THE NEW CARTOONIST MAR/APR 2026

ISSN: 2977-6368

NUMBER 10 MAR/APR 2026 £2.50

READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH COVER STAR GLENN MARSHALL

thenewcartoonist.co.uk

BEHIND THE PCO WITH CLIVE GODDARD

THE SPLAT AWARDS WINNERS & LOSERS

BORN TO DRAW

CARTOONING ADRIAN CARTOONS TEAL A THEMED A CARTOONIST SELECTION PROFILE

180 DIFFERENT CARTOONS INSIDE!

PLUS:N MARK WINTER ON SILVERSTEIN N TNC MEETS A NEWBIE IN MY NEW BOSS N ACADEMY/BAFTA REVIEW NGETTING ANIMATED N PROPHETICAL MILDRED HOROSCOPES

CONTENTS PAGE 4

ART THEFT

BEHIND THE PCO WITH CLIVE GODDARD

PAGE 12

HEAD LINES GLENN MARSHALL PROFILE

PAGE 20

THE SPLAT AWARDS

PAGE 24

A CARTOONIST’S WHYNGE

PAGE 28

THE 3 S’S CONTIUED MARK WINTER ON SILVERSTEIN

PAGE 36

ADRIAN TEAL PROFILE

PAGE 40

CARTOONIST CARTOON SPECIAL

PAGE 50

MY NEW BOSS WITH RORIE VERSTEEG

PAGE 53

ANIMATE THAT!

PAGE 54

PENS DOWN BOOK REVIEW

PAGE 56

ANIMATION - BAFTA/OSCARS

PAGE 60

EDDIE SELZER PROFILE

PAGE 64

THE CARTOON MUSEUM

PAGE 70

THE DIRECTORY

PAGE 85

HOROSCOPES & CAPTION COMP

PAGE 86

PARTING SHOT

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

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GET YOUR HOROSCOPES FROM PROPHETICAL MILDRED p81

CARTOONISTS CARTOONS p40 !

CHECK OUT ALL THE TOONS

MEET ADRIAN TEAL

SPITTING IMAGERY

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Ed’s Welcome HELLO! Hope you are all well. Finally I’m able to present the arrival of a very late Mar/Apr issue...(apologies...life and all that).

I see Grandad has been at it again trying very hard first to start and then to end World War 3 in the Middle East. Nuclear weapons? Threats?

Regime Change? Oil & Gas? Or just ‘Not The Epstein Files.’ The reasons are plentiful for the great big orange man baby and his slippery sidekick Bibi to go and get their big weapons of mass distraction out. ‘Operation Epic Fury’ (or as I like to call it ‘Operation In Your Face’) is in full force, and woe betide anyone who dreams of not reporting it in its full spectacular glory.

Strange, strange times we live in.

THE MAG

On to matters TNC, and as I mentioned in the last edition, I’m trying to find new digital solutions and a new home for TNC; something that gets us away from those restrictive ISSUU tentacles.

I’ve had numerous back and forths with other platforms that offer a similar service, including a

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couple of meetings with PressReader in Canada (via Zoom of course!) and I’ve also had a look at maybe setting something up on Substack.

However I’m now looking at the website as a home instead, as you may have seen via some social media posts on Instagram . We are on our way! All the information on what is to come will be out there for everyone to see soon, and anyone who has subscribed since TNC began in 2024 will also be contacted directly, so no-one will miss seeing the updates. My very own ‘Operation In Your Face’ is just around the corner.

NUMBER TEN

So what’s in this rather late Mar/Apr issue?

Well firstly we have the fantastic ‘Digital Brand Awareness User Experience Multi-Platform Content Engineer and Global Visionary’ Glenn Marshall on the front cover.

We have a great Q&A in ‘Behind the Scenes at the PCO’ with its Chairman Clive Goddard.

We take a look at the recent fun and games at The SPLATS Awards, plus a quick gander at a classic

cartoonists’ WHYNGE in London.

Mark Winter gives us another epic extended three S’s series, exploring the work of Shel Silverstein, and there is a meet and greet with the amazingly talented Adrian Teal of ‘Spitting Image’ fame.

We have a great bunch of your ‘Cartoonists’ themed cartoons in and out of the centre-spread, and Dy meets up with budding cartoonist Rorie Versteeg in ‘My New Boss’.

There’s also a look at some of your animations, we have an animation profile of Eddie Selzer, and Dave Walker’s latest book gets a review in ‘Pens Down’. There’s a look back at what happened at the Baftas and the Oscars, and Prophetical Mildred returns with your horoscopes. The caption competition continues with a chance to win a TNC mug - and finally, there’s a tale of trickery and sleight of hand in a brilliant ‘Parting Shot’.

Enjoy!

EMAIL PETE THE EDITOR

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BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE PCO

REACHING ALL THE PROS

TNC CAUGHT UP WITH THE CHAIRMAN OF THE PROFESSIONAL CARTOONISTS ORGANISATION

Where do you find a collection of professional cartoonists when all the pubs have shut? Well The Professional Cartoonists Organisation of course! A very handy website.

The PCO promotes the work of its members and champions the cartooning arts across the board and around the world. They organise and support exhibitions and festivals and also stand up for, and have campaigned on behalf of oppressed artists.

Members can be found gracing the pages of national newspapers and many popular newsstand magazines including The Guardian, The Daily Mirror, The Metro, The Financial Times, The Independent, The New Zealand Herald, Private Eye, The Oldie, The Spectator, The New Yorker and many, many more.

TNC grabbed a moment with Chairman and all round good egg Clive Goddard to find out more about the PCO and its work.

You’re a brilliant cartoonist but how did you add the extra string to your bow and become the Chair of The PCO?

Thanks, Pete. The cheque’s in the post.

Initially I was asked onto the committee as secretary back in the days when Andy Davey was chair-leg and we would meet at the Custard Factory in Birmingham. Presumably video conferencing hadn’t been invented at that point. I didn’t stick at it for long though as it involved paying attention at meetings and taking minutes (I mean, who knew?)

It was 2018 when they asked me back to be chair after good old Bill Stott stepped down. He was an impossible act to follow so I haven’t.

It was also a two for one deal as they asked my wife Amy to come onboard as treasurer at the same time and we said OK because we liked the idea of being one of those power-couples who get referred to by a single compound name like Bennifer. Clammy was the nearest we got.

Amy was subsequently horrified to discover that being treasurer involved doing accounts and maths and stuff.

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Credit: Weston Library

PETE SONGI poking and probing

KEEPING IT FUNNY Clive drawing at Weston Library in Oxford

Obviously the great thing about being a member is the shiny badge but what are the other benefits for a cartoonist joining the PCO?

Shiny badges aside there’s also the coveted swag bag containing a PCO T shirt, tote bag, colouring book and a sock, worn and signed by Glenn Marshall.

The PCO website gives you a portfolio page among the great and good of British cartooning.

I’ve no idea how often members get work or commissions through the site but I know it happens. Finding ways to lure more customers and clients to the site without spending a fortune is my current brain-worm.

There’s also our members’ forum where you can talk shop with like-minded cartoonists’, argue the toss with nonlike-minded cartoonists, and meet eligible singles in your area.

Membership also means invitations to take part in cartoon exhibitions and festivals (though we’re currently down to just the Herne Bay festival having lost Shrewsbury) and the opportunity to take part in the annual cartoon awards (The Splats). Plus, our You Tube Channel (PCO TV), our Facebook page, Insta page and BlueSky page and there’s an informative newsletter with very few formatting errors. All

this and associate membership of the AOI for just seventy quid a year (or eighty if you’re one of those tech-phobes can’t be bothered to set up a standing order.

Does the PCO take only professional cartoonists or has the criteria changed with the influx of social media with millions of publishers?

The criteria for membership has changed over the last twenty years to be less strict on what counts as professional. If we only accepted cartoonists who earned their living from their art we’d be a very small organisation. For example, I still can’t afford to give up my paper round.

The wording changed to ‘earning a significant part of your income through cartooning’ and applications require a majority vote from the committee to be allowed into the hallowed halls of the PCO where the good biscuits are.

Most applicants still come from the world of print media though.

Have you seen a spike in AI generated cartoons arriving in the PCO inbox?

How do you protect against that?

Do you think AI is real threat?

I think it is a genuine threat to our livelihoods. It’s one thing for Facebook users to post Disneyfied

WITH CLIVE GODDARD Gen AI caricatures of their cat but these people were never going to hire a real artist anyway, The problem is that some tight fisted companies, who had previously commissioned paid work are doing it too. Stories of being replaced by crappy machine content are trickling in. Personally, I’d like to see a levy placed on Gen AI companies with compensatory money being distributed to artists through DACs or something similar.

evening, speaking with DACS and to AOI about the AI problem and hopefully getting more eyeballs on our web portfolios. Plus, of course, something to celebrate our birthday.

Credit: kasia Kowalska

The PCO has just had it’s 2nd SPLATS Awards, an amazing night (see p20).

What was behind the decision to create a new awards format?

We spent a few years being a very junior partner in the Ellwood Atfield / Tim Benson Political Cartoon Awards and the general feeling was that we could do something better ourselves with more cartoonists involved, more award categories and fewer thrusting young business types in suits, who we didn’t know, hanging around drinking all the free Heineken. The calibre of politicians who were invited as guests of honour deteriorated too.

The shambolic 2023 awards were the last ones we took part in. There was a cringe-inducing speech by freshly sacked Suella Braverman while no one thought to tell Lord Kulveer Ranger that the award he was presenting was dedicated to the memory of the late Tony Husband - and that Tony wasn’t there to accept it.

I spoke with numerous cartoonists that evening who felt, annoyed, ignored and belittled by the event and took the idea of doing our own thing to the committee. It wasn’t a unanimous decision but I’m very glad we did.

It’s a big year for the PCO - A 20th anniversary no less. What plans do you have to commemorate it all?

None at present but we really should do something. All ideas welcome.

What does the PCO have planned for the rest of 2026? Any more exhibitions or news you’d like to share? I hear Herne Bay will be back again?

Yes another Herne Bay Festival will be happening in August. It’s great - everyone should go there.

Carol (The Surreal McCoy) is working on an ‘exhibition in a box’ kit which will enable us to put on exhibitions in places other than London (I looked it up on Google Maps and apparently there are quite a few places in the UK which aren’t London.) We’re planning a long overdue Noel Ford Retrospective exhibition. In early March we’re going to the House of Commons (in London, I’m told) to support the WDC in a campaign against animal exploitation at tourist spots. We’ll be making a few tweaks to the submission rules for the next awards

thenewcartoonist.co.uk

HERNE BAY 2025 Clive getting messy

And what’s next for Clive Goddard?

Quite busy lately drawing the cover art for Mystery Guides (they’re great fun), a few pics for business and industry and plugging away as ever with the remaining mags and papers. I’m also trying to get more speaking gigs talking about cartooning while showing a slightly amusing slideshow. If you know who might enjoy an informative but funtastic talk please let me know. Currently waiting to hear whether the WI will have me and drawing a lot of cartoons about jam and Jerusalem. Also looking forward to a few more cruise ship gigs giving cartooning workshops to the unsuspecting passengers in-between bouts of eating and drinking too much

Finally TNC believes everyone was born to Draw. We know you are a dab hand, can you gives us one of your favourites?

A few to grace the TNC pages...

Membership enquiries e: pcomembership@gmail.com THE PCO 05

NEWS & POLITICS

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NEWS & POLITICS

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NEWS & POLITICS

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HEAD LINES

A PORTRAIT OF GLENN MARSHALL

MARSHALL NOSE BEST TNC CAUGHT UP WITH THE CARTOONING ENIGMA THAT IS MARSHALL ‘NOT’ FUNNY A self-styled ‘Inkfluencer’, a cracking animator, nose expert and of course a regular in the pages of this magazine. It’s TNC’s absolute pleasure to grab a few words with the legend that is Glenn Marshall!

You can find Glenn popping up in all manner of places, but officially on socials he is here on Bluesky and on Instagram.

Glenn was born in Shropshire and studied at the Shrewsbury and Newport Schools of Art. He remains incognito.

Where did it all begin for you? Were you drawing from a young age? Did you know what you wanted to be from the outset?

Firstly thanks for inviting me to do this.

When you first posited the idea of this interview at one of your Duke of Greenwich boozy exhibition openings I said ‘Are you mad?!’ and rapidly declined. Then weeks later I thought about it and decided that after all the successful, brilliant ‘Head Liners’ you’ve had in the previous issues you should feature someone who has at brought out a graphic best been mediocre. A warts-and-all peek into novel. And this is….eh…. the life of a cartoonist. It’s not all glamour, glitz Glenn.” and well-drawn noses.

When one of the cartoonist greats died a few I do call myself a cartoonist but I could years ago a friend said “You know that phrase equally call myself an orthopaedic surgeon or ‘He was a cartoonist’s cartoonist?’ Well you’re a ballerina, it doesn’t mean I am one. On my the opposite.” It wasn’t meant as an insult - I LinkedIn profile I fashion myself as a ‘Digital don’t think! - although I do accept the phrase Brand Awareness User Experience Multi‘cartoonist’s cartoonist’ won’t be used for me platform Content Imagineer & Global Visionary’ when I shuffle off this mortal coil (my obit’s more - which does mean I’ve got a heck of a likely to be something like ‘I told him it was long business card (and having a bad idea to try sharpening a pencil had some experience of with an angle grinder’) working in the US I know If this all sounds like this wouldn’t be an self-flagellation it really overlong or overblown isn’t, sometimes I draw job title there.) something and think I realised where my ‘Wow, I’m a genius!’ standing was in the then I’ll go away, make cartooning universe a coffee, come back a couple of years ago and think it’s the worst when I was mingling at drawing ever done by an event and a few of us mankind. Then I get stuck were being introduced to in a loop flip-flopping a cartoonist from overseas. between the two views.

“This is so and so, who’s a Anyway what was the question CHASING VOTES Election rehearsal with national newspaper political again? Where did it all begin….?

Jonathan Dimbleby cartoonist. This is so and so, the Yes, I loved drawing as a youth. daily pocket cartoonist for an My parents gave me long rolls of esteemed organ. This is so and so, who’s just wallpaper lining on which I drew huge, scrolling

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IN CONVERSATION Marshall & Ken Clarke

panoramas, some of which I still have. I did consider offering them to the French nation as part of a cultural exchange for loaning The Bayeux Tapestry to the British Museum.

I found some old school reports a few years ago and one comment from a teacher was ‘rather than work he spends too much time acting the amiable buffoon’. Acting the amiable buffoon could easily describe what I’ve done as my career so yah boo sucks Mr Hartley!.

Which artists or animators inspired you?

At art college I was fixated by the visceral work of the German Expressionists during the Weimar era - George Grosz, Otto Dix and Max Beckman, particularly their black & white drawings which were great but admittedly not very funny. I wasn’t influenced by cartoonists, I wasn’t even aware of cartoonists even though my college work was quite playful.

I really bloomed at art school. It was a small college in Newport, South Wales which centred on traditional skills - we did hand animation, set metal type and drew and drew and drew. I always joke it took me three years to learn how to draw and then another thirty years to learn how to undraw.

Away from those strictures we could do pretty much what we wanted - I specialised in animation and typography. One year I bought

ANGRY MEN WITH AN ANGRY PEN!

FIRST EVER PUBLISHED CARTOON. PUNCH

GOING THE EXTRA MILE! The green screen studio shoot from the making of the cover animation

two matching second-hand novels and for the whole term meticulously cut every letter E from each page (hence the need for two identical copies) and then glued them in the order they appeared on a large sheet of paper…man I loved a double E! When the college publicity course tried to get us to adapt to the new cutting-edge technology that was LETRASET I went out and bought lots of Batman dry action transfers and made big compositions using those instead.

You got your big break/started your career path working at Breakfast TV. We’ve heard you had a close relationship with Roland Rat. How did that come about? Where else did it lead?

The downside of the wonderful freeform college years was that when we graduated we were virtually unemployable.

I spent two years as an illustrator (mostly humour) making the majority of my money from rejection fees as I ignored briefs thinking I’ll just go with my own interpretation. They were tough years. Not only did I need to use the blank paper on the reverse sides of my old college work to draw on but I remember going into supermarkets and deliberately denting cans to try and get 10p knocked off at the till.

My big break came after one of

thenewcartoonist.co.uk

my flatmates, who was an Ergonomist, invited me to test a brand new digital painting system which meant that when TV stations started to go digital I already had experience with computer etch-asketches.

I ended up at pre-launch TV-am where yes, rodent drawing did feature, but also doing cartoons for stories on the show (I was covering items like ‘How To Get Dog Sick Out Of Your Carpet with Pat Phoenix’) The thing I loved was how fast we worked after the glacial speed of publishing. I’d draw a cartoon, it was immediately put to air (nine times out of ten without anyone checking it) then erased. It was really liberating.

After half the workforce (including

PRIVATE EYE

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HEAD LINES Roland) got sacked by the company (long story) I mostly freelanced in Soho post-production houses as a ‘matte monkey’ a lot of the time correcting badly shot films in advertising. It was during this period I also started getting cartoons published - initially in Punch.

As we’ve seen in TNC with your great ‘Technical Reviews’ you tend to swim in ink and nibs with your work. Has that always been your preference? Do you think it’s important to get your hands dirty? Or would you prefer to be a smug Procreate user with clean nails?

Ah yes, I love the smell of pigment in the morning. What’s funny is in my parallel TV career as a Designer and Creative Director I used high-end technology, including state of the art graphics, editing and animation systems. I also advised TV companies in the UK and abroad on what equipment they needed to use.

A broadcast career high was when I won the contract to do the global on-air rebrand for AP (Associated Press) pitching against three agencies in Europe and three in the US. To a large extent this success was due to my technical knowledge for implementing the design on different systems in different territories. To execute the huge amount of multi-format deliverables I teamed up with my talented former colleagues, Jump Design & Direction who I went on to work with on several branding projects (amongst many other things, Jump did all the hilarious ‘Day To Day’ & ‘Brass Eye’ graphics).

My other career highlight was typing and playing out the hymn text on ‘Songs of Praise’.

Throughout my television career I was doing cartoons for Punch, Private Eye and the plethora of Viz comic clones popular during the time (who could forget my strip ‘Vincent Venables & His Hallucinogenic Chemicals’ …OK, most people) I was also drawing weekly cartoons for several broadcast media publications, all in pen and ink. The contrast of sitting down with a scratchy pen away from computers was very therapeutic, in the way someone might go swimming outdoors for relaxation away from work…or ‘wild swimming’ as people call it now. I think I was

THE FIGHTING DEMERARA AFTER TURNER

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‘OUR GLORIOUS LEADERS’ Previous PMs in Downing Street 3D

probably ‘wild cartooning’.

Away from the world of cartoons I had become ITN’s Creative Director working on rebrands and specialising in election programmes but there was some cartooning crossover; in 2005 I worked with Gerald Scarfe making his drawings of the political party leaders animate live in a virtual environment. Not only did his caricatures interact with the presenters, they also changed expressions when triggered by the live result data coming in during the night. It was the first time virtual reality graphics had been used this way. (As an aside, it had been really embarrassing having to go to Gerald’s house with my scrawled sketches of how his artwork needed to be laid out and constructed in order for this to work.)

We also had Gerald in the studio on the night of the election to do live drawing which was amazing. I was his stunt double during rehearsal as well as when he needed to take a break during transmission.

The following election in 2010 I did similar work using the company Darkside Animation creating Spitting Image-esque models of the main political protagonists as well as five previous Prime Ministers. Again all the animations were prompted by the live incoming results (and good grief, bland looking Nick Clegg was hard to caricature).

You also have a gift for creating fun and engaging animations, 2D or 1.5D as you call it. How do you go about creating those?

Where do your ideas come from?

I guess it all starts with the nose right?

Ah yes, the noses, they’ve been the bane of my cartoon career. I’ve been asked to change them countless times and had work turned down because of them, but we’ve been together for so many years now we’re sticking with each other….if only for the sake of the children.

As for where do my cartoon ideas come from,…sadly they don’t any more! About five

years ago I somehow lost my gag cartoon mojo.

I’d go through my usual ritual of brewing a large pot of coffee in the morning and sitting with a blank sketch pad but I found I was just coming up with really lame, clichéd ideas like taking a modern thing and putting it in a historical context.

Some cartoonists are fantastic at these juxtapositions but mine just seemed obvious and laboured.

I really didn’t like the weekly satirical Radio 4 shows where all the punchlines were so telegraphed and formulaic with things like rules of three and comparisons when you’re defining one thing, then - surprise, surprise - you’re actually talking about the other (having said that I do love The News Quiz).

On top of that, I was failing to avoid very obvious ideas like ‘Andrew formerly known as Prince’ which I’ve heard regurgitated on TV and radio so many times as if no-one had said the line before (recently on the radio I heard someone accidentally say ‘The Prince formerly known as Andrew’ which I thought was much funnier).

I’d find I’d spent an hour and a half staring into blank space trying to think of something funny and then look down at my pad to just see a doodle of a monkey playing bongos. So I HOW TO DRAW THE MARSHALL NOSE

A PORTRAIT OF GLENN MARSHALL stopped attempting to do gag cartoons which I do miss but is also kind of a relief.

My success hit rate was pretty low anyway many cartoonists think one cartoon accepted in a batch of ten submitted is an average return, but I was getting about one in a thousand… eventually Private Eye contacted me and said ‘Can you PLEASE stop submitting a thousand cartoons a fortnight!’

(I do think many magazines, Private Eye in particular, are prejudiced against unfunny and badly drawn cartoons and need to be more inclusive in this day and age. There should be a quota per issue! We demand to be seen!).

You are an active member of the PCO and have been involved in organising various exhibitions. Could you tell us a bit more about this?

I became involved with the PCO when I heard an interview on the radio about the forthcoming Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival (RIP) which was near where I grew up and indeed where I did my art foundation course. It was one of the first times I had any contact with other cartoonists*. I was a cartoonist waif and stray and they kindly took me in.

The thing I’ve felt most worthwhile about my involvement is being part of the campaigning they do. The Surreal McCoy and I came up with the viral ‘Eaten Fish’ campaign for an Iranian cartoonist held in an Australian internment camp on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. We invited cartoonists from around the globe to ‘Draw a fish for Eaten Fish’ (his nom de plume - he couldn’t use his real name because of fears for his family’s safety back in Iran) and I collected all these cartoon fish to make a huge digital shoal which we then turned into a large canvas banner to use at a protest outside the Australian embassy.

He was eventually released and now lives in Norway where he continues to be a cartoonist.

We’ve also done shows collaborating with Cartoonists Rights Network International about other cartoonists persecuted around the world.

Other similar PCO projects have included teaming with the Three Fingers campaign against the vicious military coup in Myanmar, and raising awareness in Parliament with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation organisation (WDC) on the cruelty of Orca and Dolphin captivity. The PCO also recently made the successful ‘Great British Colouring Book’ as a reaction to Robert Jenrick’s shameful ordering to whitewash-over cartoon wall paintings in a detention centre for migrant children. He said the murals were ‘too welcoming’.

It’s a great committee team to work with (deserved name checks: Banx, Birch, Boyce,

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FOUNDTRACKS ILLUSTRATION

BY MILES COLE THE GREATEST LOOK Trump visits the PCO ‘Not The National Portrait Gallery’ Exhibition

HERNE BAY CARTOON FESTIVAL Punch & Judy vs The Zombies PCO CAMPAIGNS With Mike Stokoe & Sarah Boyce outside The House of Commons

DRESSED TO IMPRESS My gorgeous dear old Mother

Drew, Goddards A & C and S McCoy) and also helped out by the members who always send work for our exhibitions, support our causes and come to our events to help out with the drinking. *My actual first encounter with other cartoonists was when I contributed to a fundraising charity book during those two lean years fresh out of college. At the book launch I was excitedly expecting to meet this hilarious group of upbeat cartoonists but they were a miserable bunch moaning about the world and the cartoonist’s lot. Years later I now find myself

one of those people. When cartoonists get together for a ‘Whinge’ in a pub (a ‘whinge’ is the collective noun dreamt up by one of our kind for a gathering of cartoonists) it’s all waah, waah, waah…the state of cartooning…waah, waah, waah…Donald Trump…waah waah waah….A.I….waah waah waah…the Gillott 303 nib….waah, waah, waah (that last one might just be me...)

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HEAD LINES

‘THIS NEVER WORKED’

Well I’m not sure if I embrace rejection or rejection embraces me. My first solo exhibition was generously put on at One New Street Gallery, Herne Bay, by the owners Helen & Terry who have become champions of my ‘oeuvre’.

The show was called ‘Glenn Marshall - Not Funny’ (the words Not Funny were written on a note in a returned batch of my earliest submitted cartoons and it’s a phrase I’ve tried to reclaim). The exhibition was full of my rejections and failed projects including cartoons and their comical rejection slips (and yes several did mention the noses!).

I have a few favourite cartoons that just will not sell even though they make me laugh like POSTER FOR THE FIRST a drain. I once did a talk about rejection at the ONE NEW STREET GALLERY SOLO EXHIBITION London Reference Library with Banx and The Surreal McCoy where I focused on one of my cartoons that no matter what I do has always been rejected. I’ve tried drawing it in different styles, digitally, animating it, with different tagline variations, with different animals, hiding You’ve also organised a pop-up exhibition at the noses, in strip form, even at a huge 4ft x 3ft the Houses of Parliament to raise awareness size but no joy. around animal cruelty. How did you make that Another cartoon that I often ranted about happen? no-one using finally got published by Prospect Yes, we’ve worked with WDC (Whale & Dolphin magazine, which, if truth be told, was a doubleConservation) before on various events edged sword as I relished getting outraged including the aforementioned pop-up exhibition about its failure. in the House of Commons building. We were I like the quote “Success consists of recently back in the parliament building going from failure to failure without loss of presenting a similar campaign to MPs about the enthusiasm” (which is often attributed to either widespread cruel treatment of animals in tourist Churchill or Lincoln but there is no evidence destinations. either said it. So whoever came up with it failed to get the credit they deserved which seems You can also be found in different guises at rather fitting). the annual Cartoon Festival in Herne Bay. How did that come about, and do you make all of your own outfits?

My lovely mother and I shared a similar sense of humour; she was a piano teacher but also performed in a musical comedy double act putting on shows involving lots of dressing up so I suppose I inherited it from her…although she was MUCH more of a natural at it.

HEADLESS PORTRAIT On top of that at cartoon festivals I always feel a bit of a fraud (inkposter syndrome?) with the incredible talent around me doing huge, brilliantly rendered, very funny cartoons. So going that extra inch by dressing up and performing is a bit of a cover up for my insecurities….paging Doctor Freud!

Footnote 1 (I wanted to be the first TNC interview with footnotes).

Your cartoon work has graced the pages of TNC, Private Eye, The Spectator, The Oldie & Punch as well as your strips appearing in TV Week and Broadcast. But you also embrace rejection and publish many great works on social media.

What advice do you have for anyone starting out in these AI obsessed uncertain times?

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The quote could be my mantra as failure has followed me even away from cartoons. In 2004 a group of friends and I tried to form a TV station, called TVOD. We’d been going to short

film festivals and thought a lot of the content deserved to be seen by a wider audience but short films with their varying lengths didn’t fit into the regimented TV schedules with their set programme durations.

We actually got surprisingly far. A marketing agency let us use their office space, we were a registered company, we built all the branding and even got an OFCOM licence…no easy feat.

We were in talks with a music industry mogul to secure backing, then guess what happened?

YouTube happened. Suddenly there was an easy outlet for multi-length content and TVOD bit the dust.

In a similar vein three of us formed a music sourcing company - Foundtracks - where people making films and TV programmes would come to us for recommendations of the sort of music they wanted for their projects. We did a few documentaries and then what happened?

Spotify happened. And suddenly it was easy for anyone to use Spotify’s algorithms to make a wide range of suggestions of similar tracks. So Foundtracks bit the dust.

Anyway, I digress….what was next…social media.

Social media has actually worked out quite well for me. Nowadays, most of the time, if I earn anything it’s for artwork I’ve posted that someone wants to buy or for sales of things in exhibitions.

As an example last summer I had an artwork in an exhibition at One New Street Gallery where the drawing extended beyond the frame and onto the plaster wall. Someone wanted to buy it and I jokingly said they’d have to buy the wall and they recently did! (The plaster had to be cut away around the drawing…I am the Poundland Banksy).

Even with all this, sales are pretty minimal.

I’m more a no-jobbing cartoonist than a jobbing cartoonist. Watch out for ‘Marshall Unlucky Bags’ for sale online soon and for an announcement of my global lampshade franchise (sales so far: 1).

The use of AI is a big debate in the cartoon world, as it is in other professions. A particular hot topic recently is people, uninvited, animating your artwork. The Independent’s Dave Brown & The Metro’s Guy Venables were recent victims of this. When you first see the results you think wow, how tricksy, but the effects are too smooth and pretty soulless and that’s before we even

GLENN MARSHALL

QUICK FIRE!

consider breach of copyright.

I quite like the crudity and DIY glitchyness of my sub-Captain Pugwash animations. AI would make them too polished and tidied up. Just as a test I did ask ChatGPT to come up with a Glenn Marshall animated cartoon and it replied “Who the fuck is Glenn Marshall?”

As far as giving advice is concerned avoid sharpening pencils with an angle-grinder!

FAVOURITE FILM?

Kodak Tri-X 400 35mm Lovely and grainy

Finally - what’s next for Glenn Marshall?

The inexorable spiral towards death.

FIRST CAR?

Footnotes 1. In his 1905 book ‘Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten’ (Jokes & Their Relationship To The Unconscious) Freud talks about generating laughter by expressing previously repressed inhibition.

DAF Variomatic. Known as the rubber band car.

It could go exactly the same speed backwards as forwards and both were slow.

EARLIEST MEMORY?

I can’t even remember my latest memory half the time let alone the earliest. If I don’t write an idea in a notebook within 30 seconds of having it, it’s lost in the ether forever.

GLENN MARSHALL

YOUR CHANCE TO WIN AN ORIGINAL DRAWING OF THE COVER!

MOST LOVED FOOD?

The Sailor Fountain Pen with 55 degree nib look you’ve got to put the hard miles into understanding some of my attempts at humour.

This will only make sense if you’ve read my fountain pen review in a previous TNC issue (No Ed. don’t put a link to it here, links are for the lazy)

MAN CITY TROPHY WIN OR CHARGES DROPPED?

A Pep contract extension pretty please.

PIECE OF EQUIPMENT YOU CAN’T DO WITHOUT WHEN CARTOONING? A corkscrew!

NESCAFE GOLD BLEND OR LAVAZZA?

Lavazza Qualita Rosso snorted like snuff.

BATMAN FAN OR RAT FAN?

Simply email: editor@thenewcartoonist.co.uk subject: Marshall Not Funny cover competition

DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES MAY 5TH 2026 Congratulations to DEREK SCOTT who was picked out of the hat from the last issue and gets a

David Ziggy Greene signed cover print thenewcartoonist.co.uk

ENTER HERE NOW

I actually preferred the Batman villains.

When I was a boy they’d show part one of a Batman story on a Saturday with him and the Boy Wonder left in some torturous peril at the climax, often involving a lot of rope and a circular saw.

Then on Sunday’s part two the Dynamic Duo would escape and eventually thwart The Joker, The Riddler, Catwoman or The Penguin. I used to just watch the Saturday episode and leave it at that. Probably explains my love of any world cinema films with an oblique ending.

WHAT SUPER POWER WOULD YOU HAVE?

Whimsy, I’ve always wanted to be able to do whimsy.

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GAGGING FOR THE WIN! PETE SONGI chasing the gold...again

The 30th January 2026 in the Financial Times’ Bracken House saw the great and good of British cartooning gathered together for the second PCO Awards (Splats).

As ever with these sort of events it’s all about the ‘catch up’ rather than actually taking home the perspex - and there were plenty of cartoonists to do that with; a very good turn out.

VENUE

Those hitting the bright lights of London early enjoyed the luxuriously interesting surroundings of the nearest local pub to the FT, The Seahorse.

A pub which may have had better days, but still worked to be original, it served a rather curious and very red Strawberry Cider. Those lucky enough to try it out included Mark & Frankie Winter, Dean Partterson, Ben Jennings and yours truly.

The main rabble as we discovered had arrived early at FT Towers and were already on the free Heinekens and Pizza, which was very nice indeed and demonstrated a stark difference to the Political Cartoon Awards back in December 2025. The Splats are now the premier event!

The venue was ideal. Underplayed enough to not out-shine the colourful attendees, but professional enough to scupper the PCO’s best attempts at making the proceedings anything like the Oscars. As ever Clive Goddard was master of ceremonies and did a brilliant job of keeping everything ticking along. You can see all of the lucky winners opposite.

AFTERS

So with all the winners suitably perspexed up, the hardened cartoonists polished off what was left of the free stuff and headed off to the Williamson’s Tavern for the aftershow!

A beautiful little pub tucked in behind Bow Lane (though in the dark and with free drinks

THAT WENT WELL!

still swilling not the easiest place to find) it served as a very good landing space for a good chat and whynge, which as I mentioned earlier is what it’s all about.

I can’t tell you if the pub or the bar staff knew their numbers were going to double after 9pm but I didn’t see anyone complaining. The hardiest of souls went beyond closing and hit the Wren Tavern for the Extra Aftershow.

Another great pub with a very late license it would appear. I admit to being one of that late party, but we still managed to grab the last train out of Cannon Street!

What follows now is a photo grab of the night largely thanks to the brilliant Mark Winter who hid his disappointment of two 3rds and a 2nd place away to take some wonderful pictures of the proceedings, and who really captured the vibe of the night. ...A ‘HAPPY’ PLACE Well done Mark!

THE SEAHORSES IN THE APOCALY PSE! Dean Patterson, Ben Jennings, Pete Songi & Mark Winter...

CLIVE’S GLOBAL PEAS AWARD

YE OLDE THIRSTY CARTOONISTS! ng...

The rabble gather in a coporate setti

20 22

WINNERS BEST CARICATURE: Kevin Wells (Squiggle King)

The New Cartoonist 2ND Graeme Bandeira, The Northern Agenda 3RD Ben Jennings, The Guardian

BEST CURRENT AFFAIRS CARTOO N: Grizelda Spectator 2ND Chris Williams (Dink), Private Eye 3RD Royston Robertson, Private Eye

BILL STOTT AWARD FOR BEST GAG CARTOON: Grizelda Spectator 2ND Royston Robertson, Spectator 3RD Mark Winter (Chicane), The New Cartoo

nist

BEST EDITORIAL CARTOON: Graeme Bandeira

The Northern Agenda 2ND Guy Venables, The Metro 3RD Mark Winter (Chicane), The New Cartoonist

BEST BEST CARTOON HAIRDO AW ARD: Chichi Parish LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: Roger Penwill BEST REJECT CARTOON: James Mellor ND 2 Mark Winter (Chicane) 3RD Grizelda

BEST CARTOON SERIES: Lawrence Goldsmith & Sean Garne tt (Andy Capp) The Mirror 2ND Grizelda, Private Eye RD 3 Guy Venables, The Metro

CARTOONIST OF THE YEAR: Wilbur thenewcartoonist.co.uk

Pic Credit: The PCO

OUTSTANDING PROJECT: Ella Baron ‘Battles of the Mind

WINTER’S TALE A PHOTOGRAPHIC MONTAGE...

WELL QUENCHED! AM I A CARTOONIST? ng Dean Patterson in full swi

HAIR RAISING! Glenn Marshall

TOON TALES! Chris Williams, Ben Chilton and Jess Judge share the gag

Pic s Credit: Mark Winter

REJECT WINNER James Mellor

PLASTIC FANTASTIC! Perspex awaiting homes

ALL YOURS! Martin Rowson presents Ella Baron’s win

A CUT ABOVE THE REST! The Brilliant work of Chris Burke

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ROGER PENWILL! With ‘The not dead yet’ win

BIRTHDAY WIN! Frankie Winter takes the 40th

TAKING THE PIZZA! Rebecca Hendin & Ella Baron

BEST DRESSED! Banx the unoffiical winner

WELL STRIPPED! Lawrence Goldsmith & Sean Garnett take the win

WILBURWINNER!

SQUIGGLE KING! Kevin Wells takes the win for his work in TNC

STARE DOWN! Dean Patterson, Steve Bell & Ben jennings

DISHING IT OUT! Royston Robertson

GIVING IT LARGE! Guy Venables

thenewcartoonist.co.uk

WHO DREW IT BETTER?

Pic s Credit: Mark Winter

THE AFTER SHOW! A rabble descend on The Williamson’s Tavern

THANKFULLY THERE IS NO PHOTOGRAPHIC A BUNCH OF GRAUN! FOOTAGE OF Martin Rowson, Pete Songi, WHAT WENT Rebecca Hendin, Ella Baron DOWN AT THE WREN TAVERN! & Ben Jennings

PENS OUT!

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A FEBRUARY CARTOONISTS CATCH-UP!

Pic s Credit: Mark Winter

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THE THREE S’s (EXTENDED) A CARTOON ICON SERIES

THE GOLDEN SILVERSTEIN

DISCOVERING THE MAN WITH MANY STRINGS TO HIS BOW MARK WINTER reflecting

“The phrase ‘Renaissance man’ tends to get overused these days, but apply it to Shel Silverstein and it practically begins to seem inadequate.” Otto Penzler. ‘The Mysterious Press’ founder.

Cartoonist, mega-selling author, awardwinning singer-songwriter, composer, poet, actor, playwright, musician, performer, journalist, illustrator, and war veteran, Sheldon Allan ‘Shel’ Silverstein first appeared, in person on September 25, 1930, in Humboldt Park, a densely populated neighbourhood on Chicago’s northwest side, and grew up in Albany Park, a few miles further north, closer to the river, in a predominately Jewish, European immigrant residential area. It was during the time of the Great Depression. The city was a hub for organised and disorganised crime, when prohibition-era gangsters, like one Alphonse Gabriel Capone ruled and bootlegging, speakeasies (illicit secret bars), gang warfare, corruption, violence and beer wars were all part of everyday life’s rich tapestries. Although Shel’s hood saw less mobster action than others, day. But, Shel hated the work and his father’s it was not immune to the influence of the aspirations. He just wanted to doodle, read, era’s criminal, social and economic pressures. listen to country music watch his beloved White Chicago was a “city as tough and as funny as Sox and play the ukulele. The family, which Shel would turn out to be,” quipped novelist and included his younger sister Peggy, lived mostly poet, Brendan Da Costa. on leftover scraps from the bakery. For a treat his Shel’s father, Nathan mother would make him junket. was a Russian-Jewish Shel loved junket. He would later immigrant. His mother, say, “My whole life I have never Helen was a born and really had enough junket.”

BIOGRAPHY 2007 breed Chicagoan from Drawing was an escape, Hungarian-Jewish a refuge from his father’s heritage. Nathan and his disapproval, a way of blocking brother Jack struggled to out the noisy neighbours and run a bakery, scraping his parents arguments, mostly together a living, initially over Shel’s lack ambition. Helen known as “Silverstein was more sympathetic to Shel’s Brothers,’ later the creative cravings, accepting his ‘Serve Cake Company.’ It need to earn his dough as an survived and thrived in artist, not a baker. His father the wake of the global would say he “didn’t puke his guts economic downturn. out in steerage to make it over His father forced Shel here and then serve for a year in to work in the family the war only to have his son throw business, hoping he his life away by drawing cartoons would take it over one and daydreaming”.

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THE BEGINNING

His formative years were defined by feelings of inadequacy, insecurity and conflict. He struggled with a short attention span and described himself as a “distracted student.”

Reports from Roosevelt High School said he was “combative and uncooperative.”

He distinguished himself for being something of a loner “who marched to the beat of his own drum.” He would later attribute his success to failure at baseball and with girls.

“When I was a kid, 12-14, I would much rather have been a good baseball player or a hit with the girls, but I couldn’t play ball. I couldn’t dance. Luckily, the girls didn’t want me. Not much I could do about that,” he recalled, in Lisa Rogak’s 2007 biography ‘A Boy Named Shel: The Life and Times of Shel Silverstein,’ “So I started to draw and to write. I developed my own style. I was creating before I knew there was a Thurber, a Benchley, a Price and a Steinberg. I never saw their work till I was around 30. By the time I got to where I was attracting girls, I was already into work, and it was more important to me. Not that I wouldn’t rather make love, but the work had become a

TOON FROM THE ROOSEVELT TORCH

habit.”

No need to spend much time on his early academic endeavours, because Shel didn’t.

His brief stint at the University of Illinois was followed by an even briefer one at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, which did boast a number of well-known cartoonists among its notable alumni, including Bill Mauldin and Gahan Wilson. Even Walt Disney attended evening classes.

‘I didn’t get laid much. I didn’t learn much.

These are the two worst things that can happen to a guy,” Shel claimed.

However, after that, at Roosevelt College, studying English and performing arts between 1950 and 1953, Shel “found his calling.” He drew and wrote for ‘The Roosevelt Torch,’ the school paper, including a regular satirical column called “The Garbage Man.’ Paul Krassner’s interview with him in the August 1961 issue of ‘The Realist’ entitled,‘Shel Silverstein On Trying to Make it in New York City, recalled his first visit to the Big Apple.

“I was nineteen years old and I was

boy

HIPPIE ARTICLES. JUL_AUG 1968 Play

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TAKE TEN TOON

NOW HERE’S MY PLAN 1960

a real hot-shot cartoonist, doing fifty gags a day.

So I decided I was going to New York and try to break the markets. I had a couple of hundred cartoons. I’ld been mailing stuff and hadn’t sold anything in about a year, so I figured I’ld do it in person. I got on a Greyhound busfortunately, I got a two-way ticket. I went to ‘Colliers,’ and Gurney Williams was the cartoon editor there-he’s now with ‘Look’- and he was like a legend among young cartoonists. I really, physically pushed my way by to see him. And he said okay-I guess he was scared-and he told me to come back after he had lunch. He looked through a hundred cartoons, the greatest ones ever drawn-at nineteen, I was doing only great cartoons-and he bought none. So I went back to Chicago. I got on the bus and there was a girl sitting next to me and so I thought, well, at least I’ll make out with the girl so it won’t be a total loss, you know. So the bus hit out and about half an hour outside New York, the girl got sick, puked all over my shoulder-she had gone to sleep on my shoulder and I thought, well this is the first step. Next thing I know she was puking on my shoulder again-and I spent the whole trip ringing for the bus-driver to stop and she kept puking and moaning and I kept washing my shoulder off.” Such were the trials and tribulations of a budding cartoonist.

Anyway, back to ‘The Torch.’

“I was on ‘The Torch’ and that was exciting,” Shel said. “We were getting paid at the time too, but when I was there they had no money.

There was a nice typewriter, though. It was a very old typewriter, so I accepted the typewriter in lieu of twenty-five dollars. The editor was doing the best he could with the staff he had, so what if he was paying off in typewriters? He had more typewriters than he had money. It was an exciting time.” He did find college education a “waste” better spent travelling the world and meeting people didn’t learn much from the traditional academic pathway preferred learning through life experiences. He was about to do just that

COMBAT

In 1953, Shel was drafted before he could finish his studies, not that he was convinced he would have done so anyway and shipped off to the Korean War. When he arrived in Tokyo, Shel was assigned to the Pacific edition of the U.S. Military’s magazine, ‘Stars and Stripes’ to paste up stories and photo features. According to Rogak’s biography, “When his work was done-which he performed as quickly as possible-he turned his attention to drawing cartoons using the material right in front of him: the military. Shel walked the streets of Shinbashi, a neighbourhood that GIs frequented. He spent hours each day wandering the area, taking note of the activities of his fellow soldiers, which would invariably end up in one of his cartoons. They would highlight the absurdities of military life. He initially did it for amusement, but within weeks the paper began to print his work” and eventually Shel convinced his editors to take him off layout duties and allow him to roam the Far East and send back reports in the form of single panel cartoons.

Under the title ‘Take Ten.’ His military experiences likely influenced his often-dark, cynical worldview and definitely shaped his emerging career path. He earned his first art-related pay as a journalist and cartoonist.

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THE THREE S’s (EXTENDED) A CARTOON ICON SERIES

ORIGINALS PEN, INK + CORRECTION FLUID PLAYBOY ARCHIVES 1964

PLAYBOY COVER 1963

as a children’s author and illustrator. In an Interview for ‘Stars and Stripes,’ ‘Shel Silverstein: A Corporal Makes Good,’ December 8, 1968, by Hal Drake, Shel said, “For a guy of my age and with my limited experience to suddenly have to turn out cartoons on a day-to-day deadline, the job was enormous. Nobody in the States was doing that. It was a great opportunity for me and I blossomed. The Army did me good, taught me things about life and gave me freedom to create, it gave me an outlet for my work...anyone who misses military service misses a lot.” He believed that his lack of formal training allowed him to create a unique, unfiltered style rather than following established conventions-a style that was not influenced by other cartoonists or writers.

In 1955, Shel’s first book ‘Take Ten,’ a compilation of his ‘tour-of-doodles’ was published, followed a year later when Ballantine Books released a thirty-five cent, mass market paperback edition called ‘Grab Your Socks!’ It was a sensation.

The late editor of the English language ‘Tokyo Weekender,’ Corky Alexander first met Shel at ‘Stars and Stripes.’ “His technique followed a simple pattern. First he thought of an objectsay, his first sergeant. He’d concentrate until he would come up with 20 or 30 gags on the one subject. Out of it came situations peopled by his long-nosed characters, his little men, his giants, the animals and the strange creatures for which he has a special affection. His favourite targets were the officers.”

Shel said “they even made zebras off-limits to me because they had stripes.” He narrowly avoided the world’s first cartoon-related court martial over a comic that seemed to imply officers were dressing their families in stolen uniforms, leading MAKING IT PAY to stern instructions After being that only civilians discharged, Shel and animals were returned to Chicago proper topics for and started cartooning criticism. During this on a freelance basis, period he developed submitting work to his signature, magazines while idiosyncratic style. selling hotdogs at His cartoons proved Chicago ballparks. It very popular with proved to be a tough the troops, which time. “If you’re an sometimes pushed artist or a painter, your the boundaries of family has no respect military regulations. for you,” he lamented.

“He knows the But then he began people he draws.

HIPPIE PLAYBOY JULY + AUG 1968 to have sporadic He’s lived through appearances in ‘Look’, ‘Sports the same experiences and Illustrated’ and ‘This Week. heard the same lines,” said Bob Brown of the Still struggling to earn a living, Shel strolled into S&S Seoul Bureau. Shel often described his time the fledgling ‘Playboy’ magazine’s HQ at 11 East in the army as a formative, albeit challenging Superior Street in downtown Chicago, home of experience, sharpening his artistic skills that the tuxedoed rabbit, with a portfolio of cartoons. helped launch his transition into becoming a It’s editor, Hugh Hefner had given up his successful cartoonist for ‘Playboy’ and later copywriting job at ‘Esquire’ to launch the iconic

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men’s lifestyle and entertainment monthly from his kitchen table three years earlier, in late 1953. The first issue, featuring photos of Marilyn Monroe on it’s cover and centrefold was not dated, because Hugh didn’t think there would be a second. It sold over 50,000 copies at 50c a pop.

A second and a lot more followed. Many would include the work of Shel Silverstein. Within a year he was one of ‘Playboy’s leading cartoonists. He moved out of his parents house, couch-surfed across Chicago turning his late-night escapades into cartoons before becoming a fixture at Hef’s Playboy Mansion, a 70-room French brick and limestone residence in Chicago’s Gold Coast district plaque on the door, “Si Non Oscillas Noli Tintinnare,” ( If you don’t swing, don’t ring).

He said it was his “dream job,”being ‘cartoonist at large’ that allowed him to travel the world, documenting his experiences with sketches and notes. Unlike other, more explicitly risqué ‘Playboy’ cartoonists, Shel’s work focused on humourous, often dark observations of human behaviour. His own illustrated series, “Shel Silverstein Visits…’ was a satirical and uncensored travel diary that took him everywhere, Paris, London, Moscow, Switzerland, Scandinavia, back to Tokyo, Arabia Mexico, Hawaii even Alaska. His roving reports included ‘Silverstein Plays Ball-Hanging out with the Chicago White Sox (June 1962), visiting Pennsylvania for ‘Silverstein in a Nudist Colony, (August 1963), exploring the burgeoning gay scene known as ‘Fire Island, (August 1965), and documenting the counterculture movement in

playboy Clubs, more Sick standups than one remained one of Shel’s favourites.

San Francisco, ‘Silverstein Among the Hippies,’ could count.”

(July 1968) and the second instalment, ‘More Shel talked about Lenny’s struggles with Silverstein Among the Hippies,’ the following MUSIC social acceptability. “Lenny, in some respects, is month. He employed a sketchbook format with Simultaneously his career as a musician pretty well ahead of the social acceptability of typewriter-styled captions. flourished, He became a regular performer at our times,” he said in ‘The Realist’ August 1961 Hugh Hefner wrote the foreword to ‘Playboy’s the ‘Gate of Horn, Chicago’s first folk club and interview.

Silverstein Around the World,’ (2007) a ‘the social centre for the hip crowd.’ There he Lenny was a lightening rod for censorship, collection reproduces 23 travel pieces Shel teamed up with Bob Gibson. They wrote over who became a martyr for freedom of speech created for ‘Playboy’ between 1957 and 1968.

200 songs together, contributing material to and the fight against the obscenity laws. Their “Shel Silverstein was one of the most creative the seminal ‘At the Gate of Horn’ album. Peter, friendship was transformative. Shel’s adultindividuals I’ve ever known. His contributions Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, comedy greats like orientated folk songs and satire often reflected to Playboy are legendary. Shel began his career George Carlin and Lenny Bruce were among the same taboo-breaking humour that Lenny as a cartoonist, but he went on to greater glory. the performers at the venue. Infamously, Lenny pioneered in stand-up comedy.

He became an author of best-selling children’s was targeted by law enforcement officers there Shel was also associated with the ’outlaw books, a songwriter, poet and playwright. and charged several times with obscenity and country’ music movement, a subgenre of He became our house humorist. And, most indecency. On December 5 1962, police raided American country music, active in the 1970s important to me, he became a confidant and the club and arrested him mid-performance. It who fought for and won their creative freedom one of my closest friends. caused the club to temporarily lose their liquor outside of the Nashville establishment that I remember well the first time I met him. It license and struggled to recover, closing in the dictated the sound of most country music of was Chicago in 1956. A veteran who had just mid–1960s. Shel was livid over Lenny’s arrest the era. It included Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, returned to the States from military duty in (later overturned). Lenny, like Shel pushed Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson. Shel Japan, he had heard word about a new, upstart boundaries and flouted convention. Both were magazine named Playboy. He left a portfolio connected through the rebellious and irreverent created a huge catalogue of songs with over 800 (834 to be precise) produced and recorded in 16 of his drawings with my secretary, but I didn’t countercultural comedy scene of the 1950s albums and more that never made the cut. get around to looking at it right away. After a and 1960s. They were associated with the ‘sick He wrote a number of hits for other artists, couple of weeks Shel returned and demanded humour’ movement that challenged social including ‘The Cover of the Rolling Stone’ his cartoons back. I asked him to wait norms, often labelled, ‘shock humorists,’ and ‘Sylvia’s Mother,’ two of sixty songs he while I looked over them. I went regarding subjects such as politics, penned for Dr Hook & the Medicine Show. His through his portfolio-there religion and sex-areas where ‘The Ballad of Lucy Jordan,”was also recorded were maybe fifteen drawings Lenny faced frequent legal successfully by Marianne Faithfull in her 1979 in it-and took out eight trouble and Shel pushed album ‘Broken English.’ and later featured in and put them on my boundaries in mags like the films ‘Montenegro’(1981) and ‘Thelma & desk. ‘Let’s see, five ‘Playboy.’ Michael Gerber, Louise’(1991). The poignant country song about hundred, six hundred the editor of ‘American aging and the passage of time,‘A Couple More dollars?” Shel nodded Bystander’ published his Years,’ was sung by Willie Nelson and covered his head. “I suppose you 2023 Sean Kelly Memorial could use it now,” I said.

Lecture on Comedy entitled by Bob Dylan in the 1980’s, who called Shel one of his favourite writers. ‘The Unicorn’, first “Yeah,” he said. So I took ‘Sick Humour: What It Was, recorded by Shel in 1962, became better known out a checkbook and wrote Where Shel a check. I sensed some It Went.’ He said, “But what is in its version by ‘The Irish Rovers.’ He wrote one uncertainty on his part. Maybe Sick humour? Well, it’s a bit difficult of Johnny Cash’s biggest hits, ‘A Boy Named TRAVEL SERIES Sue,’ the million-selling saga of a young man it was because I needed a shave SELF-CARICATURE COVER to define, but like its first cousin and was wearing my pyjamas. obscenity, you know it Shel didn’t think the magazine when you see it. Perhaps was going to last or that the check wouldn’t its dominant flavour is an obsession clear. It was quarter to five on a Friday afternoon with taboo, especially those relating and the banks were closed. Shel took off in to the body. Sex, drug use, violence. It disbelief, found a currency exchange someplace came of age in the Fifties, the era of and cashed the check right away.” the Organization Man and Freudian In 1960 he published ‘Now Here’s My Plan: A analysis, Valium and the Pill; its enemy is Book of Futilities,’ The cover cartoon was famous repression. It seeks ‘truth’ via ‘honesty,’ from the previous decade, featuring two chained claiming to show “things as they really prisoners , one saying, “Now here’s my plan.” are.” Lenny Bruce’s religious belief that Critics commented that Shel’s wit had turned everyone is corrupt was, to him, an dark, but he thought it was hopeful. “There’s a example of a truth liberated by honesty. lot of hope even in a hopeless situation,” he said. ‘Playboy’ appeared in 1953, tracing its ‘Uncle Shelby’s ABZ, a Primer for Adults Only’ own lineage back to Hef’s cheeecake-y followed in 1961 with exerts printed in ‘Playboy.’ college rag, ‘The Illinios Shaft.’ ‘Playboy’ It was a cynical desire to give readers misleading, would be an outpost of Sick humour harmful advice. It was clear that Uncle Shelby for the next 50 years, fostering the was not to be trusted with tender young minds. careers of everyone from Gahan COUCHIN’ ON THE OUTSIDE ALBU M COVER 1973 The book, the first of original material for adults, Wilson to Shel Silverstein and, via the

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searching for his absent father to take revenge for naming him ‘Sue,’ recorded live in concert at California’s San Quentin State Prison for his ‘At San Quentin’ album on February 24, 1969. It spent three weeks at No 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Shel also released the same year a single on the album ‘A Boy Named Sue(and other country Songs). At the 12th Annual Grammy Awards in 1970, Johnny won the ‘Best Country Vocal Performance, Male’ and Shel won ‘Best Country Song.’

He also composed original music for several films, playing guitar, piano, saxophone and trombone for ‘Ned Kelly’(1970), starring Mick Jagger in the title role with songs sung by Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson and one by Jagger himself. Shel recorded the soundtrack for ‘Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971). He also had a small role as Bernie alongside Dustin Hoffman in the production.

For Carrie Fisher’s ‘Postcards from the Edge’ 1990 comedy drama with Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine, Gene Hackman and Dennis Quaid, he wrote the song ‘Checkin’ Out.’ He was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.

‘Mental Floss’ contributor, Mark Peters, in his June 22, 2014 article said, “On top of all that, Silverstein was more than a dabbler in the dramatic, He wrote dozens of plays that were well-received by critics, including ‘The Devil and Billy Markham,’ ‘The Crate,’’The Lady or the Tiger Show,’ ‘Gorilla,’ and ‘Little Feet,’ plus the screenplay for ‘Things Change’ with playwright pal David Mamet. In his abundant spare time, Silverstein penned a few mystery stories. We also heard he sculpted a few statues, choreographed a ballet and built an Egyptian-style pyramid, but there’s no truth to those stories. As far as we know.”

WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS 1974 COVER ART

THE GIVING TREE - 1964

So just give me a happy middle And a happy start.”

So, why did Shel take up writing kids lit and becoming one of the all time greats?

Mark Peters added, “Given the whole ‘Playboy’ thing, Shel Silverstein was hardly a prime candidate to become the world’s next great children’s author.”

It was his friend and children’s author and illustrator, Tomi Ungerer that took him, “kicking and screaming” into famed publisher and editor -in-chief of juvenile books, Ursula Nordstrom’s Harper & Row office. She is often cited as ‘modern childhood’s most benevolent patron saint’, considered an editor of maverick temperament and taste with an unorthodox vision that helped create classics, transforming children’s literature.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS Shel was on her list. It proved to be a perfect Shel made it clear, he was no fan of children’s match. She challenged him, if you don’t like the literature. He didn’t believe in spoon-feeding current state of the genre, then do something kids sugar-sweet stories. He hated the often about it! used condescending and over sentimental brand Using edgy humour, clever rhymes, and felt children’s literature was lacking a sense memorable characters, unpretentious language, of mutual respect and honesty. Despite that and tripped-out loony drawings Shel bridged he became a legendary, albeit unconventional the world’s of adult and children’s art. figure in the genre, using irreverent humour, He said “I would hope that people, no matter dark, mature themes, even death, encouraging what age, would find something to identify rebellion, curiosity and questioning authority, with in my books, pick one up and experience a with non-preachy, ambiguous endings personal sense of discovery.” embraced that disobedience rather than In 1963, at the age of 32, Shel published his moralizing lessons. first children’s book, ‘Uncle Shelby’s story of He famously avoided ‘happy endings’ because Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back.’ It was written he felt they didn’t reflect real life. Children in a typically Silverstein-twisted fashion about a should be exposed to realities, not shielded from marshmallow-loving lion who faces an identity them, believing it made children feel like failures crisis after becoming a celebrated marksman. when they weren’t happy.

The 50th anniversary edition in 2013 had Lafcadio without the gun-focused imagery of “There are no happy endings. the original cover. It was a huge hit and Shel Endings are the saddest part.

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later said it was his favourite in a 1975 interview with Jean F. Mercier. for ‘Publisher’s Weekly.’A 10 minute animated short, directed by Charlie Hayward was released in 1973, narrated by Shel with a harmonica soundtrack incorporating simple, minimalistic animation of Shel’s iconic sketches.

‘Uncle Shelby’s Giraffe and a Half’ and ‘Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros?’ and his masterpiece best-seller ‘The Giving Tree,’ all followed in 1964. The flood gates had opened.

The later is a story of a generous tree that repeatedly donates parts of itself to a needy boy until it’s nothing more than a stump. It is often described as “one of the most divisive books in children’s literature. By Elizabeth Bird writing for the ‘School Library Journal’ May 18, 2012.

It’s a seemingly simple story of a tree’s selfless love for the boy was interpreted as promoting unhealthy, exploitative relationships boy ungrateful and the tree’s actions are harmful teaching the wrong lessons about self-sacrifice too sad for children and “child-unfriendly.”

But, it’s defenders call it a beautiful story about unconditional love and the cycle of nature. “It is one of those rare creations that seem to defy categorization, appealing equally to the reverent and the irreverent, the sophisticated and the simple.” wrote Jean F. Mercier.

‘The Giving Tree’ is one of the best selling children’s books of all time along with his 1974 ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends,’ ‘A Light in the Attic’ (1981) and ‘Falling Up,’ a 1996 a collection of over 100 poems and drawings. All became instant classics, winning many awards.

“However, anytime you push an envelope, you’re bound to take some heat. Indeed, both ‘Sidewalk’ and ‘A Light in the Attic,’ were banned, (like ‘The Giving Tree’) from various libraries and targeted by prudish groups who thought the

A LIGHT IN THE ATTIC COVER - 1981 poems and pictures were too weird, too gross, too antiauthoritarian, or otherwise too much for children’s fragile minds.

In fact, opponents called Silverstein’s poems everything from Satanic and sexual to anti-Christian and cannibalistic.

Yes, cannibalistic,” wrote Mark Peters.

He was, in fact one of the American Library Association’s most challenged authors. While some view the humour as directed towards adults, it was Shel’s belief that children and elderly people should be treated no differently from anyone else.

‘Sidewalk’ and ‘A Light in the Attic’ both enjoyed long runs on the bestseller lists. ‘Attic’ spent a record 182 weeks on The New York Times list, and ‘Sidewalk’ was No 11 on the Publisher’s Weekly’s all-time list of hard-cover best sellers. His sense of the absurd, deceptively simple language and his whimsical cartoon line that illustrated them became his hallmarks. His famously evenings, around closing time with a sheaf of looping signature became known worldwide his new, freshly penned mystery story to be added to exploration of the innocence and imagination of the anthology Otto was publishing, his payment childhood made him one of the most celebrated was a stack of of used books written in the and widely read authors for generations. mystery genre ‘howstuffworks’ ‘The Delightfully Shel won his second Grammy Award for ‘Best Eccentric World of Shel Silverstein’ Oisin Curran Recording for Children’ in 1984 as the author interviewed Otto. and narrator of ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends’ and They would talk and talk and talk so piercingly was nominated two years later for ‘A Light in the insightful and eloquent I do remember that Attic’ album in the same category. when I expressed my amazement at his facility Pulitzer Prize winner playwright and with words, he just shrugged and said, “I guess filmmaker friend and fellow Chicagoan David that’s why they call me a poet.” According to Mamet, said described Shel in his ‘He Was My Otto, “Silverstein was a deeply eccentric man. For Closest Friend’ piece for ‘The Paris Review,’ instance it wasn’t unusual for him to be having March 11, 2014, as “ an autodidact of pristine dinner in a restaurant with a group of friends and purity. His wide reading, knowledge and then suddenly announce that he was done, get interests were guided only by his desire to know up, take a taxi to the airport and fly to Chicago, everything. He lived alone in various houses, and or Los Angeles of Florida or wherever he felt like moved from one to the next in response to no going on the spur of the moment.” discernable stimulus. I assumed that, at some Shel’s life was also punctuated with personal point he felt it was just time to leave.” tragedy. Otto Penzler recalled he was “telling Shel had a transient existence, the him that he spent a year living at the Playboy quintessential free spirit with a nomadic lifestyle, mansion as a guest of Hugh Hefner. It was there shifting between his funky one-bath, one that he met Susan Hastings with whom he had a bedroom houseboat in Sausalito, California, daughter named Shoshanna in 1970. Tragically, intermittently at the Playboy mansion, houses in Susan died in 1975 and Shoshanna passed away Greenwich Village, New York, Martha’s Vineyard unexpectedly when she was 11 after suffering and Key West in Florida. Though he became a a cerebral aneurysm in 1982. Her death utterly millionaire, he never owned a car and looked for devastated Silverstein. In 1984, he had a son bargains in flea markets. named Matthew (A new York-based producer “I’m free to leave...go wherever I please, do and musician) with Sarah Spencer.” whatever I want. I believe everyone should ‘A Light in the Attic’ is dedicated to live like that. Don’t be dependent on anyone Shoshanna. else, man, woman, child or dog. I want to go Shel’s friend, Pat Dailey said he was a model everywhere, look at and listen to everything. You of discipline. “He took extremely good care of can go crazy with some of the wonderful stuff himself, every morning, it was yoga, breakfast there is in life,” he told Jean F. Mercier. “Restless and walking.” he was a nonsmoker and words from a restless man.” nondrinker, who valued a clear mind and healthy Otto Penzler proprietor of the Mysterious body, although he did suffer from heart disease.

Bookshop in New York City and founder of He was a prolific workaholic, fiercely protective the Mysterious Press Shel would come in the

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A GIRAFFE AND A HALF COVER - 1964

of his privacy, refused to go on TV and gave very few interviews, believing his work should speak for itself. “If you want to find out what a writer or cartoonist really feels, look at his work.

I make it so good it doesn’t need explanation.”

“I woke up with an intolerable pain in my chest,” recalled David Mamet. “ I knew I was dying and thought, well this is a heart attack.

It subsided and I went back to sleep, only to be struck again, some time later. The next morning a mutual friend called to tell me that Shel had died the night before of a heart attack-in fact two heart attacks, some minutes apart. My wife sent me to have my heart checked out, and it’s only defect was that it was broken.”

Shel died at his Key West home on May 10, 1999 at the age of 67. He was found, surrounded by sheets of notes and sketches, working to the very end on his next project.

TIME magazine’s eulogy hailed the paradox.

“Silverstein was a recluse totally engaged in life. He avoided fame, cameras and interviews, but never people, ideas or experiences.”

WHEN I AM GONE When I am gone what will you do?

Who will write and draw for you?

Someone smarter-someone new?

Someone better-maybe YOU!

MARK WINTER

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PROFILE

IT’S THE SPITTING IMAGE

TNC GRABBED A MOMENT WITH THE INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED CARICATURIST ADRIAN TEAL PETE SONGI poking and probing

You may have come across his amazing depictions of the great and the good online and on social media or even laughed out loud at his caricature puppet designs on the big screen or in the theatre.

The wonderfully talented Adrian Teal gave TNC a look behind the curtain of his 3D world with a great insight into what makes him tick.

Where did it all begin for you?

Were you drawing toons from a young age? Did you know that you wanted to be a cartoonist/illustrator from the outset?

Yes. My father tells a story about putting a pencil in my hand when I was 18 months old, and that my eyes lit up when I suddenly realised I could make marks on a piece of paper. I never looked back, really. Caricature grew as an obsession very early too, and I remember that my group caricature of my classmates made it into the school magazine when I was about 8 or 9. I recall that my dickhead maths teacher wasn’t too happy about my drawing him, though.

Faces have always fascinated me. Caricature is not just about making fun of people. It’s about making people look more like themselves than they do already. It’s a celebration of individuality and character. All portraiture is exaggeration.

Caricature just takes it to its illogical conclusion.

That’s what I have always loved about it.

KEEPING IT RUBBERY The amazing Adrian Teal

Who were your inspirations?

Before Spitting Image came along in the early ‘80s, most of the caricature I was exposed to was political caricature in newspapers and magazines. You could also find it in books written by celebrities. I remember Jimmy Tarbuck wrote a golf memoir, and that had some very nice cross-hatched caricatures in it

by Richard Willson. Punch magazine was usually filled with good stuff by Charles Griffin, Wally ‘Trog’ Fawkes, and many others. In the days before the internet, you really had to put the hours in to find quality caricature!

Your work is incredible - both accurate but playful as well.

Where do you start when you

choose your targets? Can you give us an idea of your process?

Often the targets are chosen for me, if I’m painting a caricature commission, or working on puppet designs for Spitting Image. When I produce speculative work, I just look for faces and personalities that appeal to me. Caricature has so much to say about character.

Regarding my process, a caricature is only ever going to be as good as the reference material on which it’s based. Before you even put pencil to paper, you need a good degree of familiarity with the face you’re trying to capture.

So, if my subject is a TV or movie star, I find some clips that show them from many different angles. I study them closely, take screenshots.

And when I’m picking out photos of them, I try to be discerning. I avoid painstakingly air-brushed promo pics. And I don’t bother with press shots taken on the red carpet. The paparazzi invariably

OBITUARY MEET ADRIAN TEAL

Scott

use powerful flashguns that flatten out the face.

The key to a successful caricature is thinking three-dimensionally. So, I assemble a range of photos in which the lighting shows the many contours of the face. Understanding the 1957 - 2026 relationship between the features – how the forehead forms a roof over the eyes and nose, how the nose dominates the mouth, whether the distance from the nose to the lips is greater than that between the lips and the bottom of the chin, etc. – is key to nailing a likeness. So I look at profile shots too, for a better sense of the structure of the face. I spend almost as much time hunting down photos of celebrities as I do caricaturing them. Because the world wants to see full-face images of public figures, I often have trouble finding really good profile shots. But this scarcity can make my life very difficult. Without decent references of the sides of people’s heads, it’s impossible to develop a rounded caricature.

When I have all the relevant visual information, I sketch out a rough shape of the head. Then I position the features within that, figuring out their relationship to each other.

These two steps – photo-gathering and head structure - form the basis of a good caricature.

My paintings have a lot of detail in them. But the detail is layered over a solid foundation.

I grew up watching Spitting Image in the 80s, and felt slightly bereft after it left our screens on Sunday Nights.

You were involved in its revival as well as ITV’s Big heads; both including rubbery puppets. How did all that come about?

When I was ten years old, my father made a tentative phone call to Spitting Image’s puppet workshop in the Docklands district of London.

He explained that he had a son fixated on caricature, and asked if they would mind awfully if I popped along and saw what they got up to. With the kind permission of the obscenely talented caricaturists Peter Fluck and Roger Law, and the show’s outstanding producer John Lloyd, I used to poke around excitedly in the huge puppet storage room, and get under the overworked caricaturists’ feet as they sculpted their cast of grotesques.

Such visits became quite a regular occurrence, and eventually the head caricaturist, David Stoten, set me small drawing and sculpting projects to keep me occupied. David was a serious and kind young man, and the patience he showed me was truly remarkable. He and his workshop colleague Tim Watts went on to become successful animators, and a short film they made, featuring caricatures of Kirk Douglas, was nominated for an Oscar.

Without the encouragement and tutelage

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I received at Spitting Image, I’m not sure I would have pursued a career as a caricaturist, and Lloyd, Fluck and Law changed my life immeasurably with their random act of kindness.

Roger Law kept an eye on my progress over the decades, so when he revived Spits on stage and screen a few years ago, he asked me to come on board. It was a dream come true, and my life had come full circle. I ended up designing the caricatures for most of the puppets.

In 2016, I was approached by a production company to help out on new primetime show for ITV1 in the UK. I think they had seen my Twitter page, and thought I was the right man for the job. Hosted by comedian Jason Manford, it was to be called Big Heads, and it can best be described as the bastard child of Spitting Image and a Japanese game-show. For a cash prize, members of the public competed in a series of obstacle courses, while wearing gigantic heads that were caricatures of celebrities. This was where I came in. I was asked to design the cast, which included, inter alia, Benedict Cumberbatch, Elton John, Mo Farah, Winston Churchill, Vladimir Putin, Albert Einstein, Simon Cowell, Adele, Boris Johnson, and Donald Trump.

The latter’s combover was hinged so that it wobbled alarmingly on top of his noggin when he ran.

You have worked for many other large clients on a freelance basis, including the national press producing editorial cartoons. What was your experience of that like? A bit different when you have a readership and Editors to consider?

It was a nightmare of compromises and disappointment, to be honest. I can illustrate the frustration I felt habitually with an anecdote.

I was once asked to provide holiday cover for a political cartoonist at a British Sunday newspaper. This was during a gloriously busy news week. Edvard Munch’s iconic painting

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The Scream had just been stolen from an Oslo museum (a regular occurrence, it seems); and Sir Mark Thatcher had been taken into custody for his alleged role in an attempted military coup in Equatorial Guinea.

As one of my rough ideas for the week’s editorial cartoon, I drew Sir Mark’s doting mother, the former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, as the howling central figure of The Scream. She was holding a newspaper emblazoned with the headline, ‘Mark Thatcher Arrested’. (Whenever you can mash two news stories together in one cartoon, it’s a good morning’s work.)

Upon receipt, the comment editor called me, chuckling…

‘This is BRILLIANT! Absolutely tremendous,’ he said. ‘But, er…we can’t use it, of course.’ When I asked why, he explained that the newspaper’s readers held Mrs. Thatcher in such deep affection that they couldn’t risk upsetting them with such a cruel drawing.

I always found the chasm between what you would like to draw and what a newspaper will let you get away with deeply troubling when I was cartooning for the national press. Roger Law once wrote about a crossroads moment in his career when he learned ‘the difference between an aspiration and an ambition.’ It was while tiptoeing through the minefield of internal national press politics that I came to understand what he meant. After a while, I abandoned political cartooning. Dealing with the press is not for me.

I don’t think AI could produce anything on your level when it comes to caricature, but I do see a lot of AI cartoons being posted on social media by people claiming to be cartoonists. Do you think it is a danger to the profession?

Undoubtedly. But I think the tide will turn. A.I. is a novelty, and like all novelties, it will wear off, and people will turn back to human-made art.

Maybe not soon, but eventually.

Remember NFTs? The world quickly realised what a grift they were.

However, I think there’s a subtle but important point to make about this tech and its relationship with caricature. And it has to do what I believe is a decline in standards in the art of caricature over the last 20 years or so.

There’s a generally dismissive, ‘just a bit of fun’ attitude towards caricature that prevails in the world. And it’s this same attitude that has people prompting A.I. to pump out sterile and bland caricatures for a quick laugh, rather than commissioning a flesh-and-bone artist to produce something with some life and love in it. But caricaturists themselves must shoulder most of the blame for this. As caricaturists, we have to be better at debating and honing the artistry and philosophy behind what we do amongst ourselves, and then advocating for it to the wider world, especially with A.I. breathing down our necks.

It pains me to say it about my chosen art-form, but part of the reason why A.I. caricature is so terrible is because the majority of the humangenerated caricature on which A.I. has been trained is also, frankly, terrible. A.I. caricature is symptomatic of a wider obsession with turning the creation of art into a quick dopamine hit. Great art, though, comes from protracted effort, trial, error, and thought. When someone asks me how long it took to create one of the caricature sketches I post online, I usually tell them an hour and forty years. As someone writing about A.I. put it so succinctly recently, why would anyone want to look at something that a human being couldn’t be bothered to create?

I wrote a piece about all of this recently:

What advice would you give to anyone starting out on an Illustrator/ Caricaturist career in 2026?

Christ, I wouldn’t know where to start. Develop a hide like a rhinoceros, and train yourself to do without frivolities like food, shelter, and essential clothing, I think. The key, really, is to be as good as you can possibly be, and then find ways to tell the world about it, especially the corners of the world that are in a position to commission things. Carve out a niche. I’d love to divulge a magic formula for success, but there isn’t one, unless I’ve been egregiously misinformed.

Finally - what’s next for Adrian Teal?

Well, I’m always open for commissions, on canvas or paper. I’m doing more and more work for galleries. I have a solo exhibition coming up at Quirky Fox Gallery in New Zealand in the Spring.

It will be themed around comedians, and I have just finished a Billy Connolly painting for that one.

Also, a new gallery is opening in my home county of Northamptonshire, and I’ll be supplying them with some of my stuff. It’s the Jackdaw Gallery in Oundle. https://quirkyfox.co.nz/ https://www.instagram.com/jackdawgallery/ Plus, I’m talking to a greetings card company about selling my fine-art caricatures as cards. And I have just started a caricature channel on YouTube. My videos are rough and ready at the moment, but the few I have posted seem to be well-received. https://www.youtube.com/@tealcartoons Oh, and Spitting image returns online in the autumn, all being well.

ADRIAN TEAL

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ISSN: 2977-6368

NUMBER 10 MAR/APR 2026 £2.50

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BORN TO DRAW

CATCH UP ON ALL THE PREVIOUS EDITIONS...

ISSN: 2977-6368

NUMBER 7

SEP/OCT 2025

READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH COVER STAR GLENN MARSHALL

BEHIND THE PCO WITH CLIVE GODDARD

PLUS:N MARK WINTER ON SILVERSTEIN N TNC MEETS

THE SPLAT AWARDS WINNERS & LOSERS

ADRIAN CARTOONING TEAL CARTOONS A THEMED A CARTOONIST PROFILE SELECTION

BORN TO DRAW

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180 DIFFERENT CARTOONS INSIDE!

READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH COVER STAR ROYSTON ROBERTSON

S PROPHETICAL MILDRED HOROSCOPE FTA REVIEW NGETTING ANIMATED N A NEWBIE IN MY NEW BOSS N ACADEMY/BA

POLITICALLY SPEAKING WITH ADAM MACQUEEN

THE HERNE BAY FESTIVAL CARTOONS AT THE SEASIDE

LAW & ORDER A THEMED SELECTION

ROWSON MEETS ROWE CARTOONISTS SHARE A PINT

130 DIFFERENT CARTOONS INSIDE!

PLUS: N MARK WINTER ON SCHULZ N TNC MEETS A NEWBIE IN MY NEW BOSS N THE NEW ASHER PERLMAN BOOK N THE GREAT A.I TEST N PROPHETICAL MILDRED HOROSCOPES

GET THEM ALL HERE

CARTOON SUBMISSION DEADLINES FOR THE MAY/JUN 2026 ISSUE CARTOONS FOR CENTRAL SPREAD THEME OF ‘FLYING’ APR 30TH 2026 GENERAL GAG CARTOONS: MAY 5TH 2026 POLITICAL CARTOONS: MAY 10TH 2026

email cartoons to: editor@thenewcartoonist.co.uk

CARTOONIST/CARTOONING TOONS

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CARTOONIST/CARTOONING

ALL IN A CARTOONING LIFE IS THAT YOU THAT YOU’VE DRAWN? RUPERT BESLEY a seasoned voice It’s a silly question, but I’ll put it all the same.

Do cartoonists get to look like the characters they draw? Or maybe, is it themselves that cartoonists put into their drawings?

When a cartoonist appears for the first time at any gathering, there is an unspoken halfhope or expectation among those present that the new arrival will resemble one of his/her creations.

It’s a nice thought, but one easy to dismiss.

In the first place, cartoonists, like any other grouping of people, are all different. Even if odd examples can be found to back up the notion of self-portrayal, it’s never going to apply across the board. Generalisations and stereotypes don’t hold water.

Readers often miss the point of fiction.

Forgetting that it’s all made up, they become hardened sleuths, determined to prove autobiographical details and to establish the models and facts on which they reckon the writer has based the work.

Cartoonists suffer a bit the same. A cartoon or image that’s come straight from the imagination gets pulled apart by people who insist it is based on them or, if not that, then on some person encountered or event experienced by the cartoonist him- or herself.

Cartoonists draw what they see and what they dream up, not how they look. The figures they develop for stock-in-trade characters come from how they view the world, not from how genes have ordered their physiognomy.

If it were otherwise, then cartoonists would stand out from any crowd for their large (or tiny) heads, huge noses and popping eyes. Ok, perhaps we do.

There are, of course, cartoonists who put a bit of themselves into their work. Andy Capp was said to have been based in part on Reg

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Smythe’s father (a Hartlepool shipyard worker chronically unemployed), though not the wifebeating that cropped up in the strip and was later much regretted by the cartoonist. Charles Schulz’s Peanuts and Charlie Brown were semi-autobiographical. Google Schulz and the Wikipedia entry carries a fine photograph of the cartoonist holding up his drawing of Snoopy.

The two have similar looks and identical smiles.

Or take dapper gent Sir Osbert Lancaster.

With his loud check suit, well cultivated moustache, bow tie and decorative handkerchief, Lancaster could well have stepped out of one of his own cartoons.

Lancaster was upper-crust and moved in theatrical circles; his subject matter was drawn from the same walks of life, so no surprise there that art and life should imitate each other.

Norman Thelwell was, one suspects, less showy by nature and happy in his rural retreat.

The people he drew had innocent, open, youthful faces that were also very expressive (without need of strong caricature or greatly exaggerated features). A bit like the artist himself, perhaps. As with handwriting, it’s not hard to match up style of drawing with likely

character of creator.

Giles the Great was christened Ronald, but took on the name of Carl. This came from Karlo, a schoolboy nickname from the time he sported a Boris Karloff haircut. Late in life and battling health issues, Giles’ face in photos, lined and looking out somewhat grumpily from thick glasses, began to bear a certain likeness to that of his greatest creation, Grandma Giles. Such is age.

If cartoonists really draw themselves, then I’m glad I’ve not yet got to meet Kevin ‘Squiggle King’ Wells, whose brilliant (if merciless) caricatures I love and hugely admire.

Fictitious characters come from their authors and artists and so may have a little bit of their creator within them. But 2-3 dodgy examples is not enough on which to base a general observation that cartoonists resemble their drawings, any more than musicians look like their instruments. Some do perhaps, and we love it when they do, but as a general rule? Stuff and nonsense, surely. Er, isn’t it?

RUPERT BESLEY

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THE CARTOONIST/CARTOONING GALLERY

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THEME FOR THE NEXT ISSUE:

FLYING

Email entries to editor@thenewcartoonist.co.uk Deadline: APR 3OTH 2026 thenewcartoonist.co.uk

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CARTOONIST/CARTOONING TOONS

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CARTOONIST/CARTOONING TOONS

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MY NEW BOSS!

A VERY VERY NEW CARTOONIST...

TNC CATCHES UP WITH THE NEW AND UPCOMING TALENT CHOOSING TO POKE FUN WITH A PENCIL, PAINT, FELT TIPS OR iPAD

DYANA SONGI meets Rorie Versteeg Rorie is 11 and lives in Islington with her Mum, Dad, brother Dougie and her dog Harrie.

As well as drawing, she enjoys reading, rollerskating, football and musical theatre.

Rorie also adores hanging out with her friends. Her favourite animal is an elephant! .

‘I like to create my own original characters.

I draw who I think would look really cool and whose style of clothing I’d like, and then I add and names and personalities that I think suits their style. Once I’ve drawn the characters their backstories, friends, family and relationships all come flowing through. I have a particular way of drawing eyes for my original characters. It’s a bit hard to find a style of eyes that no one you know uses, but when you find your original style and use it, it feels SUPER FAB!

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And I enjoy the calmness of just sitting down with my pens and paper whilst listening to music. (My favourite music artist is Sabrina Carpenter and my fav song is probs Lush Life or House Tour). I prefer paper and pens because it looks nicer in black and white, and it feels nicer to draw. But I also do creative writing on a device and include little cartoons I’ve made up. I also make little books and use cartoons on my school work, and I write little cartoons about imaginary games I play with my friends at playtime in school. I’m also inspired by films and books I’ve seen and read, and cartoon movies (specifically anime and Studio Ghibli). I am definitely inspired by those cartoonists and I hope to be just as great as them one day!’

You might be my new boss one day Rorie.

What sort of boss would you be?

I definitely want to be a nice boss. Like one that

RORIE VERSTEEG

doesn’t make people that work for my company dodge me in the halls - or are like super scary .

One that will have nicknames for the workers and makes jokes with them. (Here comes the but!). But I won’t take no nonsense: Are you late 4 days in a row? Warning ️Are you always forgetting your work homework? Warning ️ (Except if we have a deal or you have an outside of work issue (see I AM nice ).

😧

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😊

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Would you like to have your work featured in My New Boss?

Please email editor@thenewcartoonist.co.uk with your full name, date of birth, and a parent/guardian’s name, mobile number and email address. You must be aged 15 or under, and be resident in the UK or available overseas.

You must also be prepared to take part in a Zoom interview and submit your own work only. thenewcartoonist.co.uk

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ANIMATE THAT

MAKING STUFF MOVE...

PETE SONGI clicking on links

It’s not all about still images. Some cartoonists got in touch over the past few weeks with their animation examples, and the beauty of a digital magazine is that we can of course share them easily.

With that in mind I’ve put a little group of them here for your enjoyment...

TJET72

PIG MEAT

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CHICANE PICTURES

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PENS DOWN!

TAKE ME TO THE CHURCH

WHAT REALLY GOES ON BEHIND THE CRYPT Originally published in the Church Times this selection of cartoons from Dave Walker is out now on Amazon.

‘The PCC Strikes back’ is a collection of wonderfully wry cartoons looking at life within the church.

It’s joyful, playful and you don’t have to be of a religious disposition to find it funny.

Dave Walker, cartoonist, cyclist, web editor and former church and youth worker is the UK’S most shrewd observer of the quirks of church life. His distinctive Guide to the Church cartoons appear weekly in the Church Times, and have made their way into books and calendars, and on to mugs, tea-towels and T-shirts. This ninth collection includes, among other things: - Those new church chairs – rejected designs - Some handy suggestions for the church app - A hierarchy of needs for when you get locked in the church.

Unlike religious studies or Sunday school this book is actually great fun! Go grab a copy today.

BUY HERE

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DAVE WALKER

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ANIMATION

GRABBING ALL THE GONGS

AND THE WINNERS ARE… OSCAR AND BAFTA ANIMATION AWARDS WRAP UP MARK WINTER Animated The curtain finally came down on a drawnout awards season with the Oscars being handed out at the 98th Academy Awards at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre on March 15..

‘Variety’ magazine’s final Oscar prediction headline proclaimed, “KPop Demon Hunters’ Seems Locked and Loaded for Awards Glory.”

The Netflix smash hit was favourite to not only be nominated, but win two categories, Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song for ‘Golden’, performed by the film’s fictional K-pop girl group HUNTR/X with vocals by Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that 35 animated feature films were eligible for this year’s awards on November 21, 2025. Nominations followed on January 22, confirming the first part of WINNERS! Best Animated Feature ‘KPop Demon Hunters ‘ the ‘KPop’ prediction and naming four other contenders. Many critics and industry observers Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans and Michelle Wong noted that 2025 had been a ‘quiet, lackluster’

by Byron Howard, who won the Oscar for helming year for animated features with a weakened field the original and produced by Yvett Merino. It of award contenders, allowing ‘Demon Hunters’ sees the return of rookie cops Judy Hopps and to dominate. Jordan Ruimy, in his pre-award piece Nick Wilde, this time in pursuit of a pit viper, for ‘World of Reel,’ November 14, 2025, suggested Gary De ‘Snake, as they try and clear their name that the Best Animated Feature Oscar race was after being framed. Pixar’s ‘Elio’ had reasonable “shaping up to be one of the weakest lineups in reviews, but bombed at the box office, in fact, the recent memory...this year feels muddled… there’s worst in the illustrious studio’s history. It follows not a strong slate of films. ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Elio Solis, an eleven-year old orphaned boy, who has energy, a cultural phenomenon that, given is mistaken for the Earth’s the weak year is the leader, after being beamed current frontrunner, with up to the Communiverse ‘Zootopia 2’ expected by eccentric aliens. It’s to land a nomination, directed by Oscar winner, sight unseen (late Domee Shi, Madeline release) and might very Sharafian and Adrian well be ‘KPop’s’ biggest Molina, produced by opponent come Oscar Mary Alice Drumm. night.” One comment Ruimy felt it “Snagged on his article suggested a nomination purely that there was “some on brand recognition.” residual skepticism Described as a “hug for among Academy humanity,” science fantasy KPOP DEMON HUNTERS voters with Netflix seen ‘Arco’ sees a ten-year old, as a clash between rainbow-suited boy time traditional industry travelling from an idyllic future to a troubled past. values and Netflix’s disruptive streaming-first It was French illustrator, publisher, producer and motto.” Zootopia 2’ (also known as ‘Zootropolis director, Ugo Bienvenu’s feature debut. Producers 2’ or ‘Zoomania 2’ in some markets) is Disney’s included Ugo, Natalie Portman, Felix de Givry, sequel to the hugely successful ‘Zootopia’ (2016), Sophie Mas and Audrey Tondre. ‘Arco’ had the written and directed by Jared Bush, co-directed credentials, collecting some impressive awards,

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winning Best Feature and Best Soundtrack at the Annecy International Animated Festival, Best Independent Feature at the Annie Awards and the National Board of Review, The New York Critics and France’s Lumiere Award’s Best Animated Feature awards. The independently-made, hand-drawn ‘Little Amélie or the Character of Rain’ became a festival favourite. Directed by Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han and produced

by Claire La Combe, Edwina Liard, Henri Magalon and Nidia Santiago, it is an adaption of Amelie Nothomb’s autobiographical novella of the same name. A little Belgian girl born in Japan, wakes from a vegetative state to a world full of adventure and discovery. Described as a “handcrafted love letter to childhood, self-discovery and the life-changing power of really good chocolate,” it won the Audience Award at Annecy.

‘KPop Demon Hunters’ follows a K-pop trio of young women- Rumi, Mira and Zoey, who are also secretly hunting demons trying to take control of earth, blending trendy music with combat skills.

Directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, written by Maggie, Danya Jiminez, and Hannah McMechan the animated blockbuster was produced by Sony Pictures Animation studios in Montreal and Vancouver. It began streaming on Netflix in June, 2025, going viral, becoming the most-watched film ever on Netflix, with over 500 million views. The movie’s soundtrack was the first to have four songs in the top ten of the Billboard 100, simultaneously and the breakout

single, the album’s fourth track,‘Golden’ went double platinum.

‘Kpop’ cleaned up on the awards circuit, completing a near-sweep of the season, collecting 98 gongs to date. At the Annie Awards, considered the biggest animation awards ceremony and animation’s highest honour it won all ten categories it was nominated in, including Best Animated Feature. It added two Golden Globes, two Critics Choice Awards, a Grammy-the first K-pop song to do so and selected as TIME magazine’s ‘Breakthrough of the Year.’ How could it loose at the Oscars? It didn’t!, winning the two Academy Awards it was expected too, becoming the first non-Disney/Pixar animated film to win multiple Oscars. At this year’s awards the only films that won more Oscars were ‘One Battle After Another,(6), ‘Sinners (4) and ‘Frankenstein (3) it is this year’s most awarded film not up for Best Picture wasn’t eligible because it reportedly didn’t play enough markets but were eligible in the other categories “It’s no secret that the Academy has a bias against animated films competing for Best Picture,” wrote Nick Spake in ‘Cartoon Contender’ January 9, 2026, “but it should have been considered given its immense popularity and cultural impact.” Animated feature films have only been nominated for Best Picture on three occasions, ‘Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ in 1991 the only one before the inception of the Best Animated Feature category and its fivenominee format and Disney/Pixar’s ‘Up’ (2009) and ‘Toy Story 3 (2010), both after the animated feature category and expanded ten-nominee format

in the Children’s & Family Film category, alongside \Arco’, but missed out to the live-action Indian coming-of-age drama, ‘Boong.’

Mixed reviews however didn’t stop ‘Zootropolis 2’ “destroying the box office” and making boatloads of cash. It was actually this year’s highest-grossing nominated film, with a staggering $1.86bn worldwide eclipsing ‘Avatar Fire & Ash $1.48bn.

While the animated features had a smaller, predictable lineup, that was certainly not the case for the animated shorts during the awards season. From the eligible list of 113 films that had qualified for consideration, 15 advanced to the Academy Awards shortlist, before being reduced to the five nominees‘Butterfly (Papillon), ‘Forevergreen,’ ‘Retirement Plan,’ ‘The Girl Who Cried Pearls’ and ‘The Three Sisters.’”

BUTTERLFY

GIRL WHO CRIED PEARLS

ANNIES

The Annie Awards nomination list looked a lot different with ‘The Girl Who Cried Pearls’ being the only film on both. It did include ‘Cardboard’ and ‘Snow Bear,’ who were also on the Oscar shortlist, but didn’t make the final nominee cut. The later was voted the winner, all frames drawn entirely by Disney legend and Oscar-nominated, Aaron Blaise. It’s the tale of a lonely male polar bear, BAFTAS It would surely have clinched the BAFTA as well at unable to find friends, decides to ZOOTOPIA 2 London’s Royal Festival Hall ceremony on Sunday create one out of snow.

An intriguing backstory with the February 22, but the British Academy’s strict interviews with Ramin Zahed in the December Academy Award noms this theatrical release eligibility rules judged it 19, 2025 issue of ‘Animation Magazine’ and in year revolved around the inclusion of ineligible and out of contention, due Chris Robinson’s ‘Social Experiment Or Hoax?-The ‘The Three Sisters,’ by Konstantin to its streaming release. Netflix Curious Case of ‘The Three Sisters’ According to Bronzit. This was the celebrated tried to give it a qualifying Director Konstantin Bronzit’ article in ‘Cartoon Russian director’s third Oscar theatrical run, but it didn’t Brew,’ January 26, 2026, that it was a “social nomination, having previously satisfy BAFTA’s requirements. experiment” or as Konstantin himself preferred to been recognised for ‘Lavatory No Oscar winner in the call it, more of “a test...a test of my own creative Lovestory’ in 2009 and ‘We Animated Feature category abilities and invariably testing the system” to see Cannot Live Without Cosmos,’ has won without a BAFTA if an unknown filmmaker could be successful on seven years later. ‘The Three nom, but that stat proved the festival circuit, where the juries would often Sisters’ focuses on sibling rivalry, inconsequential this year. From ARCO be influenced by the filmmaker, not the film when three sisters, living alone on an eligible field of ten animated itself. ‘Judge the film, not the author,” he said. a secluded island, compete for the features, six made the longlist Konstantin is very familiar with the procedures, affections of a “dashing interloper,’an uncouth, and only three were nominated for the having been involved with festivals for many burly sailor who arrives unexpectedly. After six Animated Feature BAFTA, ‘Elio,’ ‘Little Emélie or years as a competitor, as a selection committee the Character of Rain’ and the winner,‘Zootropolis years in the making, this whimsical and weird member and a member of judging panels. “Very 14 minute 2D animated short was released as a 2,’ which had a different title in UK and Europe Cypriot film, using a pseudonym for the director’s few films make it to the competition stage at because of Givskud Zoo in Denmark, which major international festivals. Sometimes this credit, the unknown Timur Kognov from Tbilisi, registered the trademark ‘Zootopia’ in the EU Georgia, currently living in Haifa, Israel or Toronto, number is 80, but often it is just 12 to 15! And in 2009. In Germany it’s Zoomania 2 because there can be up to 5,000 submissions. That’s Canada depending on which site you looked up.

‘Zootropolis was the name of a children’s book more than 300 films for every slot! I’ve been But, why hide his identity? He explained in his released there in 2010. It was also nominated

thenewcartoonist.co.uk

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ANIMATION on selection committees plenty of times. Even just physically, it’s hard to view everything with 100 percent of your attention!” he said. “The obvious tendency is that when we are presented with a film by a well-known director, our attention automatically and even unconsciously, heightens towards that film. And with all the AI and accelerated content creation going on, the situation will only get worse.” He wanted to avoid his reputation influencing the selection process and found, that initially it was difficult to get into festivals, receiving a lot of refusals.

However ‘The Three Sisters’ did eventually make its way on to acceptance lists at a couple of dozen festivals, picking up significant prizes at half of them, including Best Animated Short at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, the Best of the Fest Award at the Blow-Up Chicago International Arthouse Film Festival and the top award at the LA Greek/Cypriot Film Festival, which qualified him for an Oscar nomination consideration.

BAFTA WINNERS! Ben Jackson, Dean Atta, and Baz Sells It then made it to the shortlist, before being for ‘Two Black Boys in Paradise’ nominated. At that point he revealed his true identity...wouldn’t want Timur Kognov engraved on the famous statuette! Although, it turns out he won the Oscar for last year’s Feature winner, ‘Flow.’ does , partly exist and is a relative of Konstantin, Florence was actually taught to swim by Alfred’s actually living in Georgia. brother in the south of France. No stranger to the Academy Awards, The National Film Board of Canada has Academy Award pedigree, having SHORTS The Oscar animated shorts category can be fickle, won 12 short subjects Oscars, including seven for animation almost a lottery with a large pool of possibilities The haunting stop-motion fable ‘The Girl who to choose from. Anything can happen...and does.

Cried Pearls’ screened at 45 festivals, winning 14 AwardsWatch Cody Dericks February 26, 2026 “As usual, all of the nominated filmmakers should awards. A poor boy falls in love with a girl next door whose tears turns to pearls that are sold to prepare a speech, as this category can always a ruthless pawnbroker who wants more. Tempted surprise.” by greed, the boy must decide between love and The majority of the pre-award predictor lists had ‘Butterfly’ as the favourite to win, followed by fortune. It has a strong thematic resemblance the National Film Board of Canada’s ‘The Girl who to last year’s winner, ’In the Shadow of the Cypress.’ It’s directors, Chris Lavis and Maciek Cried Pearls,’ the only stop-motion film in this year’s nominations. Directed by the seventy-year Szczerbowski had previously been nominated in this category for ‘Madame Tutli-Putli’ in 2008. old French animation veteran, Florence Miailhe, ‘Butterfly’ is an impressionistic biopic of Algerian- They lost to Suzie Templeton’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’ that year… ironically the born Jew, swimming legend, last stop-motion animated Alfred Nakache who short to win. This time they competed for France at the collected the coveted statue, 1936 Olympics in Berlin against the odds. “Statue or and again in the London no statue, the support we’ve Olympiad in 1948 after gotten from friends and surviving Auschwitz, losing family these past few weeks his wife and daughter, who has been overwhelming. We perished at the hands of can’t express how meaningful the Nazis. It had the most it’s been. Now we may finally innovative animation style, get a free beer from our local oil paintings on canvas and pub,” they said. glass with added sand for Unlike AMPAS, the British texture, winning the Grand Academy has a British Short Prix for Best Animated Short Animation category, limited to Film at the Stuttgart Festival UK-produced films, restricting of Animated Film. It was the number of contenders, produced by Ron Dyens at with only three nominations.

Sacrebleu Productions who

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They were: ‘Cardboard,’ the story about a homeless single dad pig and his piglets, written and directed by JP Vine and produced by Locksmith Animation, DNEG Animation and Ritzy Animation was also shortlisted for the Oscar and an Annie nominee.

The visually lush ‘Solstice,’ a CGI, 11-minute animated short by veteran Scottish 3D animator, Luke Angus follows a lonely Inuit traversing the Artic Circle during endless summer daylight to reunite with his lost love. It won best Animated Short at the ‘Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia 2025 in Tokyo.

And the winner, ‘Two Black Boys in Paradise,’ a stop-motion short filmed over 18 months and five years in the making, based on a poem by Dean Atta. It is the story of teens Eden and Dula, who fall in love and go on a journey of selfacceptance to paradise free from shame and judgement.

“We really wanted to show and celebrate all aspects of queer love and queer black love,” producer Ben Jackson said. It was “a genuine passion project” for him and director Baz Sells.

Ben Jackson and Baz Sells have been working together since they met at film school in Leeds seven years ago they formed One6th Animation company.

The short also collected top honours at 19 festivals, including the Oscar-qualifying Woodstock Film Festival in New York, the BAFTAqualifying festivals in Thessaloniki and Bristol’s Encounters Film Festival, the Best of British award at the Manchester Animation Festival and was nominated for both a British Independent Film Awards and the London Critics CircleFilm Awards.

That’s an animated wrap..up!

thenewcartoonist.co.uk

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ANIMATION

DISCOVERING THE SELZER

LOOKING BACK AT A TITAN OF ANIMATION WHO ACTUALLY DIDN’T REALLY LIKE CARTOONS MARK WINTER moving pictures The enigmatic Eddie Selzer was head of Warner Bros. Cartoons Division for fourteen years, from 1944-1958.

He was notorious for a lack of a sense of humour, with no interest in or appreciation of animated cartoons and refused to allow his name to appear in the on-screen credits.

He meddled in the creative process, much to the annoyance of his frustrated, legendary animators, calling him an “interfering bore.” The amateur boxing champion, who won most of his bouts by knock-out in the first round and World War I US Navy draftee fought many battles with his collaborators and became the only producer to turn down an Academy Award nomination, despite hypocritically accepting five of the famous statuettes during his tenure.

There’s got to be more to this story...let’s find out!

For a start, Eddie wasn’t his real name. Born in New York in 1893 to German Jewish immigrants, he was, according to records, christened ‘Isidore’, a popular Jewish name and grew up on the lower East Side. He was forced to “use his fists” in a tough neighbourhood, according to Eric Costello in his ‘The Kid From East Harlem: Early Traces of Eddie Selzer,” article, posted on ‘Cartoon Research,’ March 29, 2021. “There was at least one fight a day with two on Sundays.” Eddie was a scrapper, and a good one at that. So good in fact, he became the 1914 New York State amateur bantamweight boxing champion with 27 wins, 21 by knock-out and 18 of these in the WHAT’S UP BUGS BUNNY? Edward Selzer drawing by Robert McKimson

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STORYBOARDING IT ALL! Selzer, McKimson and Foster

first round. A hand injury prevented him from being selected for the 1916 Olympic Games in Berlin, which were cancelled anyway with the outbreak of the Great War. His boxing prowess continued after he was drafted into the US Navy, winning a number of Golden Gloves Exhibition matches. Sometime after his 1914 success and filling in his military registration card in 1917, he changed his name to Edward. Prior to that period, he studied advertising at New York University and began a career at the New York Globe newspaper, before working for Associated Newspapers. The day after he was released from active duty, Seaman 2nd Class Eddie Selzer returned to A.N. and continued as its business manager. He must have been good. The editor of The Pittsburgh ChronicleTelegraph, among others wrote, “Owing to the shortage of white paper I have been forced to pay very close attention to the features we use. In doing this day by day I have been struck by the excellence that has been attained by the Associated newspapers. I do not believe

there is any service at present that gives its patrons more for their money.”

WARNER BROS

In 1930, Eddie was persuaded by Harry Warner’s son, Lewis to join their Warner Bros. Pictures studio to work on Robert Ripley’s ‘Believe It Or Not’ series, with the possibility of establishing an animation unit. But when the bottom fell out of the picture business, due to the Great Depression, he was transferred to Director of Publicity, before becoming head of the trailer and title departments from 1937-1944.

Animation studio owner, Leon Schlesinger had been producing the ‘Looney Tunes’ and ‘Merrie Melodies’ cartoon series for Warner Bros. from 1933 in a small, ram shackled, bug-infested bungalow, nicknamed ‘Termite Terrace’ on the Warner Bros. Sunset Boulevard lot, later dubbed the birthplace of the ‘Golden Age’ of Warner Bros. animation. Leon Schlesinger Productions had gathered a BIRDIE SWINGS formidable group of ‘Canary Row’ key animators and poster1950 directors, who are now considered major figures in the history of animation.

PROFILE OF EDDIE SELZER They included Fritz Freleng, Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, Bob Givens, Bob Clampett, Robert McKimson, Arthur Davis, Frank Tashlin, and voice maestro, Mel Blanc, creating a collection of iconic characters that included Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd and Tweety Bird.

The Schlesinger studio even surpassed Walt Disney Productions as the most successful producer of animated shorts in America. It made a number of films for the US military during World War II and “fostered a chaotic, creative and loosely supervised environment that allowed directors to break away from the Disney style.” The studio revolutionized animation by shifting the focus to dialogue-driven characters with distinctive personalities and anarchic humour, using absurd, sarcastic and violent comedy. Gags referenced pop culture, broke the fourth wall (when a performance acknowledges the presence of the audience) and snuck in sly, sexual innuendo. The Warner Bros. house style captured a whole new demographic of young adult viewers and became a serious rival to the Disney dominance. Leon’s attitude was “Disney can make the chicken salad, I wanna make chicken shit. I’ll make the money.” He put Tex Avery in charge, who later recalled “Schlesinger had the brass enough to keep the hell away and spend more time aboard his yacht.” Leon would say, “I pay you boys to make funny cartoons. As long as the public likes your work and you stay within budget, you can do whatever you think will bring in the laughs.”

On July 1, 1944, Leon sold his studio to Warner Bros., who renamed it Warner Bros.

Cartoons, Inc and Eddie was appointed, by Jack L.Warner himself, as the new head after Leon retired. Warner Bros. Indifference to theatrical short subjects didn’t stop them making more of them, and making them better than any other studio. New cartoon characters were introduced such as Wile E Coyote, Road Runner, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Marvin the Martian, the Tasmanian Devil, Pepe le Pew, Speedy Gonzales and Foghorn Leghorn, all becoming popular and household names.

Warner Bros. was not driven by a personal vision, they were driven by the bottom line. It appears Eddie was an ideal disciple to accomplish such a mission. Jack Warner dismissed cartoons.

They were only worth making because theatre-owners wanted them as part of the complete cinema-going package. Jim Korkis in his ‘Animation Anecdotes No 107’ piece for the April 26, 2013 ‘Cartoon Research’ post

thenewcartoonist.co.uk

A HORNY SITUATION! ‘Bully for Bugs’ 1953 poster

remembered a time when Chuck Jones and Fritz Reducks: Drawing from the Fun Side of Life’ Freleng were in a meeting with Jack and Harry (1996). He described Eddie as an “interfering Warner and the former said, “You know, I don’t bore with no sentiment towards or appreciation even know where our animation studio is.” Harry of animated cartoons.” While it’s widely added, “The only thing I know about our cartoon documented that Eddie disliked cartoons and studio is that’s where we make Mickey Mouse.” openly said that he had no understanding of They didn’t realise the studio didn’t make Mickey the creative nature of the animation production Mouse cartoons. When they finally found out, process, it’s also accepted that Chuck was an the cartoon division closed down in 1963. It has ‘intellectual snob’ who was venomous about been suggested subsequently that this was a bosses and, according to Matthew Hunter in slight exaggeration, but the sentiment seems ‘Anime Superhero’ News could be petty. “I plausible. Eddie was more humourless and strongly suspect that Jones was unfair to the formal than Leon, but deliberately continued guy (Eddie), portraying him as some sort of the policy of giving the animators creative detestable tyrant, when my impression is freedom as long as they stayed that he was probably just a run-ofwithin the increasingly the-mill company man, who did smaller budgets. the job he was asked to do,” In his May wrote Jamie Weinman in 12, 1997 TIME ToonZone, March 14, 2003. magazine “He strikes me as a fairly article, ‘Cartoons inoffensive bean-counter.” are no However there are a number Laughing of yarns, bordering on Matter,’ urban legends, recalling a American film few of the ‘battles’ between critic, Richard Corliss the animators and Eddie.

A PUDDYCAT? stated, “The bosses of When seeing a group of them ‘Birds Anonymous’ 1957 still laughing over a storyboard, these geniuses were, for the most part, misery dolts who never he stormed into the room tested positive for a sense of and demanded, “Just what the hell has all this humour. Eddie Selzer hated the laughter got to do with the making of animated notion that his slaves might cartoons?” In another story session, for ‘Fast enjoy their work.” and Furry-ous’ (1949), he started fussing about Considered one of the most influential how they misspelt ‘furious’, not getting the pun. animators of all time, and according Robin The classic cartoon,‘Bully for Bugs’ (1953) was Williams, the “Orson Welles of Cartoons,” created specifically to annoy Eddie, according to Chuck Jones mocked and belittled Eddie in his Chuck, who directed it. Eddie said no one ever memoirs, “Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times turned out a funny cartoon about bullfighting. of an Animated Cartoonist (1989) and ‘Chuck “A bull and a bunny ain’t funny!” It went on to

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ANIMATION

PROFILE OF EDDIE SELZER LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT? ‘For Scenti-mental Reasons’ still

Puddle Jumper.’

Eddie actually collected two statuettes at the 1950 ceremony, also winning for ‘Best Documentary, Short Subjects for the cartoon doco ‘So Much for So Little,’ tied with Richard de Rochemont’s ‘A Chance to Live.’ He would go on to win two more before retiring in 1958, for ‘Speedy Gonzales’(1956) and two years later for ‘Birds Anonymous,’ his twelfth nomination.

After his death in 1970 at the age of 77, the last Oscar was bequeathed to Mel Blanc and Fritz become one of Warner Bros. most popular films. most directly responsible for the concept and Freleng was given the statuette for ‘Tweetie Pie.’ the creative execution of the film,” which can He also tried to stop Chuck from using Pepe le Comics and animation historian, Fred Patten Pew saying there is nothing funny about a skunk include the producer(s). “In accepting this award, who spoke French. Naturally Chuck took that as I’m naturally thrilled, but I accept if for the entire stated in his July 7, 2013 ‘Cartoon Research’ article,’Two More Notorious Animation Myths,” a sign to go ahead and make ‘For Scent-imental Warner Bros. Cartoon studio...the one man that “The Warner Bros. Cartoons were so great Reasons’ (1949). He also told Robert McKimson who really should be up here getting this award because the studio bosses Leon Schlesinger and and not me is the director of the picture, Fritz to forget about making anymore Tasmanian Eddie Selzer took no interest in them and had no Freleng, who is in the audience. I can’t pay him Devil cartoons because he was “far too idea what their animators were turning out.” too great a tribute,” Eddie said. At a small party Grotesque.” Jack Warner told him to resumme Probably an exaggeration, but fair to say that at his home after the awards he said,” I’m afraid after receiving boxes of fanmail wanting to see my family was more excited about it than I was.” both left their staff to do what they did best. more of ‘Taz.’ Fritz Freleng reportedly walked Despite comments to the contrary, Eddie always Ultimately, Eddie proved to be successful in his out on a meeting, after Eddie tried to stop told people that he was proud to be producer of position as the studio produced an incredible him teaming up Tweety with Sylvester the Cat, ‘Looney Toons’ and ‘Merrie Melodies,’ because of legacy under his management. One of the although he did back down the next day and comments in ‘Cartoon Research’ summed it the joy it brought to so many. apologised. up nicely, “The few recorded times Selzer tried Unlike his predecessor, Eddie didn’t want any meddling with the cartoons seem to be blown on-screen producer credit, that went AWARDS out of proportion. There are maybe a good 500+ to the Warner Bros. Studio itself.

In 1950 the Tweety and Sylvester According to a relative, he short ‘Canary Row,’ was nominated cartoons made during his time as producer, and he only caused a fuss five or six times, but didn’t like his name included for an Academy Award, but always, eventually letting the directors have because he didn’t think he Eddie withdrew it, becoming there way.” Eddie’s personality and involvement deserved credit. They were the first and only producer to deserves some credit. He challenged his staff, Warner Bros. cartoons, no do so. The Academy rules at which served as a great creative stimulus. need for any producers the time allowed only one While Eddie had a complex relationship with names. cartoon per producer to be Eddie’s name may have voted on in the final ballot. He his animators resulting in some notorious never graced the credits, had a second nomination with clashes over creative decisions, they did develop professional rapport. Both Chuck and Fritz ANIMATION WINNER! but his moniker does appear ‘For Sent-imental Reasons.’ He latter admitted they had a mutual respect and Receiving 1948 Oscar from in hidden gags in numerous simply withdrew the first to avoid Shirley temple for ‘Tweety Pie’ splitting the vote. The gamble paid a lasting friendship with Eddie. They recognised films, such as the ‘Selzer Water’ in “Deduce, You Say (1956) and off with ‘For Sent-imental Reasons’ his ‘interference’ actually pushed them to excel in order to defy him. the ‘Eduardo Selzer’ road sign in receiving the Oscar. Walt Disney, who was also Jerry Beck’s book ‘The 50 Greatest Cartoons’ ‘Rabbit of Seville’ (1950). nominated that year with ‘Toy Tinkers’ and holds ‘Tweety Pie’ won the 1948 Academy Award the record in this category with twelve wins from polled 1,000 animation professionals in 1994.

It ranked the Warner Bros. short, ‘What’s Opera for Best Short Subjects, Cartoons, which he 39 nominations also had multiple entries on gratefully accepted from Shirley Temple at numerous occasions, but never saw the need to Doc?’ (1957) the greatest of all time with ‘Duck Amuck’ (1953) coming in second. Seventeen the RKO Pantages Theatre in LA. During the withdraw any and still won. The only producer first five decades of the Award’s existence, the in history to receive all three nominations in the Warner Bros. Productions were included in the publication.

Oscars were presented to the producers. Now one category was Stephen Bosustow in 1957, it is given to ‘the individual person or persons guaranteeing a win, which he did with ‘McGoo’s I guess, in boxing terms, one could say it was a split points decision to Eddie.

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CONNECT WITH US

DO YOU WANT TO BECOME A MEMBER OF THE PCO?

WHAT IS THE PCO?

Our title pretty much gives the game away: we’re an organisation for, erm, professional cartoonists. We considered Professional Political & Gag Cartoonists’ and Caricaturists’ Organisation…but not for long.

WHAT DOES IT DO?

The PCO promotes the work of its members and champions the cartooning arts across the board and around the world. We organise and support exhibitions and festivals.

We also stand up for, and have campaigned on behalf of oppressed artists.

All before breakfast.

HOW DO I JOIN?

The majority of your earnings need to come from cartooning and/or caricaturing.

Then you can send samples of your work or links to a website/social media platform to the esteemed Andrew Birch here: pcomembership@gmail.com

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GRANT MEIKLE

63 Wells Street, London W1A 3AE

5 minutes walk from Oxford Circus underground station

Event: 30th March RELAXED STORY TELLING Professional story teller Olivia Armstrong will bring to life a brand new sci fi story. This story is about an meteor landing on earth and giving humans super powers. Will they use these powers for good or for evil? The story has been created by Evan Bond our current Young Cartoonist in Resident.

The story will last around 25 minutes.

Olivia brings the story to life with props and her energy. Children will come away knowing a brand new story and having had a fantastic time.

Our relaxed events are specifically designed for children and young people (aged between 5-25) with Autism spectrum conditions or sensory processing differences.

Tickets are £5 per child. Adults are free.

Timing: 3:30-4:00pm Timing on the day will slightly vary due to the live nature.

The more exited the children are the longer the story will take!

Accessible information will be emailed the week before. Any questions please email:

outreach@cartoonmuseum.org

Event: 1st April Aardman Model Making Workshops – Shaun the Sheep’ Join one of Aardman Animations very own animators for a session making your own clay Shaun the Sheep - perfect for welcoming in the spring time!

Please note that any adults accompanying a child who wish to participate must pay for a space (and can of course make their own Shaun!). Carers accompanying children and who will be assisting the participating child as they have additional needs do not need to pay.

We have limited space in the room and too many adults who are not participating in the workshop attending with participating children cause the space to feel crowded.

This can feel overwhelming for the participants and make it more difficult for the animator to ascertain which tables need assistance.

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We recommend accompanying adults purchase a ticket to the Museum so that they can view our exhibitions whilst their child is in the workshop. We greatly appreciate your help with this.

MORE INFO HERE

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EVENTS & ADS EASTER HOLIDAY WORKSHOPS!

MYTHICAL MANGA

20 for 20!

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CREATE A COMIC

FUN WITH FACES

SUPERHEROES

Aim The Cartoon Museum is 20! To celebrate the Museum’s impact, we are seeking your help to ensure its sustainability into the next decades

The Cartoon Museum: fit for the future Who we are:

The Cartoon Museum is Britain’s only museum dedicated to cartoon, caricature and comic arts. Our unique collection holds more than 6,000 artworks and a library of 8,000 publications. These works tell the rich 300-year story of British cartooning from the Georgian era to today, showcasing witty humour and challenges to the status quo. We invite everyone to participate in the power of line and laughter.

What we do: Over the past 20 years, we have proudly: Welcomed more than 500,000 local, national and international visitors.

Engaged nearly 40,000 children through our schools, learning and outreach programme.

Platformed more than 200 cartoon, caricature and comic artists through our exhibitions.

Supported the work of new talent through our Young Cartoonist in Residence. programme, conferences, shop merchandise and events programme.

By 2030 we aim to: Target and grow our audiences: engage more people and artists by relaunching our InFocus exhibits and expanding our family and neurodiverse programmes.

Showcase and safeguard our collections: de-risk our collection and library by moving them to suitable long term storage and unlock public access for research and enjoyment.

Sustain and invest in our organisation: increase our income, develop skills and strengthen our partnership network.

Our challenge: We are a small independent museum in receipt of no regular funding. The financial landscape for cultural organisations has changed. In order to continue caring for our collections, engaging audiences and nurturing promising talent, we need your help to build a sustainable path so that we are fit for the future.

How you can help: Every bit counts! If you are able to donate, we appreciate your contribution towards our £20,000 goal. These donations will help us achieve our 2026 goals to: re-launch our InFocus programme of rotating exhibits, transport our collections safely into more suitable long-term storage and provide accessible opportunities for young people.

We also want you to spread the word - about our collection, our vision for the future and our fundraising campaign. We thank you for visiting our galleries, joining our Friends and Patrons group, attending our events, buying from our onsite and online shop and sharing your experiences on socials and through word of mouth.

DONATE HERE thenewcartoonist.co.uk

Through new support and continued dedication, we will be fit for the future. We will continue to make the creativity of cartoon art - past, present and future - accessible to all for the purposes of education, research and pure enjoyment.

Here’s to our next 20 years - and beyond!.

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83

CAPTION COMPETITION!

WIN ME!

Below is a caption from a finished cartoon.

Send us your suggestions. The winner will be published alongside the original cartoon in the next issue and win this fantastic TNC mug.

Email jpg entries by 30th February 2026 to editor@thenewcartoonist.co.uk or hit the link opposite!

PROPHETICAL

Mildred from Bath

RIVER

STYX

YOUR HOPES & DREAMS EXPR

ESS

“At last, a regular service that runs on time”

CAPTION COMPETTION

The winner will be selected purely on humour and originality, open to all skill sets....

Get drawing... & good luck!

“BLOODY ATTENTION SEEKER”

84

MILDRED

WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY?

Winner!

CONGRATULATIONS! Mildred wins a TNC mug for matching up against Kathryn Lamb from the last issue!

Prophetical Mildred

HOROSCOPES Scorpio

the most accurate soothsayer in the Greater London region for cartoonist horoscopes

24 October – 21 November

A group of close friends become fed up with reality and decide to live in a fictional city. You become the cartoonist for their fictional city’s newspaper. You will win a lot of fictional awards.

Aries

21 March – 19 April

You will realise that you do all of your best cartoons at the last minute with a hyperventilating editor breathing down your neck, desperate for you to file. You will decide to push this to the extreme. You will procrastinate cartoons to the point that three editors, two sub-editors and one layout designer will have minor cardiac events with the stress of it all, but it’s the best work you’ve ever done.

Taurus

20 April – 20 May

Curious about all these news articles dictating that people must return to the office in order for society to function, you will decide to cartoon from office full time. You will choose a new office at random each day, and surprisingly you are only removed forcibly by security six times.

Gemini

21 May – 21 June

You will create a cartooning playlist. A playlist to cartoon to. There is one deeply shameful and embarrassing song on this playlist and you will live in fear that people will find out and point and laugh, but you have all your good ideas when this song is on.

Cancer

22 June – 22 July

You will start drawing cartoons on small rockets and letting them off in your backyard. You will receive several rejection slips from far off galaxies.

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Sagittarius

22 November – 21 December

You will be haunted by the spirit of a cave painter from over 37,000 years ago. He wants to collaborate with you on a cartoon project but his captions are really rubbish.

Capricorn

22 December – 19 January

Leo

23 July – 22 August

Some sort of virtual reality tech type company hires you to help create a virtual cartoon world.

After 17 particularly harrowing yet strangely enjoyable hours on Gin Lane you will be fired.

Virgo

23 August – 22 September

You will start a cartoon crypto currency. As you’re not entirely sure what a crypto currency is or how it actually works this will mostly consist of you drawing funky looking bank notes with lots of bendy penises hidden in the details. You manage to convince three ex Tory MPs to invest.

Libra

23 September – 23 October

You will make a cartoon of everything you dream. The cartoon about your mailman having a poached egg for a face, the one where British soldiers keep interrupting you on the loo and the one with a big frog are all instant hits and get published. The one about your mother results in you being rather aggressively questioned in an MI5 underground bunker.

You will become disillusioned with the news cycle and begin to just make things up. Unfortunately reality will start bending to your will and the weirder your cartoon is the more likely it is to become true.

Aquarius

20 January – 18 February

The monster under your bed will start drawing cartoons in the dust. They are actually rather good but they start to give Trump ideas about dastardly things he could do next, so you have to keep them on the down-low.

Pisces

19 February – 20 March

You will create a book of cartoons and start leaving it in the health and wellness section in bookstores. It will receive mixed feedback.

27 people report worse health and very little wellness after experiencing your book, however one person is convinced that it cured their psoriasis. Another thinks it had a positive effect on their erectile dysfunction but you are best off just blocking this guy’s emails before you learn any more about that. Trust me.

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PARTING SHOT

IT’S ALL ABOUT LETTING GO MAKING DREAMS COME TRUE AND IMPRESSING THE PUNTERS IS ALL IN THE ILLUSION...

JOE LEDOUX playing tricks Being a Magician, I have often thought about the philosophical reason we LAUGH. I think it all has to do with understanding. Art says AH! Science says AHAH, and comedy says HAHA because we figure something out, we have that eureka moment.

Eugene Burger, one of the wisest teachers in the art of magic, told a story. Going off my memory, he had been hired to perform magic on a yacht. Eugene was like a real wizard with a long white beard and a very serious attitude. He came upon a bunch of people in Hawaiian shirts holding cocktails and upon seeing Eugene, they screamed, “Here comes Santa!” The situation quickly got worse as Eugene performed for the group, when he came to the realization that the only person not having fun was him, so he grabbed a cocktail and started to play along and have fun with the group instead of holding his image of the master magician. They not only thanked him for coming, but gave him a huge tip. A great lesson to every performer.

THE GIG

Early in my career I was asked to perform magic at a dive bar called the Cantab Lounge.

I opened the door to the sound of chattering voices and the smell of cigarette smoke and dim neon lights to discover a wall of people as I wedged myself through the crowd and performed for a group of people at the first table I stumbled upon. Making a bunch of sponge bunnies appear on the table, a woman quickly grabbed one and placed it in her pocket. I told her I would need it back and she replied, “It’s my 21st birthday and I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want,” and then she walked off.

I staggered through the crowd to the back where there were big bearded men with tattoos.

I asked him to make a wish on a star as a glowing light appeared. He said, “I hope I get laid tonight.” I turned the glowing light into a real star and handed it to him, telling him, “Magic reminds us it’s possible for dreams and wishes to become true.” He took the star and looked me in the eyes and said, “That’s not what I asked for.”

I realized this was going to be a long night, half the people at the venue didn’t believe I was hired to do magic and thought I was just a random guy. And people could barely hear me over the noise of bands playing and glasses clanking. One trick went over well with one guy who was wasted

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and then put his hand on my shoulder, dragging me to a beaten and battered wooden counter, demanding he buy me a shot. I told him I don’t drink, but he would not listen. At this point I had beaded sweat on my forehead and secretly told the bartender I don’t drink and give me apple juice. He winked and I downed the juice and thanked him.

Things were so insane that the band who hired me asked me to go outside and perform for the people in line waiting to get in so they wouldn’t leave, and the bar would make more money and people would actually be able to hear me. As my foot stuck to the floor with every step, I made it to the door.

I stepped outside to the cool air, the smokers in line, and it was a sigh of relief. I performed a card trick for a couple in line and a little group formed around, when I felt a tap on my shoulder and saw a weathered wandering man who was just walking down the street holding a brown bag full of liquor and missing a few teeth, who said, “Let me show you a card trick.” Normally I would have refused, but, inspired by Eugene

Burger’s story I just handed him the deck and everyone watched as he did a really amazing card trick. Then one of the random people in the circle said, “Let me show you mine,” and took the deck performing another amazing trick and everyone was going nuts and cheering, including me. I realized that as long as everyone is being entertained and having fun, I’m doing my job. And there was a couple together, and a guy looked at me and said, “This is one of the best birthdays of my life.” That’s when I had the epiphany, that moment of understanding life on a deep level, and I LAUGHED. JOE LEDOUX

@joeledouxmagic

GOT A ‘FUNNY’ STORY YOU WANT TO SHARE?

e: editor@thenewcartoonist.co.uk

KEVIN WELLS

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THE END PORTRAIT BY: KEVIN WELLS

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