It’s that time of year again – the days are getting longer, the blossom’s on the tree, the birds are singing, and it’s time to enter the Walkleys.
There’s nothing more depressing than picking your favourite cartoon out of the year’s offerings. As most people who know a cartoonist is well aware, we’re all neurotic needy types who require constant love, attention and praise to stave off a constantly threatening spectacular tailspin into the deepest pit of misery and depression.
Anyway, stiff upper lip and all that, I’ve flicked through the year’s work and am feeling the usual waves of inadequacy and self-loathing this entails, so I’m enlisting your help. I’ve narrowed it down to a short list of 16 and if you feel like casting an eye over them and picking a favourite and telling me why (comment below, or email if you’re shy), that would be much appreciated. If you hate ’em all, feel free to keep it to yourself.
The ETS Explained
The Language Barrier
Free Icecream
Revolutionary Spin
Kevvie McKenzie
Parting The Red Ink
A Very Labor Budget
Temporary Surplus
Culinary Emergency
Not As Scary As They Used To Be
The Perfect Shitstorm
Peace In Our Time
Where Money Goes
Overshake
Costello Reduction Scheme
Leave Early
If only one could get in a TARDIS, I’d suggest teaming up the ice cream van’s sign from ‘Free Icecream’ on the side of the truck in ‘Temporary Surplus’.
But for me the stand out is ‘Revolutionary Spin’. It collapses Rudd’s usage of the language into a very succinct package. And just who is Julia eyeing off? Rudd, the kid or the door through which I’m positive she’d like Kev to depart so she has the power (I also note that if I squint, she’s staring at me!).
How does one choose? The brutal simplicity of ETS explained, the awful truth behind The Language Barrier, the reductionist economic theory underpinning Free Icecreams or the linguistic genius of Revolutionary Spin. Or perhaps the tragic reality of Leave Early? In terms of something that sums up the year, crystallises it to its essence I’ll have to choose, um, Free Icecream. With nuts.
I like free icecream, so I’m voting for the free icecream one (I also like that comic best, so it works out well).
Just to be difficult, I like them all Jon. But if I have to choose, I’ll go for the Revolutionary Spin: It’s so simple it’s brilliant!
Jon it’s not what I think , it’s what I think the judges think and because I don’t think they do think I think the best shot you can give it is Free Ice Cream.
For bold images, limited colour palette and brilliant composition I have to choose “Not as Scary as they Used To Be”, but the one that leaves you with a lingering after-taste is “Where Money Goes”. Both do what brilliant cartoons do – speak more eloquently than words alone.
“Peace in our time”