Sunday, February 28, 2010

Contemporary cartoon in China - part 2

Article by JMB

Here is an anthology showing the works of 30 of the Chinese most famous actual cartoonists. This book was issued for an exhibition of Chinese contemporary cartoonists that was on show in the Museum of Satire & Caricature at Forte dei Marmi (Italy), from August 9th to October 5th 2008. After a one page foreword, there are two articles: “The evolution of satirical cartoon in China (written by The China Artists’ Association (2 pages), and “[Chinese] Cartoonists and power, a short story” written by Giorgio Giacomelli (5 pages). Each artist, of the 30 selected, has a four pages section, with a few data lines + a photo and a selection of 4 or 5 of his cartoons.
The China Artists' Association (CAA) aims to be the nation's principle art institution. This Association was established in July of 1949 and boasts over 6,000 members. Its affiliate organizations include the Chinese Paintings Committee, Oil Paintings Committee, Print Committee, Fresco Committee, Animation Committee and the Children's Art Committee. The association also publishes the monthly magazine Fine Arts.




Cartoons by Bin Zhang.



Cartoons by Jing Zhang (I don’t know if these two Zhang come from the same family).



Cartoons by Jie Luo.



Cartoons by Dachuan Xia.



Cartoons by Lichuan Xia (she is the young sister of Dachuan Xia).



Cartoons by Pengfei Xu.

Cartoonbook file: http://www.museosatira.it/cina

Learn more - go to:


Contemporary cartoon in China (part 4)

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Contemporary cartoon in China - Introduction

Article by JMB - first article in a series about Chinese Cartoon books

"The world is full of foreigners" (French colloquial joke)

The reading of foreign cartoon books is particularly interesting for discovering different subjects as well as seeing more graphic styles. The trouble comes when the possible captions are not in a language one can understand. Glory to cartoon without caption!
Well… once such books read, sometimes a collector cannot record any data about them. How can a westerner write a bibliography when a book is printed without any Latin letter?


The Cyrillic alphabet, if not really translated, can be transferred (letter by letter / or sounds’ letter by letters) into the Latin one. I suppose the same thing could be done with the Arabic alphabet (harder task, I never tried). This is an option. But how about the Far-East ideograms? Here, it is quite impossible. Nevertheless; it would be a pity to deny oneself the pleasure of entertaining with such cartoons coming from important nations like China.



China in Cartoons Exhibition
- January - March 2010 in the ECC

Contemporary cartoon in China (part 1)

Article by JMB

Since Jan asked me to present some Chinese cartoon books, I first start to show you some anthologies which title, publisher and publishing place are, for my eyes, unknown. I just can tell you these three books (soft cover, full color, 240 x 213 mm) were printed in 2005.

This one has 204 pages, and shows 350 cartoons by 17 cartoonists
its ISBN number is 7-80188-502-3


Here are two pages from this anthology
(cartoons by Su Ning).


This one has 178 pages, and shows 315 cartoons by 19 other cartoonists
its ISBN number is 7-80188-503-1


Here are two pages from this anthology
(cartoons by Feng Gui Bo).


This one has 168 pages, and shows 230 cartoons (& caricatures) by 41 other cartoonists
its ISBN number is 7-80188-548-1


Here are two pages from this anthology
(cartoons by Xiao Cheng Sen).

Here is another Chinese anthology which I don’t know the publisher and place names. I was told it is a collection of awarded cartoons for 25 years, 1978 to 2002, as shown on its cover. This one has its title (?) printed at the back cover and at every page: Zhongwai Huojiang Manhua. Its first 18 pages are in color on glazed paper, when the 299 other pages are in black & white, these ones are made of a thin and bad paper, so the result is not excellent.


Soft cover, size 210 x 200 mm, 350 cartoons. ISBN: 7-5407-2994-5


Learn more - go to:

Contemporary cartoon in China (part 4)

Saturday, February 13, 2010

It's Valentine's Day: may I present Pat Mallet 's erotic cartoons...



Das Grosse Buch der kleinen grünen Mänchen - germany 1977 Most cartoons in this book were published in the French magazine Lui

On the occasion of Valentine's Day 2010 I'll present you some light erotic cartoon books by Pat Mallet. Patrick Mallet (born in Marseille, 1941) is a French cartoonist. He is deaf since the age of 9 but nevertheless he created 'the little green men', 'les petits hommes verts' or 'die Kleinen Grünen Männchen' : little green martians that come to earth to explore mainly the female sex. And most appalling of all, the female sex seems to like the martians!
In 1966 Mallet's cartoons were published in Paris Match, Stern and Die Zeit. Since 1970, his litte green martians cartoons were published in the French magazine Lui. In 1972 and 1978 he received the 'Prix international de l'humour' in Montreal. I don't think he still draws cartoons , but the cartoons he made in the past are just very funny into my opinion.

Most of the books of Mallet I have, I bought on eBay Germany where you easily can find this books.


Les Petits Hommes Verts - éditions j'ai lu 1987

Die kleinen grünen Männchen - Fischer Verlag 1987



Die kleien grünen Männnchen werden Activ
- Fischer Verlag 1987


gelegenheid macht liebe - Fischer Verlag 1989


The book below is the second book of Mallet with cartoons about world history. Of course many of great moments in human history were inspired by the little martians and they were present at these moments. I'll show you this books in more detail later.


Did you know the martians helped Louis XIV of France
to build the Palace of Versailles?


Learn more:
Pat Mallet bio on Lambiek.net
L'Humour acide de Pat Mallet (french)
Facebook: avec Pat Mallet

More funny erotic cartoons on our blog

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Bill Mauldin: The Brass Ring

Last week I finished reading The Brass Ring (Berkley Publishing, 1971, 333 pages), an autobiography written by the American WWII cartoonist Bill Mauldin (1921-2003), in which he tells the story of his childhood and youth untill 1945, the year he won his first Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. His cartoon characters Willie and Joe became immortal. The story tells how a poor farm boy became world-famous spokesman for hundreds of thousands of young men at war, the greatest combat cartoonist ever, and won the first of his Pulitzer Prizes , all by the age of 23.


I bought this paperback edition (Berkley Publishing, 1971,333 pages) a few weeks ago for 1,75 euro. I enjoyed reading this books. It's well written, sometimes funny and taking. I learned a lot about the real life of American soldiers and the us army life during the invasion in Italy. I also learned about V-mail! Nowadays we have e-mail, but back in WWII soldiers could use this kind of Victory-mail. Mauldin drew a successful v-mail Christmas card for the GI's in Italy.

Mauldins Money-making v-mail christmas card

there is a nice story about this
cartoon in the book

pre-war cartoons

Some copies out of the book:






Here are some quotations about the book:


" Mauldin's contribution to understanding of the war and how the G.I.s saw it is unique"
(General James M. Gavin)

"If that little son-of-a-bitch sets foot in Third Army I'll throw his ass in jail."
(General George S.Patton)

"For all his often hilarious stories about snafus, high jinks and general military tomfoolery, his prose brings back the feel and smell of war, its pain and loneliness and challenge."
(Newsweek)

A few quotations out of the book I liked:

"General Theodore Roosevelt, junior", she told me. "He got up there and said your cartoons were saying what was on everybody's mind about the way infantrymen get treated in Naples. The other guy said you were inciting mutiny and Roosevelt told him you might be preventing it by blowing off a little steam for the boys" (p. 241)

"Using the survival kids they had been taught, they did some fishing with grenades and found buried wine casks by locating the steel hoops with mine detectors. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to use all of the material I got while hanging around that outfit. It was so wild it defied caricature."
(p.262, about the 1ste Special Forces)

Mauldin drew this Time cover (June 1945)

"... and General Patton, home for triumphal parades, has said I was the Bruce Bairnsfather of World War II and that he hadn't liked Bairnsfather, either." (p.331)