Favourite SA annuals to tickle your funny bone just in time for coming holiday season
Madam & Eve 2022 Annual
Unmasked
Stephen Francis & Rico
Jacana Media
It's been a tough year on many fronts and just in time for a bit of light-heartedness comes the latest “Madam & Eve” annual.
“Madam & Eve”, regarded as one of South Africa’s favourite and longest-running comic strips, takes a satirical look back at yet another roller coaster year of Covid-19 lockdowns, Eskom load shedding, corrupt and inept politicians, Zondo Commission reports, Home Affairs queues, a burning Parliament and millions hidden in presidential farm furniture…
Flip through the pages and join the crazy but well-loved crew of Madam, Eve, Mother Anderson and Thandi, and their supporting characters, as they unveil the humorous side of daily life in South Africa. As the authors say, it proves, once again, that laughter IS the best vaccine in these challenging times.
Written and drawn by Stephen Francis and Rico Schacherl, Madam & Eve has been tickling South Africa’s national funny bone since 1992.
Francis is the writing half of the “Madam & Eve” team. He was born in the US in 1949 and moved to South Africa in 1988.
In 1992, while witnessing the interesting and often strangely amusing dynamic between his South African mother-in-law and her domestic housekeeper, he conceptualised the “Madam & Eve” strip. Francis is also an award-winning script writer for television and film.
Rico Schacherl forms the other half of this creative team, as illustrator. Born in Austria in 1966, Rico has lived and worked in Johannesburg for most of his life. He has been drawing cartoons, he says, ever since he was old enough to hold a pencil.
Besides his work on “Madam & Eve”, Rico also produces illustrations and editorial cartoons for a wide range of other publications. – Books Editor
Zapiro Annual 2022:
It’s Not How It Looks!
Zapiro
Jacana Media
"It’s Not How It Looks!" is the 27th annual collection from cartoonist Zapiro. And it’s set to be yet another bestseller as his cartoons capture the craziness of yet another wild year in South Africa… and the world.
The annual covers the sweep of 12 months of momentous events through Zapiro’s piercing eye and his sharp pen. His award-winning cartoons make you laugh out loud while often wincing at the same time.
Zapiro says his main challenge is keeping pace with the constant chaos of life in SA: "Every time I think things cannot get any weirder they go and get twice as weird.
“Not even my crazy mind could invent a country where, at the same time, we have the devastating final Zondo report delivered (late), two Gupta brothers finally arrested and a brazenly crooked ex-spy chief revealing that millions of dollars in cash has been stolen from Cyril’s game farm. And that’s just one week of our lives!
“While overseas, Putin’s making a mad war, Boris is being completely Boris and the US Supreme Court goes back 50 years on women’s rights.’
Zapiro is Jonathan Shapiro. Born in 1958, he went through school in Cape Town, studied architecture at UCT, and experienced conscription, activism, detention and a Fulbright Scholarship to New York before establishing himself as a cartoonist. He is editorial cartoonist for Daily Maverick.
Previously he was published in Mail & Guardian, Sowetan, Sunday Times, Independent Newspapers and The Times. As an activist in the 1980s, he drew for the UDF and for South (1987–88). He has published 26 best-selling annuals and four special collections and won numerous international and South African awards and has two honorary doctorates. – Books Editor