Charlie Hebdo's satire
The brand of humor in Charlie Hebdo is very particular, and somewhat unique to France. It is absurdist (in the tradition of Rubrique-à-Brac), a type of humor comparable to MAD magazine and Viz in terms of anglo-saxon publications. It is also extremely satirical, comparable to The Onion and The Colbert Report, e.g. saying Charlie Hebdo is homophobic is as absurd as saying Stephen Colbert is right-wing, or that Ali-G is racist. Charlie Hebdo humour is often crass and shows a complete lack of respect for many institutions, à la South Park. More explanations of this are offered in this article from The New Yorker and this article in Mediapart.
Charlie Hebdo employs their rather brutal satire against dogma, hypocrisy and hysteria, regardless of its source. Satire works by toying with different levels of interpretation (irony) – a fundamentally subjective endeavour which in the hands of Charlie Hebdo is sure to leave bitter aftertastes. Humor is not a requirement.
The cartoons shown below are a small selection of the broad range of topics that Charlie Hebdo covers. There are plenty of cartoons that are simply making fun of Francois Hollande or Nicolas Sarkozy. It's important to keep this in mind, as otherwise it is very easy to conclude, when only presented with a handful of cartoons, that Charlie Hebdo covers only the topics below. In reality the cartoons touch upon a wide variety of topics, but always play stupid and mean with them (« bête et méchant »). Here are some statistics regarding the subjects matters of most front-page cartoons on Charlie Hebdo compiled by Le Monde: