Petry and Crisan: 12 Satirical Cartoons About Modern Society

Twelve Satirical Cartoons by Petry and Crisan

Petry and Crisan are a pair of Romanian cartoonists who sign their joint work "PeTry & CriSan". In 2016 Horia Crisan shared twelve of their satirical drawings on Bored Panda, where the duo was described as having worked together for more than thirty years. In their own short statement they said the cartoons express their views on war and politics and on human failings such as immorality and shallowness, and that their main goal is to draw attention to touchy subjects. They also mentioned that their work had won many prizes, without naming them.

Their style is easy to recognise: polished, almost glossy digital painting with exaggerated caricature faces, the look of a magazine cover rather than a quick newspaper sketch. That finish makes the dark ideas land harder. Each scene first looks familiar, a wedding, a hospital ward, a balcony speech, and then one detail turns it into an argument.

Below are the twelve cartoons with a short note on what each one appears to say. Satire is open to interpretation, so treat these readings as a starting point for your own.

War and its cost

1. The Soldier's Future

A young soldier marches off toward a signpost marked "WAR", waving to his pregnant partner, while a thought bubble shows the life he imagines: wedding, family, grandchildren. Above him, Death's scythe slices straight through that dream. The contrast between the cheerful send-off and the bloodied bubble is the whole message: war cancels futures, not just lives.

2. War

A giant Grim Reaper swings his scythe low across a stormy battlefield, cutting through a line of charging soldiers in a spray of red. In the foreground more men run forward with raised pistols, apparently unaware of what waits for them. The cartoon has no words, which leaves the scale of Death against the tiny figures to do all the work.

3. The Revolutionary's "Victory"

On a balcony, a battered young protester with a bandaged head and arm in a sling flashes a victory sign beside a well-fed politician in a suit. The list of demands behind the protester is fully ticked, but the shadow on the board behind the politician makes a rude gesture at the same list. The quotation marks in the title say it plainly: revolutions are often won in the street and lost in the palace.

Love, money and appearances

4. True Love

A priest marries a frail, elderly groom to a young, glamorous bride while the bridesmaids gossip. Their speech bubbles praise the couple's "true love", but every L and S is replaced by currency symbols such as the pound and the dollar. It is a simple visual trick that exposes a marriage of money.

5. The Grandmaster

Charlie Chaplin stands alone on a tall pedestal, while Jim Carrey, Rowan Atkinson and Benny Hill share a single plinth, stacked on each other's shoulders. The point is a tribute: it takes three famous modern comedians to reach the height of the silent-film master. Chaplin's cane and bowler hat make him instantly recognisable even without the label.

6. The Cure for Stupidity

Two patients lie in neighbouring hospital beds hooked up to drips. One of them has a boxy television set in place of his head. The joke reverses the usual idea of treatment: the "cure" being fed into a brain is endless screen content, and it is not making anyone smarter.

7. The Brain

A huge pink brain floats in dark space like a planet, while empty white speech bubbles swim toward it like sperm cells approaching an egg. Read one way, it is a picture of ideas trying to reach a mind; read another, it shows how much empty talk crowds around a single thought. The duo leaves the meaning open.

Religion and morality

8. The Bible, Corrected by God

A grinning devil holds open a large Bible while God, with a feather quill, crosses out words. On the pages, captions under a rich man and a poor family have been edited, "rich" and "poor" swapped. The cartoon is open to two readings: either the devil has already rewritten the book to favour the rich, or God is putting things right. In both, the debate is about who scripture is used to serve.

9. The Truth About Original Sin

Adam and Eve, nude except for fig leaves, stand under the tree of knowledge while a red, horned devil hands Eve the apple. Adam stands a few steps behind them, already holding an apple he has picked from the tree himself. The joke shifts the traditional blame in Genesis away from Eve alone and suggests the story was always more complicated than the familiar version.

10. The Opening Ceremony of Life

A woman gives birth in a hospital delivery room, but a red ribbon is tied across her legs and a dignitary cuts it with scissors while a priest and doctors applaud and a photographer takes pictures, as if a new bridge were being opened. It mocks the way public figures and institutions like to claim credit for, and pose beside, events that belong to someone else.

Freedom, care and the modern patient

11. Two Prisoners

In a cell scratched with tally marks, a pregnant prisoner lies on a bunk counting the days, and inside her belly the unborn baby is drawn counting too. Two lives serve one sentence. The image raises real questions about pregnancy in prison and about children whose first months are shaped by a parent's punishment.

12. Doctor or Veterinary? Both!

A waiting room is shared by a cow standing upright like a person, a pig, a rooster, a horse in high heels with ribbons in its mane, a pregnant woman and an elderly man, while a doctor and a vet appear at neighbouring doors. One reading is about rural health care, where the same overstretched services cover people and livestock. Another is about how patients feel when they are processed like animals in a crowded system.

How Petry and Crisan build a satirical image

Looking across the series, the duo relies on a few classic devices. Substitution is the most common: currency signs replace letters, a television replaces a head, a ribbon replaces a doctor. Scale is another, with Death towering over soldiers and Chaplin towering over his successors. And many cartoons use a second layer of detail, like the shadow on the board or the hidden apple, that rewards a second look.

These tools have a long history in political cartooning, from eighteenth-century British caricature to modern editorial pages. What makes this pair distinctive is the high-finish painting style, closer to fantasy illustration, which gives even grim subjects a seductive surface. That tension between beauty and message is deliberate.

If one cartoon struck you more than the others, it is worth asking why: does it confirm something you already believe, or does it push against it? Good satire usually does a bit of both. You can find more of their work on the duo's Facebook page.

Sources: Bored Panda: Sarcastic cartoons by Petry and Crisan; Petry and Crisan on Facebook; True Activist. All cartoons by Petry and Crisan.

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