We’re delighted to welcome three new cartoonists to our community, hailing from Qatar, Spain and Germany.

Philip Reynold

Philip Reynold worked for 30 years as an art director and creative director before becoming an editorial cartoonist. In November 2017, he joined the Gulf Times, a leading English daily in Qatar. Visit his Facebook page to see more of his work.

Fares Garabet

Fares Garabet is a Syrian cartoonists now living in Germany. Check out his Facebook page to see more of his work.

Manuel Macías Ávila

Manuel Macías Ávila is a Spanish painter, illustrate and cartoonist from Sevilla. He has participated in many competitions and exhibitions around the world.

Last week we reported a cartoon from Portuguese cartoonist Vasco Gargalo was removed from Facebook, most likely due to its explicit sexual content. The cartoon, titled 'Nuclear Kamasutra', shows Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in various sexual poses.

Although we still firmly believe it is not the role of Facebook to censor social satire, we came across this thoughtful piece by Philip Ellis, written for INTO.

It's a good article because it raises a series of valid questions and concerns that cartoonists face in their choice of symbols and analogies when they want to ridicule and criticize power:

'Ideologically dangerous figures like Mike Pence, Vladimir Putin, and, of course, Donald Trump, are sketched out in all kinds of gay scenarios, ranging from the campy (Trump and Putin astride a unicorn) to the sexually graphic (Gargalo’s aforementioned “Nuclear Kamasutra”). The point, supposedly, is to humiliate these men, to remove at least some of their power by making them objects of derision. Except doing so requires us to laugh at the mere idea of them engaging in homosexual acts, which is problematic for a number of reasons.'

We do recommend you go read the full article, because its food for though for all cartoonists. What weapons do you use to ridicule power, and are you sure those weapons are pointed in the right direction?

The only thing we're not sure of is if the author asked Vasco Gargalo permission to publish his work.

Great visual content generates traffic and online video is more popular than ever. Our shop not only makes it easy to buy cartoons for your publication, we also offer you a tool to instantly create a video slideshow of the cartoons you buy - for free! And we made an instructional video to show you how:

Lectrr is a political cartoonist from Belgium. His work appears in Belgian daily De Standaard. In addition to political cartoons, Lectrr also makes illustrations, comics strip and animations. Check out his website to see all of his work.

Photo: Anda van Riet

Last week, we announced the official selection of the international cartoon competition The Art of Resistance. 58 cartoons will be featured in the upcoming exhibition with the same title. This week, we’re kicking off the school competition: CM editor and cartoonist Tjeerd Royaards is in Zeeland (the south of the Netherlands) and for the next 10 days will be giving workshops for high school students, teaching them why cartoons matter and inspiring them to draw their own cartoons about resistance. The best cartoons made by the students will also get a place at the exhibition. The winners of the school competition will be announced on May 5th at the Freedom Festival in Flushing, when the winners of the international competition will also be revealed.

We did a similar school competition in 2016, with some amazing results, and we’re excited to organize a second edition!

With a total 1781 submissions from 76 countries we think our first international cartoon competition was a huge success! Out of all these submissions we made a shortlist of 200 cartoons; on March 5, this shortlist was presented to a professional jury, tasked with the difficult job to select the cartoons that will be featured in the upcoming exhibition ‘The Art of Resistance’ and to determine the winners.

The jury consisted of Hajo, a well-known Dutch cartoonist, Saskia van Loenen, chairperson of Pers & Prent (a foundation promoting political cartoons and organizer of the yearly Dutch cartoon award Inktspotprijs) and Michiel van Hattem, president of vfonds, a Dutch NGO with a focus on peace.

Together, they selected 57 cartoons, including 9 honorable mentions and 3 winners. The honorable mentions and winners will be announced on May 5th at the Freedom Festival in Flushing, the Netherlands. For now, we present the official selection of cartoonists, in no particular order:

Amorim - Brazil

Emad Hajjaj - Jordan

Aidarbek Gazizov - Kazakhstan

Katarzyna Kuzior - Poland

Aleksei Kivokurtsev - Russia

Khaled Al Jaberi - United Arab Emirates

Manuel Arriaga - Spain

Konstantin Kazanchev - Ukraine

Liu Qiang - China 

Agim Sulaj - Italy 

Mahmoud Salameh - Australia

Aleksandr Kovtun - Ukraine

Andrea Pecchia - Italy

Manny Avetisyan - United States

Bruce McKinnon - Canada

Falco - Cuba

Daryl Cagle - United States

Mohsen Asadi - Iran

Marilena Nardi - Italy

Arash Shayesteh - Iran

Grzegorz Szumowski - Poland

Hilal Özcan - Turkey

Denny Fisher - Brazil

BIZ - France

Alexander Dubovsky - Ukraine

Hicabi Demirci - Turkey

Assunta Toti Buratti - Italy

Vjekoslav Bojat - Montenegro

Umpo - Thailand

Yusef Alimohammadi - Iran

Dejan Borkovic - Serbia

Angel Boligan - Mexico

Ivailo Tsvetkov- Bulgaria

Mello - Brazil

Schlorian - Switzerland

Sylvain Pongi - France

Paco - Italy

Sergii Riabokon - Ukraine

Menekse Cam - Turkey

Shahram Rezaei - Iran

Mahmood Nazari - Iran

Willem Rasing - The Netherlands

Vladimír Pavlík - Slovakia

Patrick Grillot - France

José Antonio Rodríguez García - Mexico

Simona Vilchez - Peru

Jorge Mateus - Portugal

Rice Araujo - Brazil

Saeed Sadeghi - Iran

Oguz Demir - Turkey

Joanna Kołodzińska - Poland

Mary Zins - United States

Pete Kreiner - Australia

Nouri Najafi - Iran

MORO - Cuba

Osama Hajjaj - Jordan

Carlos David Fuentes - Cuba

We’ve received many applications in the last month, and we’re happy to announce we’ve added five new cartoonists to our roster, hailing from Cuba, India, Afghanistan, Canada, and the Philippines:

Hossien Rezaye

Hossien is a 31-year old cartoonist from Kabul, Afghanistan. He has a degree in architectural engineering and teaches at the university. He has been making cartoons for six years.

Yaimel Lopez

Yaimel is an artist from Cuba with a passion for illustration. His work is published in several publications; check out his website to see more of his work:

https://yaimel.com/

NEMØ

NEMØ has been freelancing cartoons since 2006 in local and some major Canadian newspapers. NEMØ cartoons have also been published in the USA and in Europe (France, UK and Germany).

Zach

Born in 1996, Zach is a young cartoonist from Cebu in the Philippines. His cartoons appear in various publications, including local newspaper the Antipolo Star.

Shaunak Samvatsar

Shaunak is an award-winning cartoonist and animator from India. He creates a political cartoons called Breadcrums.