Category — Bloghorn UK cartoon news

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As you know, we’ve just moved home and that means changing some details of the service we provide.

These include the email subscription link we use to send you automatic updates of our posts. If your email service, ahem, is disrupted at all during our changes, please use this link to resubscribe. The email options are at bottom right of the second column on the page. Thank you.

Bloghorn for UK cartoon news at http://procartoonists.org

Regular readers will know that Bloghorn is about to move home once more. This will be the third place we have called home since we set out back in 2007. You will be unsurprised to learn we are off to join the portfolio site for the UK Professional Cartoonists Organisation to which @bloghorn belongs.

So gentle reader, please bear with us while we do the necessary nut tightening and deliver the requisite administrative kickings. We will try not to swear.

If this proceeds to plan you shouldn’t notice too much difference.

The Bloghorn is made on behalf of the UK Professional Cartoonists Oranisation by Matthew Buck, Royston Robertson, Alex Hughes and Rob Murray. We welcome submissions and other collaborators to contact us here.

Rob Murray writes:

Bloghorn is sad to note the death of Tony Reeve, the much-loved gag and strip cartoonist for Private Eye, Punch, The Spectator and others. He was joking to the end, contributing a gag to the Eye as recently as last month that was drawn up by his friend Steve Way. Another of Tony’s friends, Geoffrey Notkin, has written a touching tribute over at the Tucson Citizen.

After its offices were firebombed following the publication of a front-cover cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammad, French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has reprinted the offending image in a supplement distributed with a leading newspaper. Reuters has more here.

In the US, cartoonist Mort Walker – creator of the long-running newspaper comic strip Beetle Bailey – is to receive a military award.

Having brought the Smurfs to cinemas earlier this year, Sony Pictures is mining comic strips once more, with a 3D animated Popeye movie. With any luck the character design will stay true to the established version of the cartoon sailor, and won’t strive too hard for realism.

Bloghorn is made on behalf of the UK Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation

A treat to start the week. Matt Pritchett, pocket cartoonist at The Telegraph Media Group talks about his favourite cartoonists in this short video.

Bloghorn is made on behalf of the UK Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation

Rob Murray writes:

Following an MP-generated controversy earlier in the year, when the University of Dundee launched the first mainstream postgraduate course in comic studies, student Laura Sneddon has helpfully begun blogging about the MLitt on a weekly basis for Comicbook resources.

Pulitzer-Prize winning US cartoonist Clay Bennett gave a talk this week in which he discussed the ‘best’ piece of hate mail he has ever received, and why “it’s hard to draw good cartoons where people are progressive”. Read more here.

As Steven Spielberg’s motion-capture Tintin film is released in cinemas, Scotsman.com asks how it will be received in Hergé’s Brussels.

Finally, a piece of original artwork by legendary Batman illustrator Jerry Robinson – the cover to Detective Comics #67 from 1942 – is expected to sell for over $300,000 when it comes to auction next month. Click here and get your chequebook ready.

Bloghorn’s roving correspondent Martin Honeysett reports on Private Eye’s 50th birthday party.

The magazine’s Golden Jubilee was celebrated in the ornate splendour of the Guildhall in the City of London on Wednesday evening.

Editors, staff, contributors, media celebrities, friends, hacks and cartoonists gathered together, then gathered together some more, like sardines, to hear speeches by the Eye’s three editors, Christopher Booker, Richard Ingrams and Ian Hislop.

Bloghorn cartoon - Private Eye 50th party © Martin Honeysett

Introduced by a fanfare of trumpets, each told the story of the magazine, with numerous anecdotes and jokes, from its humble beginnings to the present day. John Sessions, in the guise of Sir Henry Gusset, and Harry Enfield also made voluble contributions. The cake was cut, mingling recommenced, and the band struck up. A few couples headed for the floor, others to the door. A good night for a good birthday.

Ed adds: You can read more about the 50th celebrations for Private Eye here and here and you could also slum it and read Media Monkey, as provided by The Guardian.

Here’s to the next 50 years.

Bloghorn is made on behalf of the UK Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation

Congratulations to Steve Bright, one of our members, who has also made the final of Cartoonist Idol at the i newspaper. Steve provides the delightful shark drawing we use in our masthead here from time-to-time. He will be competing against Ben Jennings, Mark Thatcher, John Kennedy, and Chris Shipton for a job with the paper.

There is also a new set of jokes from the pocket cartoonists we named in yesterday’s post. You can still see the cartoons online, whereas today’s batch can be seen here. The Bloghorn sends congratulations to all those featuring in the finals and encourages you to get to know the best cartoonist folios here.

The Bloghorn is made on behalf of the UK’s Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation

The Surreal McCoy and Rob Murray, both members of the PCO, which runs the Bloghorn, have made the final in the strip cartoon section of the i newspaper’s “Cartoonist Idol” competition.

They feature alongside strips by Phil Merchant, Trumble & Warr, and Geoff Thompson on pages 26 and 27 of the i today.

The PCO also features heavily in the “pocket” cartoons section: you can see The Surreal McCoy, Bill Stott and Rob Murray on pages 7, 11, and 25 respectively, alongside James Whitworth on page 3 and Peter Allwright on page 21.

You can also see the cartoons online and a comment from the editor here. News of the “landscapes”, or editorial cartoons, is promised for tomorrow’s paper, along with more pocket cartoons. The Bloghorn sends congratulations to all those featuring in the finals.

The Bloghorn is made on behalf of the UK’s Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation

Rob Murray writes:

The BBC reports on the appropriation by protest groups of the Guy Fawkes mask featured in V For Vendetta – designed by David Lloyd for the 1980s comic strip he co-created with Alan Moore, which was turned into a Hollywood film in 2006. You can read the article here, while elsewhere the Forbidden Planet blog has responded to the report with its own interpretation.

Ahead of the imminent release of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s Tintin movie, Scottish newspaper The Daily Record reports that Hergé’s intrepid young reporter owes his success to Scotland – or, more specifically, to his adventure north of the border.

John Ryan, the creator of Captain Pugwash, is the subject of a retrospective exhibition in his hometown of Rye, opening on 19 November. Pugwash is best known as a children’s animated TV show, but in fact debuted in the very first issue of long-running comic The Eagle. downthetubes.net has more, as does the Rye Art Gallery.

Finally, The Onion’s A.V. Club has an interview with acclaimed US cartoonist Daniel Clowes, in which he looks back on his work in comics over the last few years and discusses his future projects.

The Bloghorn is made on behalf of the UK’s Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation

Rob Murray writes:

Life magazine has compiled a diverse selection of wartime caricatures of Adolf Hitler, and points out that “in the right hands a pen, a paint brush, or a crude puppet can be an effective weapon.” You can see the slideshow here.

A new film has turned to animation to tell the story of the Green Revolution in Iran in 2009. Ali Samadi Ahadi’s The Green Wave animates written accounts that were posted on blogs and Twitter, to to tell the story of the uprising, along with mobile-phone footage posted online. The animation by Ali Reza Darvish provides a unique way of reconstructing a story that emerged via the web, as the regime blocked all media and brutally crushed the protests. For more on this, see: The Green Wave film website.

The Phoenix, a new weekly children’s comic due to launch in January, will feature a strip by The Dandy’s Etherington Brothers called Long Gone Don, as well as The Lost Boy by Kate Brown. The Phoenix is being launched by the former editor of short-lived comic The DFC, David Fickling, and has already announced new strips by Jamie Smart and by Daniel Hartwell and Neill Cameron.

Finally, a competition is offering a fan of The Beano a chance to star in a Dennis the Menace or Minnie the Minx strip, and to visit the comic’s Dundee office. See The Beano’s DC Thomson stablemate, The Courier, for more details.

The Bloghorn is made on behalf of the UK’s Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation