CARTOONS FROM THE LONDON EVENING STANDARD
By Jak (Beaverbrook Newspapers)
NO ISBN:
Sometimes our industry is cruel and unjust. This collection of cartoons by Raymond Allen Jackson, who, as Jak, worked for thirty years as political cartoonist at the London Evening Standard is one of many that celebrated his creativity, perspicacity and acumen as he drew pictures and scored points with and among the entire range of British Society.
His gags, always produced to a punishing deadline as they had to be topical, were appreciated by toffs and plebs alike and were created with a degree of craft and diligence second to none. Even now, decades later, they are still shining examples of wit and talent.
But…
Artists like Jak who were commenting on contemporary events are poorly served by posterity. This particular volume (re-presenting panel-gags from October 24th 1972 to October 5th 1973), like all of these books was packaged and released for that years Christmas market, with the topics still fresh in people’s minds. But thirty-five years later – although the drawing is still superb – unless you have a degree in British Social History, the trenchant wit, the dry jabs and the outraged passion that informed these pictorial puncture wounds is denied to us. I was there and even I don’t get some of the jokes!
I don’t have a solution to offer. It’s just a huge shame that the vast body of graphic excellence that news cartoonists produce has such a tenuous shelf-life…
© 1973 Beaverbrook Newspapers Limited.