Bloodless, insipid and dessicated cartooning

It was interesting to read some of the comments about my cartoons on Metafilter, from where about 1600 visitors arrived on Friday. Some were along the lines of:

Good to see that the Anglican sense of humour is as bloodless, insipid and dessicated as their religion.

Fair enough. I found this one rather more thought provoking though:

For all the gentle self-mockery of these cartoons, there is something quite complacent about them. They seem designed to prove that ‘we’ (= liberal Anglicans) are better than ‘them’ (= conservative bigots) because ‘we’ are capable of laughing at ourselves. Interestingly, Dave Walker’s cartoons for the Church Times often have a sharper edge, and give the impression of being produced by someone who secretly despises the entire Church of England.

This one is quite a good example of his sharper, more satirical style of humour. This one too. I have to be honest and say I don’t find either of them particularly funny, or even particularly accurate, but at least they express a point of view, which many of the other cartoons don’t. As to why I don’t find them particularly funny .. well, I think the only way to be funny about the Church of England is to treat the whole thing as a surreal fantasy. These cartoons do their best to be surreal, but they don’t go nearly far enough. In fact they are considerably less surreal than the real thing.

I have learned, when viewing criticism to:

1. Not worry too much about negative comments about my work
2. Place little importance on negative comments from those who don’t know me
3. Place even less importance on anonymous negative comments, which is effectively what these on Metafilter are

Having said that I find it interesting that the humour not being ‘edgy’ enough seems to be the recurring criticism. Interesting, as I personally find most humour described as ‘edgy’ a lot less funny than more subtle humour. And humour that is trying too hard to ‘say something’ is often the worst.

I know I need to carry on doing what I do without letting what people say affect me. But I would be interested to know from some of the regular commenters which of my cartoons they find the funniest. For instance, do you like the ones where I am trying to make some sort of point, or those where I am drawing something amusing because it is an amusing picture and for no other reason? Do you like my entirely inoffensive pictures or prefer those times when I have been a bit grumpy and done a drawing to ease my fury? I’m happy to hear which kinds you find less funny too – I really won’t be offended.

As I need to fill up some blog posts while I am away during August I may well post some of the cartoons you say you like along with a link to the blog of the person who made the suggestion. Feel free to suggest cartoons in the comments or via e-mail.