By various edited by Peter Barnes (Grafton Books)
ISBN: 978-0-246132-41-3
Here’s one more little dip trip to the vast library of cartoon comedy generated by Britain’s greatest and most prestigious magazine of informed entertainment, this time themed to explore the Really Big Question: After Life – What Next?
Punch began in 1841; a magazine dedicated to satire and humour, and swiftly became a national – and international – institution. It ran more or less non-stop until 2002 before finally closing its acerbic doors, having featured sharp, witty writers such as W. M. Thackeray, P.G. Wodehouse, P.J. O’Rourke and Alan (no initials) Coren among so very many others of their informed, cheerily scathing stripe. Many of these writers’ efforts were illustrated by brilliant draughtsmen and artists.
Punch became a social force, an invaluable historian and savage commentator: its contents could even influence governments.
The magazine probably invented, and if, not certainly perfected, the gag and strip cartoon. The list of brilliant pen-men who graced its pages is something I couldn’t live long enough to relate. Name a cartoonist; if he or she were any good they will have been published in the pages of….
With such a wealth of material, it’s truly surprising how very few collections have been generated from its pages. The one under the glass here is from 1987, selected by Editor Peter Barnes Hewison and finds a motley assortment of modern British pen-pushers exploring through the medium of brush and ink inquisitions the final mystery of what goes on after we go out like candles…
The gags range from familiar old friends to the arcane, surreal and contentiously peculiar but whatever your position or disposition on souls and salvation there’s beautifully rendered work here that will make you smile, chuckle, groan and even weep with laughter.
As usual this particular book isn’t really what I’m recommending (although if you can find a copy you won’t regret it); it’s the type of publication that I’m commemorating. These cartoons and many like them by the likes of such luminaries as Noel Ford, Banx, Donegan, Duncan, Honeysett, Birkett, W. Scully, Mahood, Heath, J. W. Taylor, Spencer, Albert, Cookson, Stan McMurtry, Ken Pyne, Nick, Dredge, Kevin Woodcock, Tony Husband, Ffolkes, McLachlan, Hector Breeze, and all the wonderful rest (with unintelligible signatures) are sitting idly out of touch when they could be filling your bookshelves and giving your deadened hearts a damned good, potentially last laugh…
© 1987 Punch Publications Limited Inc. All Rights Reserved.