If... (comic)

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If... is a political comic strip which appeared in the United Kingdom newspaper, The Guardian, written and drawn by Steve Bell from its creation in 1981.^[1]

In July 2020, Bell told the Press Gazette that If... would "probably" be coming to an end in 2021 due to forthcoming budget cuts at the Guardian.^[2] The final If... strip was published on 29 April 2021.^[3]

Style

If... is a sharp and cynical satirisation of

Caricatures

Many of the political and other public figures who are lampooned gain in-joke characteristics, which often build into plot strands of their own. Examples include:

Prime ministers

• Margaret Thatcher, depicted with a mad, staring eye, a pointed nose, wide neck, big hair and generally masculine features.
• John Major, who began appearing with underpants on the outside of the trousers of his suit, when it was claimed that he tucked his shirt into them. Bell referred to this as "the badge of an essentially crap Superman". (This report was false, having been made up by Alastair Campbell during his late days on the Daily Mirror[1]. Nevertheless, it fitted popular perceptions of Major's naive suburban incompetence so well that many people today still believe it to be true.)
• authoritarian
  image.
• Gordon Brown, depicted as a grumpy ruthless Scot and can be used to make any object (bear, snail, lion, Stalin) to represent him.
• David Cameron, initially portrayed as a jellyfish, later as a tumescent pink condom.^[4]

Leaders of the opposition

• Neil Kinnock, portrayed as a bald man in a suit spouting an endless stream of incoherent waffle.
• William Hague, portrayed as a squat figure (sometimes a schoolboy) with a very bulbous head like a light bulb or the Mekon.
• Iain Duncan Smith, portrayed as a blank-faced zombie.
• Michael Howard, portrayed as a vampire owing to comments about his apparent sinister personality by Tory Member of Parliament (MP) Ann Widdecombe and his ancestors being from Romania.
• Ed Miliband, portrayed as a badger or panda owing to the white streak in his hair.
• Jeremy Corbyn, portrayed as Obi-Wan Kenobi from the Star Wars film series.^[5]

Other political figures

• Donald Trump, portrayed as entirely orange, aside from his eyes, with tiny hands and a toilet seat and lid instead of a hairstyle.
• senile yet dangerous robot with a missile like pointed head, including being deployed in space as a component of the Strategic Defense Initiative
  .
• chimpanzee, ignorant of events around him. Inspired by the film Bedtime for Bonzo, in which Ronald Reagan appeared with a chimp, Bell greeted Bush's election with a cartoon entitled "Bigtime for Bonzo", depicting Bush as Reagan's chimp. In war themed cartoons, the Bush-chimp sometimes appears dressed as Darth Vader
  , complete with banana-shaped lightsabre. After the 2006 mid-term elections he was occasionally depicted as a duck with a broken leg and a crutch - an obvious reference to his second-term status as a 'lame duck president'.
• Michael Heseltine as Tarzan with a loincloth on, sometimes over his suit, due to an incident in the House of Commons when he picked up and brandished the Mace (symbol of the authority of the monarch in parliament). Subsequently Michael Heseltine was portrayed as Mad Mike, a reference to Mad Mike Hoare the notorious British Mercenary who operated in Africa. This was when Michael Heseltine was appointed by Margaret Thatcher as UK Minister of Defence and on one occasion dressed in an army camouflage parka for an inspection of a Cruise Missile Base following the police and military eviction of an encampment of anti-nuclear protesters.
• John Prescott, as a dog called Market who Blair has had neutered, a reference to Blair's control over the left of the Labour Party. More recently portrayed as Yoda.
• gimp suit. Has also been portrayed as Darth Vader
  (though called 'Lord Bumnose').
• Labour politicians
  Tom Watson, Hilary Benn, John McDonnell, Ken Livingstone and Sadiq Khan have all been portrayed as characters from the Star Wars
  film series.
• Rebekah Brooks, portrayed as Medusa.

Recurring characters

There are also numerous characters who come and go over time. These characters often have an exaggerated nonsensicality, fitting Bell's style - most obviously their politics, which are sometimes portrayed as hopelessly idealist. They include:

• Reginald Kipling, an
  Soviet Bloc
  . Bell made the point of depicting Reg as being much happier there, including starting a family with Geronya Baikal, despite the lower standard of living and human rights.
• The Penguin, who stowed away with Reg's return to the UK from the Falklands. At first, The Penguin mostly served as a vehicle to comment upon the absurdity of human affairs (e.g. "All I care about is fish, matey") and as a sounding board for Reg, but became increasingly politicised. Bell often uses the metaphor of
  commune
  .
• Chief Constable Gerald "Badger" Courage, a policeman of variable (but normally senior) rank and invariable corruption, and a face that looks like a bottom seen sideways.
• Harry Hardnose, a permanently drunk
  right wing
  journalist.
• John the Monkey, a
  benefit fraud investigator or tabloid plant amongst the Royal Family. Initially appeared as a henchman of "Badger" Courage ("I don't take bribes! The monkey does!").^[6]
• Monsieur l'Artiste, a French artist who is apparently a caricature of Bell himself. He speaks with a strong French accent, which Bell has used to introduce various spoof French words, including "ouanquère" meaning "wanker".
• Wally the Whale, enamoured of submarines.
• Numerous other animals including the original dinosaurs, turkeys,
  radioactive) moles and two-headed sheep for strips outside Sellafield, the pandas as misunderstood immigrants, and so on. The cats began with a long plot thread starring Bill Clinton's cat Socks
  and occasionally return as 'fat cat' businessmen. In strips depicting Islamic terrorists and fundamentalists, they are often represented as goats.

External links

• If... on the Guardian’s "
  Comment is free
  " site (the red-and-grey bar below the cartoon is a scroll bar allowing access to a few older cartoons)
• The history of If...
• Book: The If... Files
• If... screensavers