cartography – Vulgar Army

This is presumably a follow up to ’The Serio-Comic War Map For The Year 1877’1. John Bull and his Friends A Serio-Comic Map of Europe by Fred W Rose Author of “Angling in Troubled Waters”2 1900 The “Refererence” section on the map reads3: REFERENCE Great Britain – John Bull has been attacked by two wild […]

Political octopus in pop culture: “The Grand Map” in Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, and art by Keith Thompson. The map shows Northern Africa and the land below (or part of) “Serbia” as depicted by squid-like creatures. You can see it in its full and glorious detail at Scott Westerfeld’s blog, where it is accompanied by information on how and why […]

Arms Around the World

It is a staple of the octopus metaphor in propaganda and cartoons to plop an octopus on a globe to represent the threat to civilisation that group X presents. A selection: Circa 1938 a German cartoon (Seppla) showed Churchill as a Jewish octopus with his arms around the globe. 1945: A French cartoon in showed Hitler […]

Of Maps and Octopuses

The following is a selection of octopuses with maps (or maps with octopuses). States are most typically represented as octopuses when it comes to maps, however, Landlords, Jews and Free Masons have also been shown as octopuses juxtaposed with cartography. I have excluded octopuses on globes for this selection, as the symbolism differs from a […]