THE NEW CARTOONIST JUL/AUG 2026

ISSN: 2977-6368

NUMBER 12 JUL/AUG 2026

READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH COVER STAR CHRIS WILLIAMS

BORN TO DRAW

thenewcartoonist.co.uk

£2.50

BEHIND THE CRITIC WITH MARTIN COLYER

DOES MY HEAD LOOK BIG IN THIS A REVIEW

BEACH CARTOONS A THEMED SELECTION

MARK WINTER’S FAVOURITE ANIMATED SHORTS

200 DIFFERENT CARTOONS INSIDE!

PLUS: N MARK WINTER ON T.S SULLIVANT N EXCITING NEW TNC WEBSITE NEWS N MY NEW BOSS N PENS DOWN BOOK REVIEW N YOUR PROPHETICAL MILDRED HOROSCOPES

CONTENTS PAGE 4

HOPPO-POTAMUS

BEHIND THE THE CRITIC WITH MARTIN COLYER

PAGE 12

HEAD LINES CHRIS WILLIAMS PROFILE

PAGE 20

DOES MY HEAD LOOK BIG IN THIS A REVIEW

PAGE 24

A NEW TNC WEBSITE

PAGE 28

THE 3 S’S CONTIUED MARK WINTER ON T.S SULLIVANT

PAGE 40

BEACH CARTOON SPECIAL

PAGE 43

BEACH BY ROBERT BESLEY

PAGE 50

MY NEW BOSS

PAGE 54

PENS DOWN BOOK REVIEW

PAGE 58

MARK WINTERS FAVOURITE ANIMATED SHORTS

PAGE 64

THE CARTOON MUSEUM

PAGE 72

THE DIRECTORY

PAGE 79

HOROSCOPES & CAPTION COMP

PAGE 80

PARTING SHOT

WANNA BE IN IT? GET IN TOUCH WITH YOUR COMMENTS, SUGGESTIONS AND CARTOONS AND WE WILL DO OUR BEST TO PUBLISH THEM!

CLICK HERE 02

Based on a drawing for the amalgamate animals exhibition and workshop at Herne Bay Cartoon Festival

GET YOUR HOROSCOPES FROM PROPHETICAL MILDRED p79

MARK WINTERS FAVOURITE SHORTS p58

YOUR BEACH CARTOONS! p40

Editors Note I wanna be the leader.

I wanna be the leader.

Can I be the leader?

Can I? I can?

Promise? Promise?

Yippee I’m the leader.

I’m the leader OK what shall we do?

Roger McGough So here we are again! The UK has yet another Prime Minister. The herd moved, Starmer fell on his sword, and with one flicker of those eyelashes in walks a certain Andy Burnham!

As culls go ‘Starmergeddon’ was pretty brutal for the loyalists, and all those who had a hand in the demise of the MP for Holborn & St Pancras seemed to have done pretty well out of it thankyou very much!

As ever promises have been made and new eras forecast; not quite sunlit uplands but any idea to end rough sleeping is a positive step in my book. Good luck finding the money though, even if the decision to put John Healey in as Chancellor versus Miliband and Mahmood might make those decisions a bit easier.

As I write £3 a month off energy bills and £2 bus fares is a start I guess...maybe check back in about six months!

thenewcartoonist.co.uk

NUMBER TWELVE

THE WEBSITE

On to matters TNC, and the new site is live and working well! Same address-just updated with a nice new colour scheme and more to see and do!

Check it out here: https://www.thenewcartoonist.co.uk As I mentioned in the last edition, the idea behind the new lick of paint is try and migrate our readers away from ISSUU.com and on to a more TNC friendly home with access to old issues and features, and a new subscription model. There’s also a bit of merch to tell your friends about as well! ISSUU still works for now, but at some point in the next two months I will pull the plug.

Please get in touch with your thoughts or if you have any questions about the new website.

“I’m all ears” as King Charles might say.

So what’s in ANOTHER rather late Jul/Aug issue?

Well firstly we have the brilliant Chris ‘Dink’ Williams on the front cover; check out his interview inside and my ‘Zoom’ call with him.

A very lovely guy!

We have a great Q&A in ‘Behind the Scenes at the Critic’ with Martin Colyer.

We take a look at all the new talent on exhibition at The Cartoon Museum - ‘Does My Head Look Big In this?’ Mark Winter gives us another epic extended three S’s series, exploring the work of T.S Sullivant and also Mark’s favourite animated shorts.

We were inundated with some brilliant ‘Beach’ themed cartoons, and with this current weather I can see why! Dy is also back with a budding new cartoonist in “my New Boss’.

Prophetical Mildred looks to the stars with your horoscopes, the caption competition continues with a chance to win a TNC mug - and finally, there’s a tale of a ‘nosy neighbours’ during Covid in a brilliant ‘Parting Shot’.

Enjoy!

EMAIL PETE THE EDITOR

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BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE CRITIC

KEEPING IT ALL CIVILISED TNC CAUGHT UP WITH THE ART DIRECTOR AT THE CRITIC MAGAZINE, MARTIN COLYER PETE SONGI poking and probing In a world where print seems to be diminishing it’s refreshing to see The Critic still going from strength to strength.

Especially as that world increasingly finds itself without cartoons in print. The Critic is thankfully one of those magazines which still accepts the toon and the gag. It also has a great submissions process as well.

As many of you know, Martin Colyer is at the forefront of that process, and TNC grabbed a few moments to look behind the curtain.

I joke that I’ve worked in magazines from Hot Metal to PDF/X. I started out with a staff job as junior designer at Radio Times in the late 70s (having graduated from Chelsea School of Art in the summer of Punk) and was immediately thrown into commissioning illustrators and cartoonists. It was fun being surrounded by a crowd of young people excited by great visuals.

We were working week in, week out with talents like Peter Brookes, Gray Jolliffe, Ken Pyne, Martin Honeysett, Ian Dicks…

After about a year, David Driver (who had redesigned the RT very controversially a decade earlier) was leaving to be Head of Design at The Times, and he, recognising that I was a) very enthusiastic about design and illustration, and b) temperamentally a freelancer at heart, offered me the side gig he’d had to give up on joining The Times, of being Art Editor of The Listener.

I loved the magazine (it was a compendium of the best of the BBC’s output, with a side order of columnists, edited by Russell Twisk). When I took over, Peter Brookes did the cover each week, but after a couple of months Peter decided that he didn’t want to do it anymore (!) so I had to find a stable of illustrators that could deliver clever conceptual covers on a short deadline. It was a trial by fire, but I soon gathered wonderfully talented people— Paul Slater, Christopher Corr, Lynda Gray, Peter Till, Bill Sanderson…

I remember The Listener also for the opportunity to work with two great cartoonists…

Ray Lowry, who I considered a genius, and Steve Way, who helped me throughout my career

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MARTIN COLYER Art Director at The Critic

to get to know and understand the life of a cartoonist. Steve did the brilliant Cartoonist magazine in the 90s, of course. I then went to the Observer magazine for a couple of years, then the Sunday Times Magazine, the BBC World Service, before ending up at Reader’s Digest, which had a really good budget for cartoons, and where I hired Steve (who had been at Punch) to be Cartoon Editor.

I once wrote an article about cartoonists that bears repeating: “What other profession has within its job description such a huge element of rejection?

Even actors, famous in the rejection stakes, don’t have to actually write the plays they audition to perform in. Most people go to work to do a job. But what if the job is literally defined by what is in your own head?

Illustrators are generally commissioned – they may produce pieces on spec, or personal work as a shop front, but it’s a whole different ball game for the cartoonist. They must ‘churn’ ideas, work them up and send them out to a world where they will be placed in piles, summarily judged, occasionally accepted, mostly rejected and returned to sender…”.

The first edition of The Critic was November 2019. What was behind its conception? Are there any subjects off limits, and do all civilised opinions count?

I was working freelance, and wondering whether I’d ever design another magazine when I got a phone call from Bob Low, who was a colleague at the

Photo credi: Antonio Olmos

How did it all start for you at The Critic? Have you always worked in the media?

WITH MARTIN COLYER Observer, and then later at RD. He sold me on the idea that I’d have a budget for illustration and cartoons and the chance to really design something without a lot of interference The political side didn’t really interest me! It struck me, and does even more now, that it’s a singularly British publication, civilised and a broad church, with a great set of passionate writers. I don’t think much is off the table in terms of subject.).

With politics being so changeable right now, how do you manage to keep The Critic up to date as a monthly publication?

Well, I don’t set the editorial direction, but with picture choices, contemporary illustration and the currency of cartoons, I hope we reflect the time we’re working in. That’s an area where cartoonists are invaluable, always looking at ways to bring today’s news into a joke featuring two men on a desert island!

FUN TIMES! CCGB ‘Meet-ups’

There is also, of course, a podcast. Do you feel that that’s now an essential component in the modern media-scape?

TRUMP 1 EVERYONE ELS I guess. I mean, there are podcasts that E0 are intelligent and well made, but I have Cartoon by Martin Colyer a very low opinion of most podcasts — they strike me as poorly edited, The Critic publishes cartoons and weakly constructed, barely professional radio recently increased the amount for programmes..

published work from £125 to £175, which is great news! How many cartoons do you take each issue, and can they be gag-related?

Are there any ‘no-go’ topics?

As an Art Editor, what challenges are you experiencing in 2026 v 2019? Has AI or any new software affected how you work, and if yes, what for you are the most positive and negative aspects We take around 10-12 an issue, and there really aren’t any no-go areas, apart from the team of this?

getting bored of Trump gags — the cartoons (about 120 submissions a month) are circulated to the team to try to get a cross-section of opinion. The bottom line is that they’re funny, but sometimes I’ll pick something that may not be laugh-out-loud, maybe wry, that had a particular graphic feel that I like for the magazine.

Oh, you know, what I do is possible only because the technology exists, with Google Drive, fast broadband, endlessly updating software, instant downloads of Hi-res photographs, email, so nothing about the technology really worries me — AI is relatively limited

by Large Language Models (LLMs) — spell-checks become worse over the last year or so! — And it’s more about people hyping it to make money than anything else… I think.

But I’m confident that A PODCAST YOU SAY? AI will always struggle Catch The Critic Show here with jokes. at Outpost Studios

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What is the story behind the fox masthead on The Critic?

The Editor felt we needed some form of smart colophon and was keen

for it to be a fox! I was pleased, as I love a good colophon (such as the New Yorker’s Eustace Tilley).

I tried a very good illustrator whose style was loose, sketchy, and full of character, but quickly realised it needed a more graphic approach to work across the various roles we needed it for, so switched to the brilliant Jason Ford, whose style is informed by comic art and clean lines.

What’s next for Martin Colyer? And the Critic?

I’m not looking for anything else — I’m assuming this will be my last magazine job. I’m happy to continue as long as I’m wanted! And no one in their right mind would predict the future of any magazine!

Finally, TNC believes everyone was born to draw. Can you give us your best attempt at an opinion cartoon?

TNC is wrong, but I’ll give it a go.

ED: See Martin’s great take on the World Cup shenanigans above...

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