Winner: "Steinmeier and Obama" by Lexluther (Germany)

Second Winner: "Angela Merkel" by Nicoleta Ionescu (Romania)

Third Winner: "Steinmeier VS Merkel" by Salnavarro (USA)

You can see the winners and places four to ten in this collection. It was hard enough to agree on three winners, so actually all other cartoons in this gallery share place four. If you want to make up your own mind about all the Merkels and Steinmeiers: this collection contains all participanting cartoons.

For all of you who participated: Thank you for submitting your work. You contributed to a global exchange of art, opinion & humor and I am sure you made a couple of people laugh, smile, smirk, or giggle. Keep up the great work!

members of the jury: Max Pohlenz, Bernd Pohlenz (CEOs, toonpool.com), Rebecca Conrad (Creative Director, toonpool.com), Paul Hellmich (Blog Guy, toonpool.com), Niels von Boldvig (Cartoonist from Århus, Denmark), Sven Larsen (Lecturer, Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule), Karl-Ludwig Baader (Editor, Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung)

Paul Hellmich

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Jury photos:

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 .