Just so you know, from 15th February 2025 I’m cutting back to one cartoon a week for the Guardian’s Opinion pages, at my own request which I made about a year ago.

I’m mentioning this because in these foul and tumultuous times, to quote the great Turkish cartoonist Musa Kart, cartoonists have become the go-to canaries in the coal mine. Whether through editorial caprice, heel-clicking political cowardice or finance department boneheadedness, it seems we’re always the first ones over the side or under the wheels. Musa himself has been repeatedly imprisoned  on trumped-up charges (deliberate pun) after decades of persecution by Turkish president Recep Erdogan, starting over 20 years ago when he had the temerity to draw Erdogan as a cat. In the US, currently straining under the yoke of “free expression fundamentalists” like the toxic Elon Musk, the dwindling number of newspaper editorial cartoonists, already long since seriously diminished by the dictat of accountants, is being further depleted by proprietors and their craven editors grovelling before the ludicrous Mango Mussolini now squatting in the White House. And as we should never forget, just over 10 years ago, the  five Charlie Hebdo cartoonists murdered alongside seven of their colleagues (including Frederic Boisseau, the office janitor) by men wielding assault weapons and shouting “God is Great!”

To be clear, none of this is happening to me, and I’ll continue providing the opinion page cartoon in Saturday’s Guardian for as long as I can still see & hold a pen and they can stand my bad puns. Indeed, given that half the UK’s national daily newspapers now no longer publish a daily political cartoon, the Guardian’s commitment to and support for cartoons needs acknowledging, as does their quiet nurturing of new and diverse cartooning talent. You may not even have noticed it, but over the past 2 and a half years the paper’s been publishing cartoons by dozens of previously unpublished cartoonists, including Sarah Akinterinwa and Danny Christie, respectively the first Black British female and male political cartoonists to be published in a British daily newspaper. I’m enormously proud to have played a small role in helping ease all those cartoonists, for a while at least, into one of the hottest hot seats in journalism.

It’s not just the hate mail, on-line lynch mobs and death threats that provide the heat (although I’ve long since learned to dismiss death threats by email or social media: send me one of my children’s ears through the post to my home address, then we'll talk). The real heat comes from the nature of the job itself, which you can  only ever truly experience when you’re doing it in real time. One of the reasons the Guardian made space to showcase new talent live in the paper itself was so wannabe cartoonists (after a trial run) would find out if they could actually respond to the latest news with an idea for a piece of visual satire good enough to win the approval of the editors,  thereafter weaving it into artwork which can both cover and hold a full half-page of the printed newspaper. And do all of that in an absolute maximum of 6 hours. Some could; others couldn’t. Few can.

For my own part, for most of the past 40 years the adrenalin rush from the thrill of the deadline was the best part of the job, producing the same kind of endochrinal hit you get from jumping out of the back of an aeroplane without a parachute, a combination of blind terror and wild exhilaration. Until, that is, about a year ago. Whereas once the prospect of painting a herd of pigs in pinstriped suits stampeding over the horizon 10 minutes from deadline would make my heart thump with joy, once I hit 65 it just left me knackered. And rushed. And ultimately naggingly unsatisfied with the finished artwork for no particular reason. Except for the fact that expecting anyone to produce the kind of complex and intricate images I like to create in around 4 and a half hours, once I actually start painting (with real paints and brushes, thank you very much), is frankly deranged.

And that’s why, on my 66th birthday on 15th February, a year after I would once have received my state pension before George Osborne did to my generation what the pigs in Animal Farm did to Boxer the Carthorse, thereafter I’m only going to shove myself through the deadline mangle once a week.

Plus, in an overcrowded place it makes more room for more new cartoonists to emerge, slightly shifting the eternal logjam of old men hogging all the best cartooning slots apparently forever, a phenomenon I first observed in my twenties and have regretted ever since, even after I nestled neatly into the logjam myself over 30 years ago.

But I’m not retiring, just giving myself more time to devote to book projects and mastering other media and naffing about with my wife. And fear not. I’ll still be raging against the dying of the light, just in a slightly different way. For details, please read on...

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If you’ve got this far, thank you. And here’s the deal. I’m going back to first principles to pursuing the business model of the founding fathers of my profession like Gillray and Cruikshank. Before political cartoons first appeared in daily newspapers in 1900, for the previous two centuries cartoonists (as they weren’t called) sold their filthy, seditious and blasphemous scribblings directly to the punters unfiltered by the wisdom and understandable caution of editors.  

So, on 1st April we hope to launch a subscription service through this website. I’ve yet to work out all the details with Rich, my redoubtable web commissar, including the subscription rates. But they’ll be cheap and affordable, and the offer will include:

At least TWO  EXCLUSIVE political cartoons a month, sent directly to your inbox

Hi-res digital copies of each published cartoon once it’s in the public domain, likewise directly to your inbox (I get a lot of feedback from people complaining that they lose detail in print and online)

A monthly newsletter of my wild ramblings on anything that enters my head

EXCLUSIVE previews of artwork for forthcoming books

Regular send outs of highlights from my Archive of over 15000 images produced over the past 45 years

Significant discounts for subscribers on original artwork, prints and other merchandise sold through my website’s online shop

Invitations - when arising - to my performances, appearances, book launches and exhibitions

PLUS anything else that enters my head which I reckon you might fancy.

It would help me and Rich enormously if any of you who are interested could let us know via this site so we can price and prepare prior to launch. Otherwise, for anyone wondering why I’m not joining Substack, the answer is simple: I’ve worked in journalism for 42 years, including at one point or another for every national daily newspaper except The Sun, who never asked me. In other words, I’m caked in quite enough of the shit of media platforms of all kinds to see me out without paying some more techbro nerds 10%, however apparently benign they currently appear. They’re all gateway nerds to Muskism.

Oh, and one last thing. I toyed briefly with calling this subscription scheme “The Fur Cup Club” until my wise and wonderful wife pointed out this might attract absolutely the wrong demographic. See you in the funny papers, and I hope here too.

Look after yourselves

Martin Rowson
Lewisham
1st February 2025