If... (comic)

If... is a sharp and cynical satirisation of British politics and current affairs from a left-wing perspective, named after the famous Rudyard Kipling poem.^[1] Suiting both Bell's anarchic artistic style and the paper's political stance, it consisted of a short (usually three-panel) daily episode in each Monday to Thursday edition of the paper, with subjects usually covered in these four-day-long segments. If... occasionally utilises wordplay and coarse humour – Bell is fond of using the pejorative British word "wanker" and its euphemistic variants, for example. With The Guardian's move to new presses, If... started to appear in full colour in September 2005. Initially, the title was reflected in the concept, with each week presenting a separate stand-alone story such as "If... Dinosaurs roamed Fleet Street", or "If The Bash Street Kids ran the country". This shifted into a different approach during the 1982 Falklands War, when Bell started to concentrate on two central characters: Royal Navy seaman Kipling and the Penguin he befriends.

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:

• 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. Nevertheless, it fitted popular perceptions of Major's naive suburban incompetence so well that many people today still believe it to be true.)
• Tony Blair, depicted with the same mad, staring eye as Margaret Thatcher and a very pointed head which, along with his ears, can be used to make any object (speed cameras, pylons, giant eye, poodle) represent him, playing upon his increasingly 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]

• 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]

• Donald Trump, portrayed as entirely orange, aside from his eyes, with tiny hands and a toilet seat and lid instead of a hairstyle.
• Ronald Reagan, whose persona mutated from a bumbling, heavily stage-managed actor into a senile yet dangerous robot with a missile like pointed head, including being deployed in space as a component of the Strategic Defense Initiative.
• George W. Bush as a 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.
• George Osborne, as a pig with a 'cute, curly tail' which voters seemingly like and, more recently, in a 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.