The attempt on Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard’s life has meanwhile added further fuel to the global clash of civilizations project. Although there have been some cartoons on the issue, relatively few artists have felt a need to comment on the attack. I don’t know what that means – could be a lack of interest, information, new jokes or compassion.

Introducing…

Bruce Douglas Patterson from the United States has a very charming Lovecraftesque avatar and his pen and ink drawings, too, are leaning towards the dark side of life. Check out this collection of Postcards from Heck and this weird bug. He also seems to have a weak spot for cats. I thought that meatloaf kitty was a really weird idea. Could be something out of ALF.

Samsudin Ismail does classic editorial cartoons and I have to admit that I didn’t get a single one. Well, maybe the one about facebook. I guess there aren’t too many people on toonpool.com who know about Malaysian domestic politics but it’s definitely worthwhile to take a look at Samsudin’s works. He has that mixed media approach (probably digital, though) and mixes line drawings with blotches of grey watercolor. Check out the elephant, the circle, and the oil price.

Gregg works for GriDD. Whatever that means. He also does these weekly cartoons for his blog and has put some of them on toonpool.com. I liked this one about a failed attempt at drawing on napkins, this one on iPhone apps (especially the Peruvian hat) and this one virtual fishing. Is there really a Sudoku game for Nintendo’s Wii console? By the way, I just noticed that the main character bears a lower-case “i” – just like those fashionable apparatii mentioned above. There’s probably a connection.

Cartoons of Interest

David Levine, long-time caricaturist for the New York Review of Books, has passed away on December 29. I really like this little drawing by Firuz Kutal.



Paul Hellmich