Lianhe Zaobao's 100th anniversary cartoon exhibition and the role of comics in Asia in 2023

by Lim Cheng Tju

On 20 May 2023, I attended the opening of the main Chinese newspaper in Singapore, the Lianhe Zaobao's 100th anniversary cartoon exhibition at One Punggol, a newly-opened community space in Singapore. 10 Zaobao cartoonists were featured, although only one of their cartoons each was showcased at the exhibition. The audience was supposed to scan the QR code to see more of their cartoons. These QR codes were also displayed on tables of selected hawker centers in Singapore for the patrons to enjoy their meal and read the cartoons on their phones at the same time. Most of the cartoons featured on the website are humorous takes on life in Singapore.

This was a very different experience from the Zaobao 90th anniversary cartoon exhibition held at the Singapore National Library 10 years ago. I was involved in that exhibition as a consultant. I had written a Masters thesis on the history of Chinese cartoons in Singapore from 1907 to 1980 with the Department of History at the National University of Singapore in the early 2000s. The exhibition made use of my research materials and I also gave a talk as part of the exhibition programs.

That particular exhibition was more historical in nature, featuring cartoons from 1923 to 2013 to show the changes in Singapore society for the past 90 years. This current exhibition is intentionally different and refreshing in using a different way to showcase local cartoons on new platforms and using technology. One need not visit a static exhibition but could still view the cartoon exhibition when they chance upon it at our local hawker centers, a staple activity in our daily lives in Singapore.

But this got me thinking – after 100 years, are cartoons now merely a source of entertainment to be read while eating our meals? Or can they provide more food for thought in thinking about social issues and international affairs? I was asked by a reporter at the exhibition what I would like to see more of in Zaobao – my answer was: given the current political and economic instability overseas, reading humorous cartoons can help us to relax. But I would also like to see more coverage of international current affairs as it is important for our young to know about supply chain issues and other volatile events that will affect us. And these can be in the form of words, pictures and cartoons. This would be a return to the tradition of newspaper cartoonists as commentators and journalists.

 

This was also the focus of a keynote address I gave on comics in Asia recently at a comics exhibition opening in Penang. Angin Berlabuh was an exhibition organized by an NGO in Malaysia who wanted to showcase social issues using the documentary comics of Taiwan and Malaysia artists. So far, there are few Anglophone books written on non-Japanese Asian comics (see Asian Comics by John Lent published in 2015 and Mangasia by Paul Gravett published in 2017) which cover 16 to 18 countries / territories, centering on the regions of East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia. But, in reality, depending on which websites you checked, Asia is much larger than that. It is the largest continent in the world with 4.7 billion people, about 60% of the world’s population. There are almost 50 countries if we include Western, Central and North Asia. We can even include Russia if we are generous and be more encompassing in how we view the world.

With all these diversities, how do we even talk about Asian comics and its role in today’s world in 2023? It is precisely because of current global conflicts, which have resulted in globalization receding and nations putting up barriers and emphasizing on boundaries, that we should look for commonalities, connections, convergences and leading to collaborations. Diplomacy plays a big part in this, but culture and in this case, comics and cartoons can help people to see the possibilities in the sharing and movement of ideas and the creation of networks. Not to over-generalize issues nor to ignore local factors, histories and identities, but in this time of flux and conflict, something like comics can cut across borders and for us to identify the things that can still unite us. The role of comics is to lend perspectives and provide common grounds for dialogue.

 

For example, one of the themes I noticed in some of the Asian comics I have read in the last 15 years is the concern for the environment and climate change. In the story, Flooded House, Flying House by Shari Chankhamma (Thailand), which was published in Liquid City Vol. 2 (Image Comics, 2010), the divide between the rich and poor has reached new heights – the rich live in the sky while the poor lives on the sea (the world is flooded because of environmental disaster) and have mutated to have fins on their hands. It is a dystopia that touches on the environmental and economic threats we face today – a theme that any readers in the world can identify with.

Another powerful theme is social justice. Priya’s Shakti (2014) written by Ram Devineni and Vikas K. Menon and drawn by Dan Goldman has the look and feel of your traditional comics about Indian mythology. But it was inspired by the tragic events of the gang rape and murder of a female student on a private bus in Delhi in December 2012. The success of the comic, online and in print, has led to sequels such as a comic story about acid attacks on women.

Only by focusing on the bigger picture (or cartoon) about issues that concern all of us that hopefully we see beyond conflicting national interests which seem to dominate our narrative these days. It is intentional of me to include Russia as part of Asia earlier in my article. If we only see them as the bad guys (and Russia is not monolithic and some opposed the war), there would be no room for resolution and dialogue. Call me an idealist, but you are talking to someone who grew up reading comics and cartoons all his life and never stopped. In the Chinese dialect, Hokkien, it's called jiak beh tua (never grow up). But I believe that is the role of comics in Asia or anywhere - to help us see the world more clearly and perhaps innocently as well.

Book Review: Drawling Liberalism: Herblock’s Political Cartoons in Postwar America

 Reviewed by Christina M. Knopf

Simon Appleford. Drawling Liberalism: Herblock’s Political Cartoons in Postwar America. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2023.  https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5814/     

The political cartoons of Herbert Lawrence Block, professionally known as“Herblock,” influenced leaders, shaped political discourse, and had a lasting impact on public memory. Herblock’s career, Simon Appleford notes, “lasted seventy-two years and encompassed the presidencies of thirteen men, from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush” (1-2). Born in 1909 in Chicago, Block worked there and then in Cleveland as an editorial cartoonist until joining the Army in World War II. Following his discharge, he worked for the Washington Post for an amazing 55 years until his death in 2001. Appleford claims in Drawing Liberalism that Herblock was a significant advocate for, and voice of, postwar liberalism – one that is largely neglected in scholarly attention to liberal intellectuals of the era. Drawing Liberalism thus focuses on “how Block’s cartoon’s [sic] reflected and shaped liberalism in the domestic sphere” (15).

The book is organized into six chapters, prefaced by a brief introduction, and followed by a short epilogue. Forty-three Herblock cartoons illustrate the chapters, assisting readers’ understanding of Herblock’s style. The introduction establishes the significance of political cartooning in history and public discourse, while providing a brief overview of some of their rhetorical features. However, comics studies and political communication scholars with keen interests in the visual and rhetorical devices employed by cartoonists will find uneven attention to those features in the rest of the book. Appleford is a historian whose focus is on Herblock’s articulation of, and contribution to, postwar liberal ideology, not an art historian.

The first chapter provides a brief biography, outlining Herblock’s journey to the Washington Post in 1946, highlighting the influences and experiences that shaped Herblock’s politics and artistry. Chapter 2 focuses on Herblock’s work throughout the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s. Appleford introduces the chapter as one that “examines the visual devices that Block used to persuade his audience” that the fearmongering of anti-Communists was as much a threat to the country as Communist subversion. Some of the “visual devices” discussed include Herblock’s use of sports metaphors, allusions to Greek mythology, everyday scenarios with which readers could identify, and his development of the character of Mr. Atom – an anthropomorphic atom bomb. Appleford further identifies three categories of Herblock cartoons that represented threats to Americans’ civil liberties: cartoons that depicted the House Un-AmericanActivities Committee (HUAC) as vacuous and vindictive; cartoons that depicted HUAC members as overzealous and malicious; and, cartoons that depicted HUAC “in activities that struck against the very symbols of American democracy” (61). Indeed, as Appleford discusses in the chapter, Herblock is largely credited with coining the term “McCarthyism” after Senator Joe McCarthy, who he drew with a “thug-like, almost Neanderthal depiction [that] would become a recurring theme” (69) of Herblock’s characterization of opponents to civil liberties and civil rights.

In chapter 3, Appleford examines Herblock’s handling of segregation and racial violence, arguing that “Block identified the fight for African American rights as one of the most important social and political movements of the mid-twentieth century,” (16) – but one in which he was more concerned about white intolerance and bigotry than the Black experience. Appleford writes, “By privileging the actions of white elites […] at the expense of other participants – most notably of the African American community but also of women and children – Block gave his readers a significantly distorted picture” of events (87) – but he also brought the ideal of racial equality as fundamental to American values “to the attention of a much larger audience than might otherwise have been exposed to ideas of liberal intellectuals” (90). And the white Southerners drawn in Herblock’s cartoons took on the signature thug-like appearance that he used for depicting enemies of liberalism.

Chapter 4 argues that Herblock’s “cartoons serviced as proxies in the early stages of a national debate over the so-called culture wars that has characterized much of American political discourse for the past fifty years” (16). It begins with Herblock’s response to the Kennedy assassination and the hostility with which an anti-gun cartoon was received by many readers – which Appleford describes as a reflection of the early stages of the “culture wars.” The chapter then looks at Herblock’s cartoons during the Kennedy years, noting that the artist “drew inspiration from the self-styled rhetoric of the campaign” to depict Kennedy as “a courageous pioneer or clean-cut cowboy” (120). The reader is left to fill-in-the-blank, that such imagery reflected Kennedy’s use of the frontier metaphor. The chapter also examines Herblock’s disparagement of the right-wing John Birch Society and Daughters of the Revolution, where he again used his thuggish depictions to suggest the “presumed lack of education and propensity for violence” (127) of their members. Appleford connects such imagery to Herblock’s belief in an urban majority as more representative of American ideals than the rural minority, with which he connected a conservative ideology that was antithetical to American democracy,

Chapter 5 is concerned with Herblock’s lackluster response to the emergence of the New Left in the 1960s – one that “failed to give any legitimacy to protest movements” (16). Here, discussion turns again to Herblock’s handling of civil rights and his tendency to privilege the actions of, and impact on, whites. Appleford also discusses Herblock’s relative lack of attention to women’s rights issues as “a reflection of postwar liberalism’s own lack of interest in the questions [compared to] civil rights” (165). Appleford further notes Herblock’s reliance on the major tropes of “dangerous seductress, innocent victim, or as a symbol of American values” (167) – though such visual metaphors were infrequently related to women’s issues or civil rights, such as the Vietnam War caricatured and embodied as the mistress of the Lyndon Johnson administration. Overall, Appleford demonstrates in this chapter that Herblock’s lack of representation for women’s and other rights-based movements that emerged in the 1960s suggested an unwillingness to engage with critiques of “the patriarchal institutions and cultural practices of postwar liberalism” (169).

The final chapter focuses on the subject with which Herblock is most strongly connected in public memory – his portrayals of Richard Nixon. Appleford seeks to show how Herblock’s cartoons were pivotal in defining the public perception of Nixon, transforming him from a young congressman considered handsome and principled, “into an archetype of corruption, a chameleon whose position on the issues of the day changed based solely on political expediency, and whose features became synonymous with the abuse of power” (16). Throughout the chapter, Appleford frequently discusses the prominent “5 o'clock shadow” in Herblock’s caricature of Nixon – one that was a controversial point of contention for the president and his supporters. It is, however, almost by accident in passing that Appleford recognizes that the darkened face visually represents “the darker side of Nixon’s character” (206). Other common depictions of Nixon by Herblock as a vulture or undertaker and as a man who wore many masks. Perhaps the most insightful part of the chapter is Appleford’s exploration of Herblock’s cartoon coverage of Watergate, for which Herblock frequently used water imagery. Washington Post owner Katherine Graham noted that Herblock’s cartoons were well ahead of the news on understanding the significance of the Watergate break-in, and Herblock worked closely with reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in making sense of the investigation.

The book’s epilogue briefly examines some of Herblock’s post-Nixon work to underscore Herblock’s lifelong commitment to democracy by using his pen to pressure the people and the government to “do the right thing.”

Throughout the book’s 234 pages, Appleford considers the ways in which Herblock “was attempting to tread the fine line between caricature and stereotype” (41). He rarely depicted African Americans in his cartoons – and some of those depictions relied on minstrel Black face features and some only showed the characters from the back. He also typically depicted women in traditional gender roles, as faces in a crowd, as members of a family, or in gender-appropriate professions such as teacher or nurse. Appleford particularly notes Herblock’s use of literary and pop-cultural allusions: Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass. Snow White. The Wizard of Oz. Poltergeist. Harvard University’s alma mater “Fair Harvard" (although Block never finished college). Readers would be well-advised to look through the end notes for additional insights.

Appleford deftly weaves the work of Herblock into the larger political history of the United States. As such, the book may be a great resource to any scholar looking to better understand the zeitgeist of postwar America. One weakness for classroom or reference use, however, is that chapters do not use subheadings to help organize or clarify the different topics or themes encompassed in each.

In the book’s focus on Herblock as an intellectual of postwar liberalism, Appleford is very successful. He carefully situates and explains the arguments advanced by Herblock in relation to other liberal thinkers of the time. Some attention to other cartoonists of the era might have also been informative, especially when Appleford presents perspectives on Herblock’s engagement, or lack of, with particular topics and imagery, to offer readers a sense of whether Herblock’s handling of these was unique or not. Nonetheless, readers are sure to gain a new understanding of the current political milieu through Appleford’s history. His attention to not only Herblock’s arguments, but also to the controversy they generated provides historical perspective on present day partisanship within the culture wars.

 

Christina M. Knopf, PhD is a Professor & Presentation Skills Coordinator in the Communication and Media Studies Department of SUNY Cortland.

Book review: Asian Political Cartoons by John A. Lent

reviewed by Matt Wuerker

John. A. Lent. Asian Political Cartoons. University Press of Mississippi, 2023. https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/A/Asian-Political-Cartoons

At the risk of revealing my own shallow occidental ethnocentrism, I have to say that I was largely ignorant of the cartoon culture of Asia.  I have always had the general idea that cartooning was something that was particular to Europe, especially England and France, but also Spain, Germany and Italy.

It’s true that what we in the west think of as the political cartoon did come out of Europe.  But, like meat pies, macaroni, and beer, cartooning spread from there through colonial expansion to other parts of the world.  Some of those colonial territories were very fertile ground for this crude, yet very powerful and popular form of art, I think of South America in particular.  But I always suffered from the mistaken notion that Asia was largely not taken with the idea of political commentary in the form of exaggerated drawing combined with humorous word bubbles.  John Lent’s new book “Asian Political Cartoons” shows me how wrong that impression was.

In 300 mostly-color and beautifully-laid-out pages Lent takes us deep into the rich and culturally complicated history of the political cartoon in a part of the world that has seen staggering and tumultuous political change over the last century.

While all these cultures enjoyed unique traditions of their own in the visual arts, the arrival of the colonial powers introduced the novel and odd European concept that political dissent can be expressed in funny pictures and distributed in penny sheets and humor magazines.  In China for instance suddenly there were China Punch, Shanghai Charivari, and Shanghai Puck all imitating their Western antecedents.  The simple power of thumbing your nose at power and authority with arresting caricatures and graphic exaggeration has an innate appeal.  It spread quickly.

Ironically enough as Chinese nationalism and the struggle against colonial occupation started to build this same graphic form was turned against the imperialists, and not just those from the West.

Political cartoons don’t always use humor, but instead can express deadly serious outrage. In the war with the Japanese Chinese political cartoonists marshaled their craft to contribute to the war effort.  Lent shows how these cartoonists melded their classical Chinese ink drawing styles with more Western cartoon imagery to create devastating war propaganda posters.

The Philippine cartoonists also used a similar kind of jujitsu and turned this colonial art form against those that would colonize them.  First sharpening their pens on their nineteenth century Spanish occupiers, they then turned their fire on their twentieth century American occupiers.

Philippine nationalists used satirical magazines, often graced with cartoons on their front covers to lambast those who had colonized them as well lampoon their own compatriots who were going along with and embracing being colonized.

 Another country among the dozens Lent examines is Bangladesh, one that I had the pleasure of visiting myself about 10 years ago.  Despite attempts by the parliament to introduce blasphemy laws that would punish any images deemed unsuitable by the Islamic mullahs, the Bangladeshis enjoy a thriving and very industrious cartoon community. Beyond popular printed magazines like Unmad they’ve also built a home and a platform on social media that includes great animation work. When I visited back in 2013, I especially enjoyed getting to know many of the bright lights in Dhaka, especially Nasreen Sultana Mitu, Tanmoy, and Mehedi Haque.

 Lent also shines a light on the struggles that many Asian cartoonists face as those in power attempt to intimidate and censor them.  The fight for freedom of speech in Asia has been tough… and continues.  Authoritarians of all stripes really don’t appreciate political satire.  From Mao to Suharto, to the current leadership in China, Malaysia, and Singapore, as well as religious fundamentalist movements throughout the region, censorship, jail time, and threats of violence can be the cost of creating political cartoons. Over the years many brave cartoonists have taken great risks to stand up for the ”freedom to cartoon.”  In recent times and despite the best efforts of those in power to shut them up cartoonists like Wang Liming (Rebel Pepper) and Badiucao in China, Zunar and Fahmi Reza, Kanika Mishra in India, among many others, have kept up the fight.

As the book ranges all across Asia, it also highlights the five decades that Lent has dedicated to studying and chronicling the cartoon culture across the continent.  He’s met and personally knows many of the prominent practitioners, as well as many of the new generation.  It’s a grand tour through cartoon territory not very well known by many of us.  A journey well worth taking.

Wuerker is a practicing cartoonist for Politico, and has won the Pulitzer, Berryman and Herblock awards/prizes.

Curator’s Notes on Jim Morin: Drawing and Painting, an Exhibition of Political Cartoon Drawings and Landscape Paintings

by Martha Kennedy  

Self-Portrait, c.2017   ©  Jim Morin

Jim Morin: Drawing and Painting. Martha H. Kennedy. Ogunquit, Maine: Ogunquit Museum of American Art, May 1 – October 31, 2022. <https://ogunquitmuseum.org/exhibition/jim-morin-drawing-and-painting>

Ed. Note – When it became apparent that we were not going to get a reviewer for this show in Maine, we asked the exhibit’s guest curator, Martha Kennedy to give us some background on creating the exhibit. A long-time contributor to IJOCA, she has recently retired as a curator from the Library of Congress’ Prints and Photographs Division.

  The exhibition presents a selection of cartoon drawings and paintings by the artist that focus upon the environment and landscape. Best known as a highly acclaimed political cartoonist, Morin is also a very accomplished painter in oil. He stands out among his peers by connecting the artistic process of working in these two different media, noting “My paintings affect my drawings and vice versa...” 

During more than four decades as the editorial cartoonist for the Miami Herald, Morin won two Pulitzer Prizes in 1996 and 2017, shared another with the Herald editorial board in 1983, received the Thomas Nast Society Award in 2000, the prestigious Herblock Prize in 2007, and many other honors and distinctions. While honing his talent and skill as a cartoonist, he made time to paint in the evenings and frequently exhibited his paintings from 1982 onward.

Born in Washington, D.C. in 1953, Morin grew up outside Boston, Massachusetts, in a family that discussed politics and encouraged him to draw. He graduated from Syracuse University with a major in illustration and a minor in painting. He studied the latter under Jerome Witkin, who “saw cartoons as paintings, as art.” This perspective played into Morin’s artistic development in that strong design characterizes both his cartoon drawings and his paintings. Morin worked at the Beaumont Enterprise and Journal and the Richmond Times-Dispatch before he became the editorial cartoonist for the Miami Herald, holding the position from 1978-2020.

Works in the exhibition are arranged in three sections. Cartoon drawings in “The Environment” reveal Morin’s ability to transform keen observations of the physical world into arresting imagery that captures changes in the earth’s atmosphere, threats to the well-being and diversity of fauna and flora, pollution of the oceans, deforestation, and other shifts in the environment. He has never shied away from pointing to the impact of varied human activity on the planet. As evidence of climate change has grown and become widely acknowledged by scientists and non-scientists alike since the late 1980s, his concern has only deepened, and his imagery become more alarming. Selections include several Pulitzer Prize-winning works and graphic commentaries on major environmental disasters including the oil tanker Exxon Valdez running aground and the explosion of British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig. In many other examples, he also decries how unchecked development of fossil fuels adversely affects the land and human well-being.

 Another section of the show situates Morin’s drawings in the grand tradition of satirical art that arose and flourished largely in Britain and France from the late 18th into the 19th centuries. Leading artists of those times, such as James Gillray (1756-1815), Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827), and Honoré Daumier (1808-1879), employed bold caricature in scenarios that critiqued the behaviors of leading public figures and governing bodies. Morin cites his study of Daumier’s work, both drawings and paintings, as a major influence in his artistic development. The tone and approach that he employs, for example, in caricaturing businessmen and politicians as squat, rounded figures, sinister and smugly smiling as they wield power for dubious ends, remind one of Daumier, who won lasting acclaim for his biting portrayals of the deceitful and powerful.

 Additional qualities that often characterize Morin’s cartoons include boldly designed compositions, varied points of view, and fine, often meticulous rendering of forms regardless of size, all perfectly balanced. Many of these qualities also distinguish his paintings. Although Morin paints a wide variety of subjects including landscapes, cityscapes, and human figures, this exhibition primarily features landscapes, which include no people. Recent examples, in particular, possess a strong sense of place underlaid by keen observation and love of nature. His paintings often feature changing atmospheric conditions and light effects in the sky and on the water, in addition to reflecting his fascination with approaching storms. Since 2013, he has chosen to live in Ogunquit with his wife Danielle Flood, a writer. He celebrates the natural beauty of the area and finds inspiration in walking, kayaking, and viewing the ocean from his house, and seeing what he calls “a daily miracle.”

 Jim Morin will discuss his work in conjunction with the exhibition, following a brief introduction of the artist by curator Martha Kennedy at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art on Tuesday, July 5^th, from 5-7 p.m. The exhibition is generously sponsored by the Miami Herald.

 

Book Review - Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle Against Censorship, by George and Liew

reviewed by Leonard Rifas

Cherian George and Sonny Liew. Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle Against Censorship. MIT Press, 2021. $34.95. ISBN: 97802625430
19 https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/red-lines

Red Lines surveys “21^st century restrictions on freedom of expression as experienced by political cartoonists around the world.” The most dramatic cases are of cartoonists who have been assassinated; abducted and presumed killed; arrested and died in custody; assaulted; jailed; threatened; sued; fired; or were forced into exile. In addition to presenting their stories, the authors describe the very ordinary, market-based pressures which result in dissenting cartoons playing a much smaller role than they could in the liberal democracies of the West.

The co-authors briefly include their own backgrounds. Cherian George had served for a few years in the 1990s as art and photo editor of the largest newspaper in Singapore, and Sonny Liew created a rightly-celebrated graphic novel about Singapore’s history. Unlike other nations with strong economies, Singapore lacks press freedom. Liew was responsible for the “scrappy,” very visual treatment of the text, and also contributed portraits of several of the cartoonists.

Their book’s scope is truly global, with examples from more than sixty nations. They thank such people as the supremely well-connected John Lent, the activist organization Cartoonists Rights Network International, Daryl Cagle, and others for their help in making this possible. For Red Lines, they interviewed over five dozen cartoonists from six continents, and they cite scholarly material from over 200 published sources (all in English.)

The idea of a “political cartoon” has no clear boundaries. For this project, George and Liew define “political cartooning” quickly and simply as “drawn commentary on current affairs.” They also include some examples from “the associated arts of caricature, comic strips, memes, and graphic novels.” Although clearly tangential to the kind of work that they love, the co-authors admit that memes have become “the most prevalent genre of political cartooning today” and credit memes for introducing a more participatory and engaging way of distributing messages (though through a medium, the internet, which has the potential to become the most fully regulated space ever known.) 

The political cartoons that seem closest to the heart of their project could be described more narrowly as single-panel, satirical drawings, published for a mass audience in a newspaper or magazine or posted on the web, which denounce a leader’s wrongdoing and for which the cartoonists paid a penalty. Even using this more restrictive definition, one book could not include every 21^st century cartoonist who has encountered serious limits to their artistic freedom.

Red Lines’ chapter on “The Boys’ Club” notes that “Traditional studies of censorship didn’t explore the gender dimension.” Ironically, even in studies of how various voices have been silenced, those “silences resulting from sexual discrimination were often ignored.” Once the issue has been raised, it becomes evident that “gender-based censorship” exists “everywhere” and that gender-based hierarchy and oppression rely on this. 

Red Lines discusses several extreme examples of gender-based censorship, including the persecution of Iranian cartoonist Atena Farghadani. Her cartoon mocking legislators who had passed a sexist law led to Farghadani receiving a prison sentence of 12 years. (She served two years before being released because of international pressure.) In the United States, some women cartoonists are silenced by the more everyday means of online harassment, which can create what Anita Sarkeesian calls an environment “too toxic and hostile to endure.” 

The focus on 21^st century examples keeps the book feeling current and fresh, but the authors also include some well-chosen historical examples for context, particularly in their chapter on racist cartoons. As George and Liew acknowledge, in the battles to promote full rights and respect for the dignity of all groups of people, some cartoonists have taken one side in these conflicts while some cartoonists have worked on the other opposing side.

In addition to the brutal older methods of state repression and the quieter and more effective methods of economic strangulation, increasingly the pressure on cartoonists comes from mob action, either in person or, more commonly, on the web. Internet responses to provocative cartoons can serve positive ends. George and Liew credit such criticism for sometimes helping cartoonists learn to avoid committing unintended offenses with lazy stereotypes, and for contributing to the evolution of society. 

Not all complaints, though, are well-founded or made in good faith. Sometimes political entrepreneurs strategically take offense, manufacture outrage and perform victimhood to advance a political cause. Cartoonists are sometimes caught in the crossfire of “proxy battles” in larger cultural wars. The rhetoric of “victimhood” has been used both by discriminated-against minorities and by majoritarian nationalists. Red Lines advises cartoonists to learn to tell the difference “between surrendering to a mob and adapting one’s work in solidarity with the oppressed.” The simple rule of “punching up and not kicking down,” though, becomes complicated partly because people disagree on which direction is up. For example, Red Lines asks: “Are cartoons about Muslims and terrorism punching up at a global movement of extremists […] or kicking down at marginalized Muslim minorities in the West?”

The long, penultimate chapter focuses on the massacre of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in Paris in 2015. The chapter (while, of course, never condoning the crime) analyzes the offending cartoons from multiple perspectives, and then rather than surrendering to “the Rashomon effect,” intentionally “privileges the perspective of the cartoonists at the center of the controversy.” By this, they mean that they trace the previous decade’s most immediately-relevant events that had led up to their deaths. The book does not simplistically deify the murdered artists as noble martyrs to high principles. The final word goes to a surviving Charlie Hebdo cartoonist, “Luz,” who says “The simple fact is that our friends died.”

Red Lines’ perspective seems more multinational than international, emphasizing each cartoonist’s situation largely within his or her own national context. Several of the nations in which cartoonists have suffered repression have been targets of the US government’s ongoing attempts to weaken their regimes or overthrow their leaders, including Nicaragua, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, China, and Iran. Nothing brings out the censors like a state of war, and, it would have been appropriate to add, this also applies in nations bedeviled by the CIA’s undeclared wars and the US Treasury Department’s sanctions.  (Possibly no recent study has been written that focuses directly on the historic roles of editorial cartooning in international propaganda campaigns, psychological warfare operations, and destabilization efforts.)

Given recent developments (with most jobs for professional, full-time staff cartoonists still disappearing rapidly), when the authors struggle to end on a hopeful note, they conclude simply that cartooning will not die. Political cartoonists who follow current affairs closely, demonstrate artistic skill, and seek to contribute to civic engagement will continue to struggle onward. Students and others who wish to support those struggles can find in this attractive volume a welcome, wide-ranging and nuanced introduction to the issue of cartoon censorship.

 A version of this review will appear in print in IJOCA 24-1.