The Bloghorn is the digital cartoon blog of the UK Professional Cartoonists' Organisation

Cartoonists in South Africa have joined their colleagues in the media to launch a open petition to protect freedom of expression in their youthful democracy.

This effort is in response to the ANC government’s proposal to introduce new media laws and to start a national panel of scrutiny over journalists, who were recently described as ‘dangerous’ .

The issue around media regulation of words and pictures is particularly sensitive because South Africa is a country where overall levels of literacy are relatively low. In this context, brief communication in cartoons is an extremely powerful tool for messaging, education and explanation of  public debates.

Twenty nine South African cartoonists have signed the petition and they would welcome your support. You can review some recent ‘free press’ cartoons at their website too.

Bloghorn wishes them luck.

The new issue of Foghorn, the cartoon magazine of the UK Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation, has been published. Featuring a cover by Steve Bright and a back cover by Gerard Whyman, Foghorn is available to subscribers for the modest annual sum of £30 for six full colour issues all delivered to your door.

What’s inside this issue?

Toyshops in my life – Clive Collins reveals how he never got the hang of wrapping up a fully inflated football.

A word to the wise – Chris Madden explains how simplified spelling is quite str8forward.

The Trevelyan Files – Foghorn’s very own rip-roaring adventurer continues his exploits, courtesy of Andrew Birch.

Buildings in the Fog – Roger Penwill dons his architectural trousers and heads to the nearest railway station.

The Potting Shed – Cathy Simpson keeps our resident gardening experts in check. Careful with that strimmer!

A full page of Rob Murray cartoons (described by Michael Heath,  cartoon editor at the Spectator magazine, as one of the “smart new kids on the block”.)

Strips from Wilbur, Andy Davey and The Surreal McCoy.

And of course the fun-packed filler features – The Critic, The Foghorn Guide to, Letters to the Editor, and a fair bucketload of cartoons!

Buy your own annual subscription here.

Copyright Greaves & Thomas/McGill Archive

That saucy old salt Donald McGill continues to cause a stir, nearly 50 years after his death. For the first time, the full collection of 21 postcards which were banned after an Obscene Publications Act witch-hunt in 1953, have gone on display.

They can be seen in the perfectly appropriate seaside surroundings of the recently opened Donald McGill Museum and Archive in Ryde on the Isle of Wight.

There is little option for the modern mind but to see them as cliché-ridden, pre-feminist, pre-60s snapshots of the suppressed British libido. But the sexual innuendo still has resonance. Despite the 60s and beyond, many of us Brits still have a “policeman inside all our heads” and the simple rudeness is appealing. Why do we still laugh at them? Well, because they’re funny.

Even George Orwell was a fan. A short essay of his (“The Art of Donald McGill”) in 1941, written at the height of Britain’s isolation, flattered McGill’s egregious talent and his essential Britishness, but Orwell the Old Etonian couldn’t help but warn readers that the “first impression is of overpowering vulgarity”.

Orwell points out that the viewpoint in McGill’s postcards is essentially safe and conservative – that of the aspirational working class. “They express only one tendency in the human mind, but a tendency which is always there and will find its own outlet, like water. On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”

Where the cartoonist’s view might differ from Orwell’s is that they are not “ill-drawn” – they are rather well drawn cartoon art of a certain period. Certainly better than the dozens of imitators he spawned.

A new British adult comic, CLiNT, launches on the 2nd September. Featuring writers including TV’s Jonathan Ross and contraversial comedian Frankie Boyle, the magazine is a collaboration between Kick Ass artist Mark Millar and Titan Publishing. The comic, that Millar describes as “The Eagle for the 21st Century,” is aimed at men aged 16-30. You can find out more information about CLiNT via twitter.com/clintmag or Facebook.

In case you’re wondering why the magazine is titled CLiNT, Bloghorn suspects it has more to do with a piece of US comic folklore than a certain Mr Eastwood.

CLiNT number 1 is on sale 2nd September in the UK from all good retailers and specialist comic stores.

The legal battles over control of image rights and licensing may have benefit for those who can draw.

England’s Plymouth Herald newspaper found it could not use the work of its press photographer at local club Plymouth Argyle’s away match at Southampton FC. This is because of licensing restrictions imposed on non-home club image makers at the Southampton ground, St Mary’s.

Instead the Plymouth paper found it could illustrate the game with drawing.

Bloghorn offers a sharp intake of breath, an OOOH! and applause for the SAVE! Let’s see some more use of drawing for news reportage. The creative talent is about to do it.

Uh-oh, it looks like Viz has finally achieved respectability in it’s home town, as this week sees the opening of an exhibition of original artwork from the adult comic at the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne (that’s Lit and Phil, for short).

The show, featuring the likes of the Fat Slags and Roger Mellie (the Man on the Telly), above, opens on Thursday, August 12, and runs until September 4. Opening times are Mon-Thurs 10am – 7pm, Friday 10am – 5pm, Saturday 10am – 1pm, and admission is £4, or £2 for members.

There is a series of talks and events to tie in with the exhibition. We particularly like the sound of co-founder Simon Donald’s “How to make yourself popular and successful using gutter language”.

More details at the Lit and Phil website.

Thanks to Pete Dredge for drawing our attention to this.

“Hangover’s ain’t good man… hangover’s ain’t good”

The re-captioning of existing New Yorker cartoons, using verbatim ramblings from the Twitter feed of Kanye West, have been raising laughs on various websites.

The trend was started by a pair of US comedians and has been taken up by others. From a cartoonist’s point of view there are clearly issues with copyright, but the New Yorker appears fairly relaxed about it.

This may be because the results, despite West’s dodgy grammar and spelling, are surprisingly effective. The Mick Stevens cartoon above has a certain bizarre charm to it, and this writer’s particular favourite is the Alex Gregory cartoon of two Viking invaders on a beach where one is now saying, “This is gonna be a dope ass day.”

But you wonder what the reaction will be if the trend continues and quality dips. And, of course, it’s unlikely the cartoonists will be seeing further remuneration as their cartoons fly around the world.

The Huffington Post has more on the copyright implications and you can see the cartoons here.

"You'd better release their ball. They've kidnapped the cat" by Norman Thelwell

The Chris Beetles Gallery in London has an exhibition of cat cartoons, illustrations and paintings opening later this month, titled Louis Wain and the Summer Cat Show 2010.

This show marks the 30th annual exhibition of British cat art at Chris Beetles. Alongside work by the eccentric Edwardian cat artist, Louis Wain, the exhibition features cartoons and sketches by William Heath Robinson, Norman Thelwell and Ronald Searle, although some of the paintings on show do remind Bloghorn of the infamous Viz commemorative plate The Life of Christ in Cats.

Louis Wain and the Summer Cat Show will be showing at the Chris Beetles Gallery, 8 & 10 Ryder St, St James’s, London, from August 14 to September 4, opening hours 10am – 5.30pm, Monday – Saturday. For more details go to www.chrisbeetles.com

Tony Husband’s tortoise take on England and the World Cup

Many gag cartoonists have had their fruitful areas of interest over the decades. The very wonderful Larry (Terry Parkes) spent productive years milking the world of art, and the great, and recently late, Ray Lowry would have been bereft without rock ‘n’ roll or Nazis.

PCOer Tony Husband’s simple style of drawing – like Larry’s – belies an understanding of the joke-telling format not given to many. He has made a career as one of cartooning’s generalists, able to make a gag about anything. That was until recently, when something strange happened to the Husband oeuvre. It began to become invaded by testudines.

Gags appearing in his normal haunts like Private Eye and The Oldie began to feature tortoises with curious regularity. The Bloghorn was keen to investigate and approached Mr Husband with a demand to come clean about the tortoise invasion. Was it a failed book project – “101 Uses For A Tortoise” – or a batch of rejects from “Tortoises and Tortoisemen (incorporating Tortoise Monthly)”? We needed to be told.

Husband finally revealed all: “The Lord of all Tortoise summoned me to his palace in the deserts of Org. He gave me a mission, to bring the tortoise to the forefront of popular culture. It’s as simple as that.”

Yes, that’s what we suspected.

PCOer Steve Bell writes in today’s Guardian newspaper about an usual opportunity for the more unseen cartoonist which he has cooked up with his colleague Martin Rowson.

We are both constantly badgered by young cartoonists waiting for us to die (as indeed Martin himself once urged me to), as well as editors complaining about how difficult it is to find fresh talent. He suggested using our longer than normal holiday period of six weeks to showcase some of the talent we know full well to be out there.

And he offers a short explanation of what the independently-minded artist does. Bloghorn thinks this definition is useful when trying to identify the drawn work of an illustrator or a cartoonist.

It does require a certain arrogance to sit in judgment over the great and good, as well as the not so good and the less great who rule our lives, but I’ve had a political agenda as long as my arm since I was in flared trousers, and have never been expected to express any point of view other than my own.

If you have things to say about what Steve has written please add them in the comments below.