Cartoonist Profiles: Foreign Affairs
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Matt Golding, Australia; Carlos Latuff, Brazil; Ricardo Sánchez Bobadilla, Mexico
Matt Golding
Streamline Feed goes “Inside the Mind of Matt Golding”
The sharp scratch of a pen against paper often carries more political weight than an entire parliamentary debate. For decades, Melbourne-based artist Matt Golding has leveraged that exact power, using his minimalist, razor-sharp illustrations to dissect the complexities of Australian federal politics. From housing crises to leadership spills, his pocket cartoons have become an essential morning ritual for readers of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
As a two-time winner of the Museum of Australian Democracy Political Cartoonist of the Year award [link added], Golding represents the vanguard of modern visual journalism. His work bridges the gap between dense policy and public understanding.
More Matt Golding at his Instagram page and Alan Gardner asked Golding to list 10 cartoonists who influenced him.
Carlos Latuff
On the eve of the Ayatollah Khamenei’s state funeral The Tehran Times interviews Carlos Latuff about his tribute to Ayatollah Khamenei for the newspaper.
Carlos Latuff has spent more than three decades documenting the Middle East through the lens of political cartooning, becoming one of the most widely shared and reproduced satirists covering US and Israeli policy in the region. Speaking to the Tehran Times following the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei in coordinated US-Israeli strikes, Latuff reflects on the moment he learned the news, why he chose to center his response on the Supreme Leader himself, and how decades of drawing Iran have shaped his view of Western media coverage.
From the interview:
Where were you, and what was your first reaction, when news of the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei reached you? How long passed between hearing the news and picking up your pen?
I must have received that news while checking social media. Two things crossed my mind at that moment. First, the US and Israel started this war. Second, this barbaric act would not intimidate the Iranian people—quite the opposite. By assassinating Ayatollah Khamenei, they made him even stronger. They turned him into a martyr! I make a habit of following the news on shortwave radio, and to illustrate one of my listening sessions, I created an illustration of Ayatollah Khamenei.
Latuff is a Brazilian of Lebanese descent. More background from Wikipedia. More Latuff at his Instagram page.
Note: The Tehran Times operates under the auspices of The Islamic Republic of Iran.
Ricardo Sánchez Bobadilla
Thomas Graham for The Guardian profiles Ricardo “Bobadilla” Sanchez and his comic strip El Ñacas y El Tacuachi.
What to do with all the bodies? Where to find a corrupt cop worth his salt? And how to catch the eye of that former beauty queen?
Such are the struggles of El Ñacas and El Tacuachi, the two sicarios – cartel gunmen – who are the stars of a cartoon that has been satirising the underworld of Mexico’s Sinaloa state for two decades, even as the reality has darkened by the day.
Bobadilla grew up in the state capital, Culiacán, so when he became a cartoonist he had the ideal subject matter to hand: something ripe for social commentary, and a bottomless well of black humour.
The cartoon debuted almost 20 years ago in an irreverent magazine called La Locha, with El Ñacas, the lanky one with ideas, and El Tacuachi, the stumpy sidekick who admires him, figuring out where to hide a body so no one would find it. They end up wedging it into a seat in Congress with one arm pinned up, voting for every proposal.
When La Locha disappeared after nine issues the cartoon was picked up by Ríodoce, a local newspaper, where it has run every week since.
More: From nearly two years ago Ioan Grillo at Crash Out profiled Bobadillo.
Shoot-outs echo like fire crackers at a carnival. Gunmen abduct youths off the street. Soldiers backed by helicopter gunships sweep on safe houses. Mutilated-corpses stain dirt roads. Hundreds have died and disappeared.
It’s a tragedy to weep at. Yet some Sinaloans also manage to laugh at their hardship.
Culiacán native Ricardo Sánchez “Bobadilla” writes comic strips set in the bloodbath.
More Bobadillo at his Instagram page.
feature image from El Ñacas y El Tacuachi
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