We love cartoons, at Daily Info, and regularly feature them in our printed sheet as well as livening up the website! We're fortunate to have had many cartoon contributors over the years. The foremost of these was Mary Potter, who drew so many cartoons on Oxford city and University life that she gets her own page. She was artist in residence at Daily Info from 1975 until her death in the late 1980s.
Since then many people have drawn for us - dragons, University life, bike thefts, Sharks in roofs, anything that struck people as amusing or noteable about Oxford. Below is a sample of their work. Please note all copyright remains with the artists! These images are not available for use by anyone else. But if you wanted to use one for something do get in touch, and we will try to put you in touch with the creator.
Want to see your work here? Submissions always welcome! Details here.
Mary Potter
Mary drew prolifically, and during the war she worked in the cartographic department. We like to imagine her official MOD maps annotated with tiny dragons and people, like medieval maps. Though Mary's dragons were usually benign.
Miranda Rose
Miranda ran Daily Info for many years, and still has a hand in the business, so she is even more a resident artist than Mary Potter. Her cartoons often grew out of office conversation, misheard comments, chance remarks, or phrases from ads or reviews we had been sent.
Scoot
Scoot is short for Scooter McKenzie, the cartooning alter ego of Peter Bellingham. Peter has stayed local, and stayed drawing - he works as an illustrator and designer for all sorts of different projects, from town maps to company manuals.
Emily Brady
Emily Brady is a comic creator, cartoonist and illustrator, whose portfolio includes original webcomics, portraits, book covers and video game artwork. She's drawn some beautiful dragons and Valentine's cartoons for Daily Info.
Rachael Smith
Rachael Smith is an illustrator and comic creator, who has produced many original webcomics, and has drawn covers for the BBC's Doctor Who comics. For Daily Info, she's drawn some cheeky dragons and ghosts.
Oxford Murders
The author of these cartoons is lost in the mists of time. If you can tell us anything about them, please do! Many of our cartoons date from a particular set of Cartoon Competitions in the 1980s, so that's the most likely date for these. Judging by the number of series that date from then, we are tempted to say undergrads had more time on their hands...
Town v. Gown
These wry cartoons by an otherwise unidentified "Tom" form a whole series, and perhaps go to explain some of the gulf of understanding that can arise between citizens of Oxford and students. They're also notable for the use of different fonts.
Russell Goodwin
We have a clue to the dates Russell was cartooning, in his Millennium Baby cartoon, but again he's someone we've lost touch with. His cartoons have a political flavour which gives them a nice bite.
Gargoyles of Oxford
This charming series is less University-obsessed than many of our cartoons, and nicely varied. We don't know who LOB is - again, please let us know if it's you!
Misc and Anonymous
This section contains a mix of one-off cartoons, drawings for which we've lost all details of the authors, and things from long ago. Some of the things in our archive must have been specific to events for which we've lost all details even, as they no longer make sense. Our most curious of the curious.
Send us your cartoons!
Daily Information's Cartoon Submissions are permanently open. If you can send us a cartoon that is Oxford-specific (or of interest to Oxford people), wry and/or amusing, and which will work well in our print medium (bold lines, black and white, lots of contrast, clearly legible when printed at 7 or 14 cm width), we pay £20 per selected cartoon. Original copyright remains with you, the artist, though we reserve the right to reproduce your cartoon in our media whenever we like.
Alternatively, if you have an Oxford-related illustration or painting that is beautiful but won't come out in print, send it over and - if we like it - we'll gladly feature it online with a free link to your website.
Send hard copies (with SAE for return of originals) by post to Daily Information, First Floor, 121 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1HU or by email to [email protected].