WHAT’S SO FUNNY

Andy Mason’s What’s So Funny: under the skin of South African Cartooning was launched this week at the Time of the Writer Festival.

Andy Mason embarks on a fascinating journey through the history of South African cartooning, tracing a vigorous lineage of satirical art that begins in the colonial period and continues unabated to this day. It’s described as a thunderous saga of ink and blood told in a succession of satirical images, some hilarious, some dark, some deeply shocking.

An ex-Durbanite, Andy Mason brings an insider’s eye to his scrutiny of the lives and works of South Africa’s visual jesters, paying homage to larger-than-life figures like Daniel Boonzaier, Derek Bauer, Joe Dog, Zapiro and fellow Durbanite Nanda Soobben. Andy Mason has been actively involved in cartooning and comic art from the late 1970s. In 1980 he joined Ravan Press in Johannesburg, worked on Staffrider Magazine and produced The People’s Workbook, a cartoon history of South Africa.

In the early 2000’s, he established the Durban Cartoon Project and Mamba Comix. In 2008, Andy moved to Cape Town, and co-founded CCIBA, the Centre for Comic, Illustrative and Book Arts at Stellenbosch University. A year later, he co-edited the first in a series of annual anthologies of South African political cartooning.

Published by Jacana Media, What’s So Funny: under the skin of South African Cartooning retails at R295.