Steve Ward Wins Marvelous Mug

The Cartoonists Forum (jointly run with the CCGB), has a weekly competition where a caption is given, and over the weekend, cartoonists upload a cartoon giving their interpretation of the gag.

Forum members vote on the cartoons, and a winner is selected.

His (or her) prize? Why, it's the kudos of choosing the caption for the following week!

The competition has been a fantastic success, and as an extra embellishment, a vote was had at the end of 2009 for the "Winner of Winners", with members voting for their favourite of the year.

Steve Ward's wonderful "transformers" cartoon won, and that would have been it, but for the fantastic gesture of Richard Skipworth, (a rival cartoonist whose own entries had won on a number of occasions), who designed some dazzling graphics, and had a mug produced as a prize to commemorate the occasion.

Click on the picture to see a larger image. The winning caption was, "It wasn't like this when I left it."

Well done, Richard!

UK Cartoonist Bernard Cookson has Novel Published

Bernard Cookson, a contributor to The Spectator, The Sun and The Mail on Sunday, had the idea for his novel, The Fifth Day several years ago.

A story about the theft of the Shroud of Turin, the book is a thriller in the vein of The Thomas Crown Affair, acccording to the author.

Mr Cookson, who lives in Remenham Hill, said: "The shroud has always fascinated me. The image on the material is thought by many people to be of Christ himself, so I was hit with the idea of an art thief who is contracted to steal it."

The book took three years to write and was "hard work". Mr Cookson said: "I’m not the sort of writer who can knock out a chapter in a morning but it was a great experience. When I had finished, I was actually quite sad because I had enjoyed the process."

Full article in the Henley Standard here...

Huw Aaron - Prospect Magazine's Cartoonist of the Month.

The brilliant Huw Aaron is Prospect magazine's "Cartoonist of the Month".

Cartoon Classroom

Cartoon Classroom is a free resource website set up by David Lloyd, Steve Marchant and Paul Gravett which aims to centralise all the information available on the study of cartooning and sequential art in the UK and the Republic Of Ireland.

It aims to serve libraries, schools, colleges and museums by directing them to creators who teach in these specialised areas via workshops and talks and to direct those who wish to find training in these areas for the wildest range of educational opportunities that can be found for them on a local and national basis.

Read the full story here...

Don't miss The Cartoonists taking on the quiz experts of TV's Eggheads this Thursday (October 29th) at 6pm on BBC2

A team from the PCO (Professional cartoonists Organisation has taken part in Eggheads, on BBC2.



The PCO team (seated, left to right) are Chris Burke (Chris was on the subs' bench but does not appear on the show), Alex Hughes, Royston Robertson, Robert Duncan, Graham Fowell and Martin Rowson.

Stood behind them are the host Jeremy Vine (second left) with the Eggheads team – CJ de Mooi, Barry Simmons, Daphne Fowler, Chris Hughes, Kevin Ashman and Judith Keppel (Judith was the Eggheads' sub).

The team has been sworn to secrecy as to the result, so we just have to watch it!

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UPDATE:

They won! Not just the final round, but every round leading up to it. Never been done before.

Heart congratulations!

Amazon - Free Delivery For Xmas

Anyone looking through the goods in our Cartoon Store (powered by Amazon), will be pleased to read this email we've just got from them:

"We're pleased to announce that we have removed our FREE Super Saver Delivery Threshold - the amount customers need to spend with Amazon.co.uk to qualify for free delivery - for the festive season. This means that each and every Amazon.co.uk product you advertise to your users this Christmas qualifies for free delivery.

FREE Super Saver Delivery will be available on all products until January 1st 2010. To be clear, FREE Super Saver Delivery excludes third party sellers where the product is not dispatched by Amazon. We hope this helps you and your users have a merrier Christmas and thank you for your continued participation in the Amazon.co.uk Associates programme.

For More Information on Super Saver Delivery in the UK: http://http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200397340

Your Amazon.co.uk Associates Team"

Visit our store HERE...

History of the Cartoon

Punch gives a history of the cartoon here...