Election day came and went, Angela Merkel‘s CDU won, Steinmeier‘s SPD lost. Our new vice chancellor & foreign minister will be Guido Westerwelle (FDP). Another democratic event, albeit on a much smaller level, took place on Friday:
A jury comprised of four toonpool.com staff members and three external jurors decided on the winners of the “alternative” Elections 2009 Cartoon Contest. It took some time, but after more than 300 cartoons and caricatures and some disagreement, we decided on three winners. Click here for further information.
Apart from that, the 50.000th cartoon was uploaded to our server on Tuesday. Congratulations to user Katelein from Germany – by the way, this was the first cartoon she has posted.
Introducing…
I would like to introduce new member Engin Selcuk from Turkey (who unfortunately hasn’t uploaded an avatar yet). Most of Engin’s works are one panel cartoons like this one on Don Quixote or this one on massive libraries. Some others are sequential like this classic desert island cartoon or this bitter one on the future of war and I think both, sequential and one-panel cartoons work out well. A lot of Engin’s engins cartoons deal with the military and war and, like the one mentioned above, they are all pretty dark.
Another interesting new artist is Miroslaw Hajnos from Poland. His pictures are handcrafted cartoon paintings without any dialogue or caption. I liked the classic hankerchief-hatted fiat polska (do people wear these things outside of cartoons?) and the soup of justice. Some of the cartoons, however, e.g. the bare-breasted, tied-up woman on a gas burner made me feel uncomfortable.
Cartoons of Interest
My favorite cartoon this week is “Pax Bum” by Uber. On a superficial level you could say it’s about people being afraid of peace. But just imagine these doves really could explode in a puff of feathers and particles of olive branches. That’s what makes the cartoon dear to me … it could be the first minutes of a surreal massacre without any clear-cut meaning and still be funny in an uncomfortable way. Oh, and the composition of the cartoon is really great, too.
I would also like to refer to this cartoon by Pohlenz. Using a range of colors similar of “Pax Bum”, it pretty much sums up my experience of the elections. All these ridiculous faces on the election posters made it so easy to take a cynical outsider’s position to a decision that actually is important. I’ll be glad when they are gone .
© toonpool.comTags: last week, letzte woche
