© Christian Adams for The Telegraph @Procartoonists.org

The Premier League was rocked this week by the unexpected news of Sir Alex Ferguson‘s retirement, and cartoonists had a ball with it (sorry). In The Telegraph, Christian Adams put the news in context (above), while Matt Pritchett drew parallels with another recent shock resignation. Over in The Guardian, Kipper Williams considered the impact on industry. On the news that David Moyes is taking the reins, Procartoonists.org member Andy Davey pictures the handover in The Sun.

Rob Murray (full disclosure: the writer of this post!) will be opening up his studio to the public from 16-19 May, exhibiting and selling original cartoons from Private Eye, Reader’s Digest, The Spectator and elsewhere as part of the Summer Open Studios show at Wimbledon Art Studios. Entry is free and all are very welcome.

Stephen Collins celebrates the publication of his new book, The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil, with a launch party this evening at Gosh! in London. See preview pages in the ‘Big Comics’ section of his website.

Own-it offers a helpful and concise look at the ongoing controversial changes to UK copyright legislation, which pave the way for licensing of orphan works. Read it here.

An obituary for Margaret Groening reveals that her son – Simpsons creator Matt – believes in writing about what (or who) he knows. The Telegraph picks up on the story and provides this handy interactive family tree.

And finally, having recently challenged New Yorker cartoonists to a reverse-engineered caption contest, cartoon editor Bob Mankoff invites readers to have a go.

Frank Sidebottom holds a copy of Oink! @Procartoonists.org

A new documentary is being planned about anarchic TV icon Frank Sidebottom (aka Chris Sievey). In the guise of Frank, Sievey contributed strips to Oink! in the late 1980s. Director Steve Sullivan says the film “will cover Chris and Frank’s whole career, including focusing on his work as a comic creator and illustrator.” Sullivan has turned to crowd-funding to kick-start the project, and raised over £11,000 from Frank fans in his first day of fundraising. Read more about the project here.

The documentary is not to be confused with this fictionalised take on the Sidebottom legend, which will star Michael Fassbender.

Procartoonists.org member Ralph Steadman was sadly too unwell to attend the private view of his Steadman @ 77 retrospective at the Cartoon Museum in London this week. But the exhibition has already been receiving good press, including this piece from the Camden New Journal. The paper also reports on the theft of a Steadman original from a nearby pub following the private view.

Bloomberg Businessweek looks at the new British legislation that may change the way images are used on the internet, particularly when it comes to orphan works. Every cartoonist – or user of online materials – should brush up on this. For more on copyright law, and advice on how to protect your work online, look back at our previous posts on the subject here and here.

The Brighton Festival begins this weekend, and Harry Venning isn’t the only cartoonist opening up his studio to the public. PCOer Guy Venables and Private Eye/Independent cartoonist Grizelda will also be inviting visitors into their workspaces. Find out more about the festival here. The Spectator also has coverage of the Artists Open Houses.

For those who like lists, Buzzfeed has produced this handy run-down of historic cartoons that changed the world.

And finally, some encouraging signs from the next generation: Dutch teenagers have been clamouring for political cartoons in 7Days, a weekly newspaper for young people in the Netherlands. The editorial team have listened, and topical cartoons are now appearing courtesy of Cartoon Movement.

Self "Poortrait" © Ralph Steadman 2006

A major retrospective on the work of Ralph Steadman to mark the acclaimed cartoonist’s 77th birthday on 15 May opens at the Cartoon Museum in London tomorrow (1 May). 

Steadman @ 77 will feature more than 100 original artworks and span the full range of his work including his first Punch cartoon, from 1956, and material from Private Eye, The Observer, New Statesman and others, as well as drawings that illustrated Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by his longtime collaborator Hunter S. Thompson.

The show also has drawings from Steadman’s takes on Alice in Wonderland and Animal Farm, and there are wine drawings for Oddbins, political cartoons and examples of  real and imaginary birds from his most recent book Extinct Boids.

Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas © Ralph Steadman for Rolling Stone

Accompanied by a 160‐page full-colour catalogue – with contributions by the actor Johnny Depp, the writer Will Self and the cartoonist Martin Rowson – the exhibition runs until 8 September.

The Cartoon Museum is in Little Russell Street, close to the British Museum. It also shows cartoons, comics and caricatures from the 18th century to the present day and is open Monday to Saturday 10.30am-5.30pm and Sundays 12noon – 5.30pm. For more information visit the Cartoon Museum website.

North Stand © Huw Aaron @Procartoonists.org

Kudos to Procartoonists.org member Huw Aaron, who was recently highly commended in the Cartoonist of the Year category of the 2013 Sports Journalism Awards for his rugby-themed strip, North Stand (the prize was eventually won by The Telegraph’s Matt Pritchett for his coverage of the London Olympics). Huw has also been busy with other projects, including producing stop-motion animations for S4C science programme Corff Cymru.

Following the recent publication of his Gin Lane Gazette, PCO member Adrian Teal has been leading guided tours of London.

Harry Venning, the cartoonist and comedy writer behind Clare in the Community, is opening up his Brighton studio for four weekends during May as part of the Brighton Festival. See the brochure to find out more about the Artists Open Houses event. Harry’s studio is at 93 Islingword Road.

Amazon has launched a new tool enabling cartoonists and comic creators to produce digital versions of their work for Kindle. Read more here.

Graphic journalist Dan Archer tells the BBC about how he uses comic strips to report on major political and social issues. Elsewhere, New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly writes for Forbes about the importance of cartoons by women around the world.

Cartoonists and illustrators including Simon Tofield, Sir Quentin Blake and Peter Brookes are among the artists taking part in Gromit Unleashed, painting statues of the beloved Aardman dog for charity.

And finally, any cartoonist will appreciate the humour in this series of letters about rejection from Mad magazine.

If you come across a piece of cartooning news we might not have spotted, please let us know.

The huge drawings made in the town Square in Shrewsbury on Saturday 20th April at the tenth edition of the cartoon festival.

Pete Dredge and Noel Ford cooperate in the Melodrawma at Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival 2013 © Mika Schick @ procartoonists.org

A small selection of photographs from the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival 2013.

Cartoonist Alex Matthews concentrates on his Big Board at Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival 2013 © Geoff Ward @procartoonists.org

John Landers - coping just fine with an eight foot by six foot canvas at Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival 2013 © Geoff Ward @ procartoonists.org

Cathy Simpson gets down to detail on a tablecloth during a function at Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival 2013 © Mika Schick @ procartoonists.org

There will a longer post with details of the artwork made over the weekend coming soon.

The members of the UK Professional Cartoonists at the tenth edition of the festival.

Bill Stott at last year's Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival

Bill Stott, cartoonist, founder member of Procartoonists.org and all-round raconteur, is to appear on this week’s edition of Midweek on Radio 4, chatting to Libby Purves and fellow guests.

He told us: “Libby is very pro-cartoonist. I have worked with her many times over the years. Hopefully she’ll ask me nice questions. It’s all unscripted, so it’s anybody’s guess.”

Bill is also a member of the organising committee of the Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival, so we’d hazard a guess that the 10th festival, which is held this weekend, might come up.

Midweek is a famously eclectic show which sees Libby Purves, who is a patron both of the festival and of Procartoonists.org, steering the conversation among a wide variety of guests. So who will be be sharing the microphone with Bill?

Bill: “Fellow guests include a brother and sister who have a remarkable collection of letters from their father, and an American sailor who sailed the wrong way around the world. I’m reliably informed that this does not mean blunt end first. The only spanner in the works is that the programme clashes with Mrs Thatcher’s funeral.”

That sounds to us like a useful listening alternative.

Midweek is on Radio 4 at 9am on Wednesday and will be available online.

© Ed Fisher/Cartoon Bank @Procartoonists.org

Cartoon captions are a major theme in this week’s Round-up. Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker, looks back at the work of Ed Fisher (including the excellent meta-cartoon above), and also recalls some of the best caption contest entries by Roger Ebert. Both Ebert and Fisher passed away recently.

Over at The Telegraph, editorial cartoonist Christian Adams has unveiled his first caption competition, and is offering the original artwork as a prize for the best suggestion. Each contest will be topical, and this week’s features the late Baroness Thatcher. Head over to his blog to enter.

Unsurprisingly, Thatcher has been the subject of many cartoons in the past week or so. Gerald Scarfe, a cartoonist famous for his savage depictions of the former PM, talks about his relationship to his subject in this Q&A for the BBC. Elsewhere, David Ziggy Greene posts a piece he wrote and drew for French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo back in 2010. Read it here.

One of our members, the delightfully talented Gabriel Alborozo, has launched a new project. Simple Pleasures celebrates those small moments in life that make everything a little better. Alongside his own ideas, Gabe is taking suggestions from visitors to the site. You can also follow the project.

A new documentary film, Dear Mr. Watterson, celebrates the world of Calvin and Hobbes, while the strip’s creator, Bill Watterson, is also discussed in this article from Salon which argues that we should all respect the great man’s privacy.

Martin Rowson writes for Procartoonists.org about Dylan Thomas, drink and cultural vandalism at the Laugharne Weekend

Last weekend I was in Laugharne in South Wales for the annual Laugharne Weekend, a dependably wacky and eclectic mix of comedians, musicians, writers and, for the second year in a row, one cartoonist.

When they asked me along for this year’s bash, I offered the organisers some added value on top of my usual foul-mouthed guide to the 37,000 year long history of visual satire. Given that Laugharne famously was where Dylan Thomas lived and about which he wrote Under Milk Wood, would they like me to do a really (and I mean REALLY) big visual representation of their most famous resident? Like, for instance, on a distant hill?

That, in practice, proved too daunting, but it was agreed that I would produce an image on the large lawn beneath Laugharne Castle, employing as my brush whatever you call one of those things they use to mark out football pitches. And the image itself? Obvious! Dylan Thomas as the Cerne Abbas Giant!

Then, just days before the gig, I was told the local council had nixed the idea of using the lawn. Still, they’d got the agreement of the Three Mariners Pub, in which Dylan used to drink himself stupid, so I could knock off a nice big mural on the wall opposite there instead.

So, last Saturday morning, slightly hungover from the night before (when I’d managed to draw Sir Peter Blake at dinner, which vague likeness the great man signed) I clambered on top of a pub table and, with a pot of emulsion and some brushes from the nearest hardware store, I produced my artwork, to a few grunts of admiration from the small yet critical mass of early drinkers settling down for the duration.

Dylan Thomas mural in Laugharne © Martin Rowson

I spent the rest of the day hanging out with the likes of failed cartoonist Phill Jupitus, going to some gigs, doing my own gig and, late at night, drinking fine wines with the legendary Bard of Salford John Cooper Clarke, until 4am. He too I drew, with a very great deal of black ink.

Notwithstanding, I got up reasonably early, checked Dylan was still on the wall and set off back for London, a tiny part of my brain wondering how long that emulsion would last in the damp Welsh climate.

What I didn’t expect, quite so soon, was the email from one of the organisers saying there had been complaints from the locals; complaints, moreover, about the aspersions I was casting, by inference, on their sexual capacity when in drink (or so it was reported to me). I spoke to the local press about these complaints, but before the interview was even over, the Giant had been entirely removed from the wall, with a power hose.

Well, what can you say? Either this is the greatest piece of cultural vandalism since Lady Churchill burned Graham Sutherland’s portrait of her husband or the Taliban blew up those Buddhas, or it’s how you’d expect a mucky scrawl on a wall to be treated by a decent and responsible local authority. Personally, I’m rather flattered, and not entirely bothered as it only took me about 15 minutes, and it only took that long because my hand was slightly shakier than usual. And, of course, next year I can do one even bigger.

Still, it’s a warning to all of us who engage in very public cartooning. So I have this piece of advice for anyone who’ll be ‘tooning in the Square in Shrewsbury (alas I won’t be there as I work weekends, and Laugharne claimed my time off for April). Make it mean, but keep it clean!