The Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival starts this Thursday, April 22, and runs until Sunday, April 25. We’ll be showcasing cartoons submitted for exhibition at Shrewsbury this week, and throughout the festival weekend. All cartoons are on the theme of Magic, Myth and Mystery.

PCO member Alex Matthews has been declared the first winner of the Free Expression Cartoon Contest by the Council for Secular Humanism.

The theme for the competition was Religion, and Alex’s prize-winning entry (above) netted him $2500 (£1650). Pulitzer-prize winning judge Steve Benson said of the cartoon:

Wickedly humorous, brutally direct, effectively and simply rendered. A stinging indictment of the Catholic Church’s pedophilic priest scandal that allows absolutely no room for the predictable apologetic defense. Left me laughing and wincing at the same time!

Alex, who originally sold the cartoon to Private Eye, where it provoked a couple of angry letters, told the Bloghorn:

I thought it was a pretty strong and controversial cartoon but this was a massive surprise for me, particularly as I had forgotten I entered this competition!

Religion, seen from my atheist perspective, is a favourite of subject of mine, so it is great to get some kind of recognition for a cartoon I am genuinely proud of.

Our congratulations to Alex on his win.

The Cartoonists’ Club of Great Britain is 50 years old next week.

Members will be celebrating this weekend in a pub which stands on the site of The Feathers, just off London’s Fleet Street. This is where the CCGB was launched at 2pm on April Fool’s Day – appropriately enough for cartoonists! – in 1960.

The CCGB, like the British Cartoonists’ Association, is a social club for cartoonists and their families. Many members of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation, which runs Bloghorn, are also members of the CCGB and/or the BCA.

Bloghorn wishes the Cartoonists’ Club a very happy birthday.

Link: The Cartoonists’ Club of Great Britain

Private Eye cartoonist Andrew Birch, who recently joined the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation which runs the Bloghorn, neatly sums up the age-old “Cartoons vs. Art” debate in his new Young British Artists strip. It’s a pitilessly satirical view of the Art Establishment … and Bloghorn could not agree more.

See the strip at the Private Eye site

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent
Subscribe to The Foghorn – our print cartoon magazine

Libby Purves, patron of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation, which runs the Bloghorn, writes in the Times today about how cartoons help us confront the dark side of human nature:

Cartoon grotesques let us face the real horrors

Above: Libby chats to the Guardian’s Steve Bell, creator of more than his fair share of cartoon grotesques, at last year’s Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival. Photograph © Gerard Whyman

Whilst some other Sunday newspapers are cutting back on their cartoons, the Sunday Times has expanded its cartoon content with the inclusion of 101 Uses for a Celebrity.

The regular  feature will appear in the Style section and is drawn by The Surreal McCoy, a former Bloghorn Artist of the Month and a member of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation (the group which makes this web site).

Surreal tells us;

I had originally drawn a cartoon with a couple of old ladies sitting in a car parked in front of Thora Hird who was balanced sideways on 2 traffic cones. One old lady was saying to the other ‘‘Oooh, isn’t that Thora Hird?’’ and the caption read ‘Celebrity Roadblocks’. I soon started wondering to what other uses could celebrities be put? Then to find out who was flavour of the month it was a matter of reading as many celeb magazines I could lay my hands on, whilst using that great excuse ‘‘its for research purposes, no really’’, and drawing them in all manner of undignified poses. This was a few years ago and of course they did the rounds of editors’ desks, dutifully returning each time with the usual ‘‘we really liked your idea but don’t have the money/space/imagination/etc’’ rejection note. Until the art editor at the Sunday Times’ Style magazine had a look at the PCO’s website, chanced upon my portfolio, visited my site and offered me the gig. Joining the PCO has got to be one of my better decisions.

Bloghorn thinks a lot of publications, print and digital, could benefit from the skills, fun and entertainment that people like this can bring to developing and keeping readerships.

The Only Joking! exhibition, a collection of gag cartoons old and new, opened at the Cartoon Museum in London today (Jan 27).

The show is designed to raise spirits in the deep winter with a few much-needed hearty chuckles, though when PCOer Martin Honeysett attended the private view yesterday he found that many people were clearly at home nursing winter colds (like this Bloghorn writer!)

Martin said: “I suppose the sparcity of cartoonists in the pub beforehand should have indicated the smallness of the throng attending. Never mind, all the better to get a good view of the fine work on display, extolling the virtues of this form of comic art and the lack of current appreciation.

“It’s a nice mix of old and new and an opportunity to see some gems from the museum collection. Well worth a visit.”

So, sup up your Lemsip (other cold remedies are available) and get down to the Cartoon Museum in Little Russell Street before the exhibition ends on March 1. For more details visit the website.

An exhibition entitled Only Joking! is at the Cartoon Museum, London, from January 27 until March 1. The show is billed as a collection of joke cartoons old and new designed to raise spirits in the deep winter. Meanwhile, you have until January 24 to catch 30 Years of Viz at the museum. For more, visit the website.

A lecture on the Power of the Cartoon given at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London in autumn 2009. The talk is delivered and performed by PCOer Martin Rowson. Editor’s word – this lecture does contain some strong language.