompts.

Cartoonist Adam Zyglis threatened over cartoon

From The Freedom Cartoonists foundation.

An event called, "Drawing support for local journalism" at the Buffalo history Museum was canceled after threats of violence against editorial cartoonist Adam Zyglis. 

His cartoon on the Texas floods has drawn furor from MAGA supporters. 

Cartoonists’ & free speech orgs in support of LeMan magazine

From Cartoonists Rights International.

The undersigned are appalled by the victimization of staff at LeMan humor magazine, Istanbul in recent days, following the publication June 26th of a cartoon strip by Doğan Pehlevan, the content, meaning, and intent of which has been distorted by government officials in Turkey, leading to inaccurate media coverage and misguided public outrage and, ultimately, four jailed on multiple charges, two more colleagues wanted by police, and the entire entity under investigation for accepting foreign influence.

• Association of Canadian Cartoonists / L’Association de caricaturistes Canadien
• Daryl Cagle – Cagle Cartoons, Inc. (Newspaper Syndicate)
• Cartoon Movement
• Cartooning for Peace
• Cartoonists Rights
• Columbia Global Freedom of Expression
• European Cartoon Award
• Forum for Humour and the Law (ForHum)
• Freedom Cartoonists Foundation
• Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC Strategy
• Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation (PCO)
• ToonsMag

Clashes and arrests in Turkey over LeMan cartoon

From The Guardian.

-Peace be with you Muhammed! -Peace be with you Moses...

Turkish prosecutor orders arrests at LeMan magazine over allegation of depicting prophet Muhammad.

Clashes erupted in Istanbul with police firing rubber bullets and teargas to disperse a mob on Monday after Istanbul’s chief prosecutor ordered the arrest of the editors at LeMan magazine on grounds it had published a cartoon that “publicly insulted religious values”.

The magazine’s editor-in-chief, Tuncay Akgun, said the image had been misinterpreted.

AI Re-Imagines original cartoons

From The Daily Cartoonist.

It seems a fairly new YouTube uploader is taking cartoonists’ original cartoons, “re-imagining” (read: swiping) them through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and then passing them off as their own.

Original Jack Ohman cartoon

Zehra Ömeroğlu receives Robert Russell Courage in Cartooning Award 2025

From The Daily Cartoonist.

Cartoonists Rights has bestowed the 2025 Robert Russell Courage in Cartooning Award 2025 on Zehra Ömeroğlu, a Turkish cartoonist, who has been the target of criminal prosecution for a cartoon that was published in 2020 and faces a three year prison sentence.

The offending cartoon was published in Leman, a satirical magazine composed mainly of women. 

In 2022, she was summoned to the police station and informed of obscenity charges for her tongue-in-cheek pandemic-related cartoon.

"Capitulation is contagious"

Adrienne LaFrance in the March issue of The Atlantic.

By killing a cartoon that lampooned its owner, The Washington Post set a dangerous precedent.

Paper Prints Danziger Cartoon, Publisher Apologizes, Fires Editor

The owners of The Palm Beach Post fired editorial page editor Tony Doris last month after the paper published the above Jeff Danziger cartoon and later condemned it as antisemitic.

The full story here.

Political Cartoonists on facing Donald Trump

Zach Rabiroff in The Comics Journal.

Trump's ABC by Ann Telnaes

Zach Rabiroff for The Comics Journal investigates the state of political cartooning as the practitioners face a revitalized and seemingly very powerful Donald Trump who is entering his second term as President of the United States with few limits in his way. 

Darkness at News

Mike Peterson in The Daily Cartoonist.

There have been a number of cartoons responding to Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos having spiked an endorsement for Kamala Harris, many of them playing on the Post’s motto “Democracy Dies in the Dark.”

Ann Telnaes gets the top spot in part because she works there and her cartoon joins with 16 Washington Post columnists who signed an outraged statement protesting the move, which is reason enough, but also because while she is perennially one of the most inventive political cartoonists, she knows when it’s time to be plainspoken.

And her fans recognize her outrage, as the comments on her page indicate.

The fact that the Post has published protests over the topic — from both staff and readers — is encouraging, because it indicates a chasm between the people who make the paper and the man who owns it, and that there is a difference between doing what you’ve been ordered to do and behaving like a lickspittle.

Henry Payne charged with drawing “racist” cartoon

From The Detroit Metro Times. 

Henry Payne, a Detroit News auto industry reporter who moonlights as a political cartoonist is being criticized for appearing to imply that U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib is a member of Hezbollah, which critics have labeled as “racist,” “xenophobic,” “vile,” and “disgusting.”

The illustration depicts Tlaib at her desk next to the charred remains of an electronic device with a thought balloon reading, “Odd, my pager just exploded.” 

The cartoon is a reference to a recent attack against the Lebanese organization Hezbollah that is believed to have been orchestrated by Israel, in which beepers and walkie-talkies were modified to act as remote-controlled explosives. 

Turhan Selçuk Competition revokes winning cartoon

 

The first prize of the 14th Turhan Selçuk International Cartoon Competition has been revoked after allegations of plagiarism were levelled at the author. 

An investigation determined that Mehmet Akif Özdal had previously participated in various competitions by copying other artists’ cartoons.

Iran Alert – Atena Farghadani

From Cartooning for Peace.

The non-governmental organisation HRANA published an article drawing attention to the situation of the Iranian press cartoonist and former political prisoner Atena Farghadani. 

Arrested on April 13th and detained in Qarchak prison, she was clearly ill-treated during her arrest. 

She was allegedly arrested for trying to display one of her drawings on the wall of Avenue Pastor, where the presidential palace is located. The criminal charges against her have yet to be confirmed.

The Zehra Ömeroğlu trial is postponed

 

The trial for "obscenity brought against cartoonist Zehra Ömeroğlu  for a drawing published in Leman which deals with the effects of Covid, could not be heard because the Istanbul Criminal Court judge of First Instance was excused.

The trial in which the illustrator risks a prison sentence is postponed until September 26.

Graeme Mackay meets pushback for an editorial cartoon

From Graeme Mackay's website. 

I was met with push back after my March 20 editorial cartoon depicting Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin engaged in military offensives against innocent civilians juxtaposed with Justin Trudeau announcing Canada’s decision to halting arms sales to Israel.

My mission as an editorial cartoonist includes observing Canada’s place in global affairs, and the vote by Parliament to suspend arms shipments to the Netanyahu government was significant and warranted reaction. 

While the cartoon may appear provocative to some, its intention is clear: to comment on current events and political decisions in a satirical manner.