Cartoonists in time of war

“Chappatte is probably one of the most influential authors in the world still linked to the print media.”

This totally exaggerated claim is excerpted from two otherwise great pages on editorial cartooning in times of war and the travails of creation. The piece appears in Objektiv, the classy supplement of the Slovenian newspaper Dnevnik. If you read slovenian…

The story is by Ahmed Burić, a former writer for the martyr Sarajevo newspaper Oslobođenje. He moderated a panel I was part of at the 2026 WARM Festival in Sarajevo in July, which centered around the presentation of the film The Pencil Snipers by Jean-François Berger. The documentary features the trajectories of editorial cartoonists during the Balkan wars.

Among them, the revered Corax from Serbia, who passed away this year - a true master of the art and a scathing opponent of Milošević. As a participant in the film notes: “There are many who think that Slobodan Milošević, at the end of his rule, simply came to resemble the caricatures of Corax.”

Another excerpt from Burić’s piece that we will all gladly agree on:“A newspaper is text, but what gives it full life, its juice, are the illustrations.”