Ok bill leak.had two sides his professional side and his graphity side. His gravity side was very sarcastic to make a point, but very well presented,

Dear Foxy,

Uttering Bill Leak's name in the same breath as Pickering should be criminalised.

The latter is a disgusting con artist, a philandering dole bludger and an all round nasty human being.

I have always felt cartoonists who focus on the physical features of their subjects rather than the absurdity of much of politics were going for the easy laugh, which is why I admire Tanberg so much. Simple lines distilling complex issues.

In the last decade or so Bill Leak played to his conservative audience, but there are those who do exactly the same for the left.

And don't get me wrong, when I say he isn't among our best cartoonist but when we are talking about political cartoonists he certainly deserves that accolade. At his peak his Walkley Award winning works were top shelf.
http://www.walkleys.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/walkley_magazine_cover_2.jpg

Perhaps like many of us curmudgeonation elbowed its way in as he get older and in Bill's case perhaps to a degree the rapier was later replaced by the broadsword. I can understand that perfectly.

My favourite cartoonist remains Leunig. Perhaps being a Victorian I'm slightly biased. I don't think he ever won a Walkley. The work that made me truly gasp in awe was one in which he had the conning tower of the Kursk poking through some clouds with the sun shining on the Captain's face. I may well have been cutting onions at the time.

Leunig has probably faced more censorship and condemnation than Leak ever did over his cartoons particularly this one;

http://ma.ttrubinste.in/wp-images//Leunig.jpg

The rabid rightwing in this country called for him to be sacked and he received death threats.

But he remains a national treasure.

SR,

So to be a great cartoonist, one can be artistically challenged, occasionally funny, as long as one has the correct political alignment and is racist against Jews?

Dear Steele,

I don't know much about Pickering's personal life.
I read that he has terminal cancer. I like
Ron Tandberg's cartoons very much. They're usually
spot on. Michael Leunig is a legend (likes meeting
people and doesn't own a duck). And of course there's
Fiona Katauskas (the Katauskas family is very well known
in the Lithuanian Community, especially in Canberra).

It is the violations, taking risks and reflecting on the sad and exasperating human condition that makes for good satirical cartooning in my view. Suffering and frustration and powerlessness - we only fool ourselves that we have any control over events - are part of the human experience. Most of us need those flashes of inspiration from astute and frank observers like the late Bill Leak and Pickering too, to front the day and keep on doing it.

Ron Tandberg is something else entirely, a predictable stodge who does his daily duty for his paper. Nowhere risky and disarmingly whimsical like Leunig and chalk and cheese when compared with the genius of Bill Leak.

SteeleRedux applies a political filter to everything it seems and is constantly on the lookout for confirmation of that bias. That makes everything so simple.

But for the rest of us there is life to contend with. We appreciate being unsettled, to go away with a different view even of the common and mundane. Pickering's vulgar depictions of politicians for instance pricked the balloon of politicians' egos, but they were also humbling for all of us who realise that underneath the front afforded by clothes, image and respectability we are all vulnerable, sensitive and rather flawed works in progress. We struggle with that and it is good somehow to find out that it is all part of the human experience.

I was going to add but forgot, that the astuteness and subtlety of Fiona Katauskas that was apparent in the images she drew of Malcolm Turnbull, the 'many moods of Malcolm' or something like that (will look for it later), again shows the gulf between the gifted, risky and forever frank satirist and the duty man for SMH,
Ron Tandberg.

Tandberg is never refreshing and novel, more an assembly line for not so funny, not so well illustrated, obvious biffs.

SMH should give that girl ;) Fiona a go.