Lee James Turnock - the world's least known cartoonist: Great albums you've never heard #1

Thursday, 7 February 2013

Great albums you've never heard #1

Mirrorbawl - Do Wotcha Wanna! (Pelican Records, 1975)

2 comments:

Kid7 February 2013 06:41
Eh? What happened to the celebrities post?
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TwoHeadedBoy7 February 2013 15:16
What happened to the list of celebrities you've met? Surely you haven't got into trouble over that ALREADY?

Eeh, some people...
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SO...

How did I get into cartooning? It's a long story, suffice to say I was ill a lot when I was a kid. This was in the late seventies, there were three channels on television and I didn't have one in my bedroom. This was also before the days of the internet, Playstations, even Nintendo Game and Watch games, so I had to occupy my time somehow, and I chose drawing and writing. I filled dozens upon dozens of exercise books, scrapbooks and sketchpads with my own stories, cartoons, posters and other doodlings, eventually getting quite good. My earliest influences were Charles M.Schulz (Peanuts), Maurice Dodd (the Perishers), Willo the Wisp cartoons, and the artists behind pretty much all of the children's comics of the day. Yes, I'm so old I can remember when there were proper children's comics on the shelves. And we had loads to choose from as well. Buster, Whoopee, Whizzer and Chips, Nutty, the Beano, the Dandy, Oink!, Jackpot and shedloads of others all happened in my lifetime. I could never get into war, science fiction, horror or 'serious' comics though. Still can't. I like funny stuff. My brothers' Commando comics just looked like too much work for me. I also loved Leo Baxendale's Willy the Kid books - though a lot of the work in the weekly comics I thought was Baxendale turned out to be ghosted by Tom Paterson, Dave Sutherland, Mike Green and others. His style's probably been copped by more artists than anyone else's, excluding Robert Crumb perhaps.
I first saw print in the early eighties, first in the school magazine (luckily Nutty didn't sue me for ripping off their Jay R.Hood character) and then in a road safety magazine published by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. Sadly no copies of either survive so I'm unable to put 'em up here. Believe me, it's no big loss. My next venture into print does survive, however, and that was a strip I had published in Crash magazine in 1986, when I was nearly twelve.
Then along came Viz in 1988 (Northampton got its first comic shop in '87, I think...Blitz Comics, late of Barrack Road) and I suddenly realised what I wanted to do...waste my God-given talent on a load of fucking foul language, dirty drawings and schoolboy smut! Yeah! Why not, eh? Why not. Actually, I was already moving in that direction thanks to a BBC documentary about the aforementioned Robert Crumb, and my purchase of the excellent Hunt Emerson / Pat Mills book You Are Maggie Thatcher, but Viz showed me...well, it showed me that there were other people in the world who laughed at the same things I did. If that sounds a bit self-pitying and isolated, well spotted. Viz went supernova just as I discovered it and started buying it, and that was a nifty reminder that there were millions of people in Britain who still enjoyed a good chuckle behind the bike sheds. Like a lot of aspiring cartoonists, I tried to get into Viz but failed miserably. Well, deservedly so. The strip I sent them was called 'Proper Tosser' and it was as shit as fuck, but at least they sent me a nice letter back. And it made me think "I could do something like that".
So I started self-publishing my own comics to sell in the school playground. I did one issue of Imagine, five issues of Ug, and two issues of Yuck while I was still at secondary school...and I had a joke published in a copy of Poot! comic. They paid me a fiver. This felt like the big time for me. Poot! was one of the comics that started up in the slipstream of Viz's world-beating success. There were quite a lot of them, the number varying depending on whereabouts in the country you were. I saw adult comics whilst on holiday that I never saw at home, or anywhere else for that matter. I bought most of them, sent stuff off, and saw print in a few of them. I didn't always get paid what I was promised, but it was all good experience and I've learned not to be bitter about things that happened years ago. (And if you believe that, you'll believe anything!)

All the artwork on this blog, except where otherwise noted (or it's downright obvious that it's not by me), is protected by copyright and may not be reproduced, reposted or otherwise ripped off without first obtaining my permission, which will usually be forthcoming. Go on, try asking nicely. You'll be amazed at where good manners can get you.
All the scans of existing comics, photographic material, illustrations and so on remain the property of their respective owners and are included here in the spirit of promoting interest in them. In short, don't sue my arse off as I haven't got two pennies to rub together. Anyone who tells you cartooning makes millions is a bloody liar. It takes ages and makes sod all money. But I still love my work!

Thursday, 7 February 2013

Great albums you've never heard #1

2 comments:

SO...

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