A good satirical cartoon makes you laugh first and think a second later. This gallery collects 21 illustrations that use that delay: some are cheeky seaside-postcard jokes about vanity and cheating, others are sharp comments on poverty, greed, social media and the way we treat the planet.
Most of these images have circulated on social media for years, often stripped of their creators' names. Where a signature is readable we mention it; otherwise we describe the cartoon and what it is getting at. Below you will find a short guide to how visual satire works, the cartoons themselves with a note on each, and a few questions worth asking before you share one.
How visual satire works
Cartoonists squeeze a complicated issue into one frame by using visual metaphors: a heart-shaped balloon, a felled tree, a smell drifting through a window. Exaggeration does the rest. A tiny detail, such as a nurse's high heels or a baby blowing smoke, carries the argument without a single word, which is why the best of these cartoons work in any language.
Many of the drawings below are in the tradition of wordless international cartooning, the style seen at cartoon festivals and in syndicates that distribute work to newspapers worldwide. Others come from the bawdier European humour-comic tradition, where the joke is about desire, jealousy and embarrassment.
Love, desire and betrayal
Honey, I have a confession... I have another woman. A husband announces his affair while his wife's many lovers hide on the ceiling, behind the curtains and under the bed. The punchline flips the confession: he is the last to know.
A burglar and a naked lover meet in the same wardrobe while a couple sleeps. It is classic bedroom farce, the same kind of joke that has filled stage comedies and humour magazines for a century.
A teenage girl pulls back a sheet expecting to find her friend alone and instead finds him in bed with someone. The drawn sex scene is played purely for the shock on her face, in the tradition of adult European humour comics.
A boy is lifted off the ground by a heart-shaped balloon tied around his neck, while a chain links his foot to a brain anchored to the floor. It is a neat visual summary of being torn between feelings and reason.
A caveman with a heart above his head pushes a heart-shaped boulder off a cliff onto the woman below. Love, the cartoon suggests, can crush the very person it is aimed at.
A man and a woman chisel each other out of stone, each carving the partner they want. Discarded pieces, a Playboy logo, handbags, sports gear and a crown, show how expectations shape the people we love.
Vanity and the body
An elderly patient in a wheelchair drools as a glamorous nurse walks past, and even his slippers are drooling. The cartoon mocks the old cliché of the sexy nurse as much as the leering patient.
On the beach a man sucks in his stomach and puffs out his chest as an attractive woman passes; once she is gone, the belly drops back. A familiar image of how we pose for one another.
A man tries the same trick at a swimming pool, flexing to impress a sunbather while his reflection under the water shows the real belly. It carries the logo of Joker Éditions, a Belgian publisher of humour comics.
A grinning older man holds a box with a puppy under a sign reading Pet my puppy, while a young woman reaches in. It is a cheeky double-entendre joke about the lengths people go to for attention.
A fox carries two women under its arms while two smaller foxes watch admiringly. It plays on the fox as the classic symbol of the sly seducer, admired by the younger foxes looking on.
Social media and modern habits
How come Facebook keeps deleting our profile pic? Two babies feeding at their mother's breast are the joke here, a reference to the years when Facebook removed breastfeeding photos and mothers protested. The company has since stated that breastfeeding photos are allowed.
Instagram, with zero likes, breaks down the door of a yellow room marked with Snapchat's ghost logo. The cartoon refers to Instagram copying Snapchat's Stories feature in 2016 and quickly overtaking it.
A mother in a yellow dress breastfeeds while smoking, and in the second frame her baby exhales smoke. It is a blunt anti-smoking message: what a parent takes in, a child can take in too.
A diner calls the waiter to complain about a fly in his food; in the second frame the waiter calmly sprays insecticide on the plate. Signed by the artist, it is a gentle joke about service that solves the wrong problem.
Poverty, greed and the planet
A poor family sits in a dark alley eating the smell of a rich man's roast through his window. Separated by a single wall, the two worlds share nothing except the aroma, an old image of inequality that is still sadly relevant.
Six panels show people enjoying a tree's shade, fruit, swing, birds and shelter from the rain, until a man in a suit takes an axe to it. The cartoon is signed Arcadio, the signature used by Costa Rican cartoonist Arcadio Esquivel, whose wordless strips have been published internationally.
A man walks away with a bundle on a stick that pierces the woman and child he leaves behind. Drawn in dense cross-hatching, it reads as a comment on migration or abandonment: leaving home always costs someone left behind.
A drowning woman waves for help, but the lifeguard swimming to rescue her has not noticed the giant octopus below. The cartoon is a reminder that some dangers are invisible from the surface.
A blind man lies flat on his back after walking into a lamppost while his guide dog relieves itself against it. Dark humour about trust and distraction, aimed at the dog, not the man.
Questions to ask before you share a cartoon
- Who made it? Many viral cartoons lose their signatures. A reverse image search often leads back to the artist, who deserves credit.
- What is the target? Good satire punches at power, hypocrisy or our own habits; a joke that only mocks a group of people is not commentary.
- What is left out? A single frame simplifies. Enjoy the idea, then ask whether the real issue is more complicated.
- Is it current? Jokes about apps and platforms age quickly, as the Facebook and Instagram cartoons above show.
Satire has always been a way for ordinary people to talk back to power and to laugh at themselves. These cartoons are a reminder that a pencil, a good idea and a little exaggeration can still say more than a long speech.
Sources: Cartoons by various artists, credited where a signature is visible. Background: interview with Arcadio Esquivel (JR Mora); Arcadio Esquivel profile, Pace University Earth Desk.
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