Brexit: Editorial Cartoon

By Leela Moreno

This cartoon depicts Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, attempting to swim away from the European Union and take Great Britain with him. I showed him swimming alone because at this point in his campaign to leave the EU his is pretty alone. I also chose to label him, Northern Ireland, Scotland, the United Kingdom and the EU because they are all impacted by Brexit. I chose to have Johnson saying “We’re leaving NOW!” because he has been uncompromising, and I think that capitalizing “now” makes it more of an exaggeration. The response to his demand is coming from both Great Britain and the European Union. They are saying, “I didn’t know now meant January 31, 2020.” I think that there is a lot of irony in his demands, so I chose to depict that in my cartoon.

The process of making this cartoon started by making a rough sketch of what I wanted to show. I then redrew it in a neater manner. After that, I decided that I would make my cartoon colorful so that it stood out more. I decided to use flags as well as labels to identify the countries shown in my comic. I think that the flags make the cartoon stand out more and distinguish them from other countries. The text boxes for me were the most crucial. Having strong images was important, but I think that text makes a lot of impact. I went through a lot of different wordings that all conveyed the same idea before choosing what I ended up doing.

I learned that making an editorial cartoon wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I think that it was helpful to make the cartoon about a topic that interested me. It made it a lot easier to come up with creative ideas that would elicit a reaction.