Volata

The point is, really, that if I were going to do a cartoon about climate change and the BBC, I wouldn't do it like this. So it's intensely irritating that somebody has taken my artwork, and attached a message and a gag that is not mine. I had already done a cartoon about BBC lies, long before I drew the above image, and I don't feel the need to do another. I had also already done my Sherlock Holmes, Died Suddenly / Climate Change cartoon, so would not have done another cartoon so close to that joke. As many people know, I'm really relaxed and generous about the use of my work. I don't charge people to use it, I want them to share it far and wide, print it off, make stickers, use it in publications etc. I think it's reasonable for me to get annoyed about random internet users butchering my stuff and then sharing it as their own creation. My personal gripes aside, I think we all need to be mindful that in a very short space of time, we've gone from an explosion of deliberately talentless and anonymous meme-making to an omnipresence of AI-generated slop that the deluded commissioner regards as their own work. But there are still actual artists working out there. And it's not a hobby or an endorphin addiction or a way to unwind after a twelve hour shift, it's a career. It's how they make a living. If we want there to still be genuine artists, with genuine talent in ten years' time, we need to make that distinction, and remember it.

I've noticed this doctored version of one of my cartoons is doing the rounds. This is not the original version. It was about governments, not the BBC, and the man being pissed on was just saying thank you. Somebody thought they could make a better version. They were wrong.