Bob Moran Documentary: BRILLIANTLY DIFFICULT

Typical, recent Bob Moran observation . . .

I did not discover Bob Moran’s brilliantly rendered, acerbic, often dark “cartoons”
until October 2022. And now I discover that his rise to public prominence came via his response to the Covid Con. Moran was one of rare ones who, like me (and how many others?), was ON IT immediately.

The Covid Con was rolled out as a world-wide “pandemic” on March 11, 2020, and the first great, long-planned and long-lasting, global psy-op aiming to seduce/reduce all of humanity into FEAR FEAR FEAR, ramped up.

Was this the first cartoon Bob did after the psy-op was announced? Possibly, created during the week of 3/8 – 3/14.

From then on, he just kept going.

The two above were published while he was still cartoonist for the Telegraph.

He even was able to publish this one there, in July, despite its reference to being muzzled.

Another one, September, 2020

Many many many cartoons later, in October 2021 he was fired by The Guardian ostensibly for a tweet castigating a British MD. This, despite his apology, in which we discover the difficult circumstances of his life. An excerpt:

But I might be wrong about timing. He might have waited until he was free to publish the grandma cartoon above, and even the muzzled cartoon above that, both of which, without words, say it all. (That’s his goal: fewer words, the better; no words, best. Let the image speak for itself.)

Did you know that Bob Moran was the only British cartoonist not to bow down to the Covid Con? That, he says, upset him. How about the U.S: know of any cartoonists here who didn’t go along to get along? With the exception of Ben Garrison, It seems to me they tended to avoid the issue.

The impact of both memes and cartoons is immediate, and, with Bob Moran, often gut-punching. So much better than trying to “explain” in a long-winded text what can instead be instantly depicted. Images constitute a universal language. And in Bob Moran’s case, deeply, often darkly, felt; as one of his commenters noted, “real venom comes with real wit.”

Another commenter notes that Bob’s cartoons “have a lingering presence.”

Bob Moran is tuned to inner guidance, saying that each time he sits down to compose a new cartoon he has absolutely no idea what’s going to come out of him. He puts pencil to paper, and gradually what wants to come through, does. He aims “to outwit the meme-makers,” those who just copy someone else’s image and then add words to light up the image in a certain manner. However, some memes are only words, vying for “famous quote” status, via either brilliant wit or austerely put uncomfortable truth.

That’s what satirical cartoonists have always done, according to one of the commenters in Brilliantly Difficult, the 51 minute, August 2022 documentary on Bob Moran: “To afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted.” Others in this film, say how much it comforted them during the Covid years to know that at least one other, Bob Moran, felt the same way. (Yes! I would have been comforted too, way back in 2020, rather than waiting to October 2022 to discover him.)

Another hallmark of a real satirical cartoonist: “to speak the truth without fear or favor.” Bob Moran is a family man with three children (one with very special needs, see above). He has a lot to lose. Yet nothing stops him, except, he notes, that he hopes his periodic despairing moods don’t overwhelm him to the point where he gives up. So far, he utilizes despair to fuel his sometimes very dark, disturbing art. One thing’s for sure, his cartoons constitute “a record of my own thought process.” And for that, we are all the wiser.