Big Bad World: Cartoon Molotovs in the Face of Corporate Rule

by Polyp

Polyp has been drawing provocative political cartoons for New Internationalist magazine for ten years, as well as contributing to other radical publications. Now 200 of his best cartoons have been brought together in a single volume which sums up his sardonic slant on global politics.

96 pages, Paperback

First published August 14, 2002

About the author

I've been scratching 'Polyp' political cartoons since 1980 and took it up full time in the 90's, having been a care worker before then.

New Internationalist Magazine, bless 'em, gave me my first big break, turning over a whole issue to STARVE TREK, a political spoof of Captain James Knee Jerk beaming neoliberal politics down to reluctant planets throughout the galaxy. I owe them my career.

Since then I've drawn cartoons for anyone who'll have me, including Ethical Consumer Magazine, WDM, Christian Aid, War on Want, The Big Issue, Friends of the Earth, FoE, Liberty, People and Planet, Campaign Against the Arms Trade, and all the other usual suspects.

As for my politics... well... read the cartoons, chuck in some chunks of Bill Hicks, radical democracy, direct action, the co-operative movement, Karl Popper: then stir and then give it your best guess.

I'm very active in the skeptics movement, taking both an anti religion stance, and one against psuedoscience - particularly where it collides with my political beliefs.

Q&A with Polyp

Reviews

[Donnell]

This fellow, writing in 2002 and earlier, sensed the future.

The cartoons are spot on, and he also includes some great quotes, like:

"The elite ruling class wants us asleep so we'll remain a docile, apathetic herd of passive consumers, and non-participants in the true agenda of our governments--which is to keep us separate, and present an image of a world filled with unresolvable problems, that they, and only they, might one day, somewhere in the never-arriving future, be able to solve. Just stay asleep, America, keep watching TV."
Bill Hicks (1961-1994), Stand-up comedian

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching
that unnerves me and causes me to tremble
for the state of my country...
Corporations have been enthroned
and an era of corruption in high places
will follow, and the money power of the
country will endeavor to prolong its reign...
until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands
and the Republic is destroyed."
Abraham Lincoln, 1864

[Alistair Potter]

Lovingly crafted collection of cartoons by Polyp that make one smile and think.