From all the US satirical cartoons I have seem they seem rather crude and tame compared to the UK and still rely rather old tropes that always seem to require labelling "oh look its the cat with $ signs for eyes and labelled "wall street"

whereas in the UK a cartoon might make a reference to a cartoon from 50-60-70 years ago and you would be expected to understand the reference with out labelling

New Yorker cartoons are not political cartoons. They are general humour, albeit of a sort that might strike most readers as highbrow.

Do you have examples of these sorts of cartoons? I've never seen one so I can't imagine what they're like.

So here's an example of a Steve Bell editorial cartoon. He's a leftwinger, in the fairly angry and vicious tradition of British satire, but this is a fairly restrained one:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2019/jun/0...

It's a comment on the pageantry around the 75th anniversary of D-Day, and directly refers to a famous cartoon from WW2, which was published on VE Day by the (also socialist) cartoonist Philip Zec:

http://www.cartooncounty.com/serendipity2/uploads/Zec2site.J...

The whole genre isn't self-referential, but it's not unusual for leader cartoons to refer to other cartoons, famous paintings, television, or other things.

Anything by Ben Garrison https://grrrgraphics.com/cartoons

1. I don’t think that there is a D1 on the scale.

2. A scale for cartoons would be interesting. The top level would probably require something like awareness of current events, knowledge of one or more complex/academic theoretical concepts, and deep cultural embeddedness and awareness of cultural trends.

"On a scale of Marmaduke to the New Yorker, how complex is this comic strip"