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Donald Trump to Angela Merkel: You guys in Berlin had a terrific wall. Patrick Chappatte, The New York Times cartoon
[son to mother]: Aren’t you a little old to have an imaginary friend? Daniel Dennett, lecture Global Atheist Conference 2012, ‘How to Tell You’re an Atheist’
It’s made a wonderful museum; there’s a fantastic archive tucked away of incredible cartoons. Tim Marlow Meets Mike Leigh, 2009
Ronald Searle: Hand up the Girl who Burnt Down the East Wing last night: Lilliput magazine April 1946. ibid.
Kenneth Bird (Fougasse) On the Beach: Punch magazine summer 1956. ibid.
Rowland Emett: The Last Tram 1951. ibid.
Donald McGill: I think we’re going to have rain ... My seaweed’s quite damp! c.1940s. ibid.
Pont [Graham Laidler]: ‘I am ever so sorry, but Mrs Tweedie never touches soups.’ ibid. Punch magazine 22 January 1936
In the past the mood of the comic postcard could enter into the central stream of literature, and jokes barely different from McGill’s could casually be uttered between the murders in Shakespeare’s tragedies. That is no longer possible, and a whole category of humour, integral to our literature till 1800 or thereabouts, has dwindled down to these ill-drawn postcards, leading a barely legal existence in cheap stationers’ windows. The corner of the human heart that they speak for might easily manifest itself in worse forms, and I for one should be sorry to see them vanish. George Orwell, The Art of Donald McGill, essay vol II pp 194-5
One day I had a nephew in hospital with Diphtheria. And I sent him a card and put a comic drawing on the back. Donald McGill, This Week, 1957
This is Donald McGill: the king of the saucy seaside postcard. And here is Mr McGill fifty years ago in a Lincoln prison cell. He is quite possible wondering how a seventy-nine-year-old man with a wooden foot who sold more than two hundred million postcards and put a smile on the face of the nation is practically penniless and facing the rest of his life in jail. Censorship at the Seaside: The Postcards of Donald McGill, 2005
It’s a scorcher, and the nation is off to the seaside ... After the war ... One industry in particular goes into overdrive: and that is the saucy seaside postcard industry ... In the summer of 1947 sixteen million saucy postcards are sent from the seaside. And rather remarkably almost all of them bear the name of just one man: Donald McGill. So just who is the one-man postcard-producing machine? ibid.
The nation’s shopkeepers are on his side. ibid.
For the first time ever the authorities decide to directly pursue the artist himself. The Director of Public Prosecutions believes that these twenty-one cards created, painted sold and distributed by Mr McGill constitute no less than obscene libel – they have the power to corrupt. ibid.
Over 2,000 Postcards Seized By Weymouth Police. News headline cited ibid.
17,989 Postcards Seized and Destroyed In Brighton. News headline cited ibid.
Man carrying gigantic stick of rock on beach: A Stick of Rock, Cock? Donald McGill saucy seaside postcard
She’s a nice girl. Doesn’t drink or smoke, and only swears when it slips out! Donald McGill saucy seaside postcard
Nurse delivering baby to mother: What was the colour of the father’s hair?
Mother in bed: I don’t know. He kept his hat on. Donald McGill saucy seaside postcard
Devil: Do you know who I am?
Drunken man: Of course I do. I married your sister. Donald McGill saucy seaside postcard
Cartoonist Gerald Scarfe drew the prime minister naked ... Private Eye’s Romantic England: MacMillan Issue. Rude Britannia III 3/3: You’ve Never Had It So Rude, BBC 2010
A tradition of rude cartooning come back to life. ibid.
A counter-culture: house-journal of this underground movement was Oz which first surfaced in the Summer of Love 1967. ibid.
Inside School Kid’s Issue: Oz was a comic strip featuring the head of the much loved children’s character Rupert Bear superimposed on an X-rated cartoon by American Robert Crumb. Words and pictures were a rude provocation. ibid.
The Oz Three... were found guilty and sent down with harsh sentences ... A successful appeal. ibid.
Anger made Bell’s pen drip with vitriol. ibid.
Check it out. It’s gone. My TV. Beavis & Butt-head Do America, Beavis, 1996
Come to Butt-head. ibid. Butt-head to air stewardess
We’re all going to die! ibid. Beavis
I want full cavity searches. Everyone. ibid. rozzer
You have been harbouring two criminal masterminds. ibid. rozzer to headmaster
Are you threatening me? I am Cornholio. ibid. Beavis
I am Cornholio. I need tee-pee for my bunghole. ibid.
I never got tired of Tom and Jerry, but I did have a dream of doing more with my life than making cartoons. Joseph Barbera
I like physics, but I love cartoons. Stephen Hawking
Amazingly, much of the best cartoon work was done early on in the medium’s history. The early cartoonists, with no path before them, produced work of such sophistication, wit, and beauty that it increasingly seems to me that cartoon evolution is working backward. Comic strips are moving toward a primordial goo rather than away from it ... Not only can comics be more than we’re getting today, but the comics already have been more than we're getting today. Bill Watterson
Comics are capable of being anything the mind can imagine. I consider it a great privilege to be a cartoonist. I love my work, and I am grateful for the incredible forum I have to express my thoughts. People give me their attention for a few seconds every day, and I take that as an honor and a responsibility. I try to give readers the best strip I’m capable of doing. Bill Watterson
Recently crowds of thousands gathered throughout the Muslim world – burning European embassies, issuing threats, taking hostages, even killing people – in protest over twelve cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that were first published in a Danish newspaper. When was the last atheist riot? Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
Political satire is a serious thing. In democratic newspapers throughout the world there are daily cartoons that often are not even funny, as is the case especially in many English-language newspapers. Instead, they contain a political message, and the artist takes full responsibility. Umberto Eco
To create a sex sigil in a cartoon the artist is required to start the artwork with a sex symbol. The Arrivals
The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Over the next three months, indignation was carefully and systematically nurtured throughout the Islamic world by a small group of Muslims living in Denmark, led by two imams who had been granted sanctuary there. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion p24
Islamic mobs were violating diplomatic immunity and issuing death threats against civilians, yet the response from His Holiness the Pope and the archbishop of Canterbury was to condemn – the cartoons! In my own profession, there was a rush to see who could capitulate the fastest, by reporting on the disputed images without actually showing them. Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great p281
Innocent white paper until black ink is applied. Storyville: Why Democracy? Bloody Cartoons, BBC 2007
On 30th September 2005 twelve cartoons of the prophet Muhammad are published in the Danish national newspaper Jyllands-Posten, a provocation that was just intended to show that you must be able to satirise religious figures in a modern democracy. ibid.
Danish flags and embassies were suddenly set on fire all over the world. ibid.