Lee James Turnock

T-huh!

2012-02-13T05:57:00.000-08:00

Quite a few performers of this type around at the moment threatening to reduce British humour into one vast candy-coloured puddle of unthreatening 'random' whimsy. Just say no!

Flaffock

2012-02-13T05:55:00.000-08:00

Progress is necessary only when it's absolutely necessary. Different can be exciting and unusual. But when it's neither, it can't hide behind the "at least it's different" excuse because ... well, how can shit be different to shit? How can nothing be different to nothing? It's amazing quickly yesterday's "different" and "progressive" turns into tomorrow's garbage. Some of the cartoons in Private Eye are eye-hurtingly ugly, but they almost always have a funny idea or a joke behind them, so you can forgive the crude art.

Rick Wretch and Jess O'Belle

2012-02-08T06:12:00.000-08:00

Continuing on my theme of 'psychotic children's comics characters'. Be honest, if you knew a real-life tearaway, they'd be more like this than Minnie the Minx or Dennis the Menace.

Incidentally, Leo Baxendale apparently took it as an insult when a Beano staffer told him "Minnie is a psychopath". Surely that was the whole point of the strip? Her adventures were wildly over the top - and that was what made them hilarious. Surely no real little girl could batter an entire gang of lads single-handedly?

Freeze Frame Frankie

2012-02-06T07:33:00.000-08:00

Did you ever think that the kids in comics who either had special powers or some magical gizmo or other that allowed them to muck around with the natural rules of time and space wouldn't necessarily use them for good?

I know they had to keep it clean because these were children's comics, but I'm sure I wasn't the only kid who thought about the kind of mischief Peter Piper could have got up to with his magic pipes that brought things to life. Especially if he had a large poster of Susanna Hoffs on his bedroom wall.

Or maybe he'd blow his pipes at the television when a certain celebrity he hated appeared on the screen, just so he could give him a damn good thrashing? I dunno. Maybe I've got a vindictive streak.

Then there was Danny's Tranny (no sniggering in the cheap seats, please) whose transistor radio could enlarge things, shrink things, make things float, make things disappear...that's a gift that's open to abuse if ever I saw one.

One of my favourites in this vein was a Viz strip called 'Dr Theodore Gray and his Amazing Growth Spray'. Half a page of Graham Dury genius, in which the Doctor used the aforementioned spray to enlarge a mouse to the size of a dog, a half of lager to a five-pint glass, a barmaid's breasts and a policeman's nose, before the policeman uses his nose as a lasso, catches Dr Gray and demands a squirt of the spray on his truncheon. You can probably guess the ending. It's in the Viz Big Hard Number Two. Go and seek it out, you won't regret it.

Whatever happened to Black Cat Found?

2012-02-03T07:48:00.000-08:00

Roger Hatt and Stephen Dix are alive and well. Roger moved into the more sedate world of ladies' hairdressing and Stephen is now an advertising copywriter. If you ask me, the real talent was in their roadie, 'Moke' (pictured below)...

There, that's that little mystery cleared up for everyone who used to go and see Black Cat Found at the Labour Club, the Picturedrome and the Charles Bradlaugh back in the 00s.

Roger Daltrey in Northampton!

2012-02-03T07:30:00.000-08:00

Being a big fan of the Who, I was excited when I heard the news that frontman Roger Daltrey was coming to Northampton to open (actually re-open) the Roadmender Arts Centre in March 1992. I went along to meet him, and he spent a long time talking to the fans and admirers who'd turned up - not many genuine rock icons come to Northampton, after all! I must have looked a right twat holding up my home-made 'The Who Forever' banner, but if I did, Roger was polite enough not to mention it - he shook hands with me, signed a couple of things and wished me good luck. Here's a picture of him signing something for another fan...

...I don't gave any more photos of this memorable event, so make the most of this one! A couple of years later I wrote to Roger to thank him for coming to Northampton and he was good enough to reply with a couple of signed photos (which I have framed in my house) and a short hand-written note. So there you have it, Who-haters! A legend and a gentleman.

A letter from Don 'Bulman' Henderson (1995)

2012-02-03T07:24:00.000-08:00

I went through a stage of rather fancying myself as a screenwriter in my late teens / early twenties. (All is vanity, because I created a screenwriting pseudonym for myself - Tommy Shields! What was I thinking?) Writing and drawing comics was a doddle, surely writing a screenplay would be just as easy? Don't you believe it! Over the course of six long months, I created a screenplay which I thought was pretty good. It had a strong story, memorable characters and some exciting moments, particularly the finale. I won't bore you with the details, suffice to say my work got seen by a lot of people, but it never got past first base. I even chopped it into three roughly equal segments, made some minor changes and attempted to sell it to the BBC as a three-part serial, but I was curtly informed that "three parters are very hard to schedule". Did they like the screenplay? I never found out.

I thought an endorsement from an established actor might help, so I wrote to the fine character actor Don Henderson (1932-1997) of Bulman fame, asking if he'd cast an eye over my screenplay, which was proving bloody expensive to post and repost to all these different people. Not to mention a little dog-eared. So I sent Mr Henderson a short note, explaining my situation and asking if he'd cast an eye over my labours. Much to my surprise, he responded with a hand-written four page letter, which I'd like to quote in full. (I've taken the liberty of cleaning up the punctuation errors for ease of reading.)

DON HENDERSON. February 20th 1995.

Dear Tommy,

Thanks for your letter, and for all the nice things you wrote in it about me!

I don't want to dishearten you at such an early stage of your screenwriting, but it's always been a million to one chance against getting one's work looked at by somebody able to bring it to fruition, and now it's some more millions times more difficult! This has been caused by the government's destruction of the UK film industry, with the enforced ITV franchise auction some while ago (which also, of course, affected the commercial ITV station Channel 4), and which caused such an appalling backlash to BBC TV!

However, the first thing you really have to do is solicit (and get) representation by a literary agent. You do not stand a snowball's chance in hell without such! (I've enclosed herewith a list of such agents, which is self-explanatory.)

I have my own production company (and have had such for about ten years) and the only one commission I've had in all that time is a piddling comedy / cookery series* Michael Elphick and I made together, with - incidentally - NO commissions to make any more of them!

I have about twenty, or more, other scripts, projects, series, serials and productions, for which I can not raise even the slightest interest! (One of the main problems is that all the screening space on ITV is fully booked up and spoken for for the next two to three years - and the BBC screen space is almost as fully booked ahead.) An incredibly brilliant TV series script for actor Michael Elphick and myself (he is my partner in the production company I have) was taken up by Zenith independent production company (who made Morse for ITV and the Paradise Club for the BBC) and they spent about half a million in pre-production and development only to have it scrapped at the very last moment by ITV, who were to have networked it! Likewise, the BBC axed the third series of the Paradise Club (which was made for them, by Zenith, at such a low cost that it would have cost the BBC three hundred percent more had they made it themselves, 'in house') at the height of its 14 million viewing figures, the very week it won the Best TV Programme of the Year award - and after Zenith spent one million on pre-production and development of that third series! To give you another rough idea of what an incredibly appalling state the UK television industry is in (and our UK film industry just does not exist - again, deliberately destroyed by our government! The Irish government are welcoming film-making, so all cinema films are now being made there!) - look at this. I own the rights to the Bulman series which cost me every cent I had. I've borrowed funds to get a new series written (which is absolutely terrific, by the way) - and I have one hundred percent of the finance to produce the series - which means that whichever UK TV channel transmitted it, could do it totally free and it would not cost them one cent! (It's already paid for, one hundred percent!) Nobody - but nobody - is even remotely interested - so it can not be made, and I've wasted years of my life on it, not to mention every single cent I had! Therefore, for the last three or four years, I've more or less given up on TV acting (well - in actuality - it's given me up!) - and work now, 99.9% of the time on cinema feature films, always overseas, out of the UK, and usually for American film production companies. (Some details about that enclosed herewith, in a photocopy of a press report on the subject!**)

Although getting a project considered these days is like winning the National Lottery (fourteen million to one against!) - some TV scripts have got to be accepted (albeit not for transmission until three or four years' time, due to the backlog of screen space being fully booked for that period) - so, continue with your script, but - believe me - the only way to do that is with a literary agent, as I've said!

I will read your script if you still want me to, but can not influence its furtherance in any way whatosever! (Sorry, but there is no point at all in not being truthful, harsh though it may be!)

Forgive my quite appalling scribble - which I hope you can read! In great haste!

Good luck, and every good wish!

Yours, Don.

* The Absolute Beginners' Guide to Cookery, TSW, 1989.

** This was for No Escape (1994) starring Ray Liotta, in which Henderson appeared as 'Killian'.

Well, there you have it. If there's anyone else out there feeling a bit crap because they can't get their script ideas looked at or considered, I hope this has made you feel a bit better. As for my screenplay? I reworked large portions of it as comic strips. No point in wasting it, was there!

Goodie Goodie Yum Yum!

2012-02-03T06:48:00.000-08:00

I'm a huge fan of the Goodies. In fact, I think I prefer them to Monty Python. I was too young to really 'get' their humour first time around (I was born in 1974, their BBC run was 1970-80, with a series on ITV in 1982) but a 1986 repeat of the famous 'Kitten Kong' episode had me hooked, and I set about finding as many records and books as I could, all the while waiting impatiently for the BBC to repeat some more episodes. They did finally repeat a few...over Christmas 2010! In the meantime, Network DVD released thirty-one episodes over four two-disc sets, Ebay traders sold bootleg recordings culled from the UK Gold repeats, and the team reunited (without Bill) for the 2005 Edinburgh Festival, which was followed by a 2007 UK tour. I met Tim and Graeme during this tour and they were both absolute gentlemen. (As the picture above shows, Graeme is also a pretty good illustrator!)

When their fortieth anniversary rolled around, it looked as if the BBC were going to ignore it completely, save for a single radio programme. Big flippin' deal! Well, if the BBC weren't going to do it properly, I bloody well was, and I set about drawing a 'Happy 40th Birthday' card which was later taken up by the fine people behind the Saucy Gibbon fansite (www.the-goodies.co.uk) and sent to Tim, Bill and Graeme. I received a nice reply from Tim...

A nice reply from Graeme...

...and not a bloody sausage from Bill. Oh well. He's a depressive, and I know what that's like, believe me. If you're reading this Bill, I understand, I really do, but don't treat the Goodies as if it's something from your past to be ashamed of. It was and still is brilliant.

Anyway, the Goodies' books were really in a class of their own. Here are a few extracts from their 1977 book the Making of the Goodies Disaster Movie, which differs slightly from the format of the first two in that it really has to be read back-to-back to fully understand the cumulative effect of the numerous running gags and references. It's still great fun to 'dip into', though!

I admit it, this is probably my favourite Goodies book because it contains references to (and parodies of) some of my other favourites, such as the legendary Charles Bronson.

I love this caricature of Bronno. And check out how much filth the Goodies managed to smuggle into the small print of a book a lot of parents doubtless bought for their kids!

"Stuffs it up her (cont)" indeed! Graeme and Tim did a hilarious cont-inuation of this 'censored words' idea during their Edinburgh Festival shows and UK tour, in which several words from Julie Andrews songs were loudly buzzed out by Graeme - I'll never listen to 'Wouldn't It Be Lovely' in the same way ever again!

I wonder if this is where the Monty Python ~~splitters~~ team got the idea for Life of Brian? Eric Idle even said in an interview that the Carry On team were never likely to do Carry On Christ! Splitting hairs slightly, and Charles Hawtrey was sacked from the Carry On team in 1972, but never mind...it's still a brilliant spoof! I particularly like the Bernard Bresslaw and Peter Butterworth caricatures.

Ironically, two of Bill's daughters went into showbusiness (Kate Hardie and Rosie Oddie) and Graeme's son plays keyboards with the Scissor Sisters...funny old world!

Oh hell yes. I love the Who. I love the Goodies. What's not to like here? A fantastic caricature of Keith Moon (or 'Keith Kong'!) by Ken Cox, who also contributed to Eric Idle's Rutland Dirty Weekend Book.

Apologies if any of this is offensive to modern sensibilities. But come on... 'Derek and Clive - children's parties'? Still sends a tingle down my spine years later! I think 'Melita' is a reference to one Melita Clarke, who had a small part (no sniggering in the cheap seats, please) in the 1975 Goodies episode 'the Movies'.

As John Cleese once said, "nothing is funnier than a vain man's toupee".

And to finish off this mini-tribute, a back cover scan from a November 1976 edition of Private Eye magazine for the Amnesty International album A Poke In the Eye (With A Sharp Stick), featuring the Goodies.

Now let's hope we get some more episodes on DVD sooner rather than later.

How long is a piece of string?

2012-02-01T06:02:00.000-08:00

I often get asked "how long does it take you to draw your cartoons?" And I literally have no idea because I never time myself. However, as a little experiment, I decided to draw a comic cover from scratch this morning, and it took me a grand total of four hours from blank page to finished product. And here it is.

Flatulence 'funnies'

2012-01-27T06:27:00.000-08:00

This has absolutely nothing to do with the above illustration, but... why are the current incarnations of the Beano and Dandy so fixated on the "hilarious" acts of burping and farting?

Even as a nipper I never found bodily functions intrinsically hilarious. Is this just a modern thing, or has it been agreed by some anonymous committee up there in the wilds of bonnie Dundee that "passing gas is endlessly amusing to children - FACT"?

As Tim Brooke-Taylor once joked in an episode of the Goodies from 1976 (but set in the year 2001), "in my day we had the Beano and Dandy, nowadays it's the Porno and the Randy!". Things haven't quite got that bad yet, granted, but come on...can the sight of Dennis's baby sister letting rip or a burping Santa on a 'free gift' dartboard really be considered 'progress'?

One of the things that annoyed me about Oink! was the endless supposedly 'edgy' references to 'pumps', burps, 'plops' and vomiting. Yes, it was funny for the first couple of issues, but the novelty wore off fast. I can't help thinking that all the publicity IPC generated (and gleefully reproduced within the comic's pages) from getting down and dirty to a degree that was hitherto alien to the world of children's publishing was more of a badge of honour for the creators ("We're dead edgy we are! We upset church groups and parents! Anarchy!") than it was a source of amusement to the readers.

New look, same old rubbish

2012-01-26T07:04:00.000-08:00

Here's hoping you like the new look for my humble blog. If you don't, there's sod all you can do about it, so clear off and make your own blog, you ungrateful little bastards.

Last post before the weekend

2012-01-20T10:07:00.000-08:00

I drew my ideal pub today. What did you do with your time?

Crying salty tears into my own piss-poor efforts

2012-01-16T07:21:00.000-08:00

Right at the end of last year, egged on by Gordon Robson (check www.kidr77.blogspot.com) and a comics-loving friend of mine who never minces his words (hi, Doug!), I decided to put my money where my mouth was and contribute some of my work to the ailing Dandy. After all, it's what the average uber-sensitive fanboy (or girl) always says when you diss their efforts, or the efforts of their heroes, isn't it? "I'd like to see YOU do any better!"

Here's what I came up with.

PLEASE NOTE - I do not claim copyright on any of the exisiting characters I used for these strips. They belong to DC Thomson, not me.

And here's what I received this morning, as a .doc file, by e-mail...

So, "crying salty tears into my own pisspoor efforts"? Not a bit of it. If the Dandy doesn't want my work, that's fine by me. Sorry if I've disappointed anyone. Am I a "bitter tit", a "parasite" or a "wretched scabby vulture"? No. See? This is how the freelance life works. Sometimes you're lucky, sometimes you're not. And we're all allowed opinions.

Some people would do well to remember that before launching into whiny-bitch defensive mode.

UPDATE (8th February 2012) SOMEONE has anonymously (of course) described my Dandy cover (above) as "like something Robert Crumb knocked off in a tea break before deciding it was much too shit to see the light of day". Well, that's me told.

Remember when the Dandy was still 'dandy'?

2012-01-16T07:11:00.000-08:00

Going through a box of old comics in an all-purpose book / magazine / poster / printed material shop recently, I came across a copy of the Dandy dated 9th November 1996, still with a Desperate Dan badge attached. For a princely 50p, I wasn't going to turn it down, and I decided to share my retro Dandy experience on my blog, if only to highlight (in my big fat opinion) just how much things have gone down the pan at Britain's longest surviving children's title.

My hopes weren't high, but I must say I was pleasantly surprised. As I flicked through its pages, what came to mind was the sainted Graham Kibble-White's description of IPC's long-gone Jackpot comic - "robust, big-hearted fun". And what's wrong with that? Nothing. Fair enough, the hilariously cruel edge of the Dandy I grew up with (Bully Beef and Chips and the Jocks and the Geordies most notably) was notable by its absence, but in its place was warm, feel-good, openly nostalgic fun, the kind of thing the seven-year-old me would have found absolutely charming. (Not that I'd have used a softy phrase like that back then!)

First of all, the "proper" Desperate Dan on the cover, and the "proper" Korky (although the absence of his red nose is a bit glaring) leaning against arguably the definitive Dandy masthead. "Fun for boys and girls!" What a lovely archaic phrase. The Desperate Dan strip, which takes up the first three pages, appears to be drawn by either John Geering or Ken Harrison. I'm guessing it's Geering. I love how big Dan's hands are and the Dan-sized garden shears as 'Cactusman' (a truly disturbing creation similar to 'Raggety' from Rupert the Bear) creaks his way out of his wooden crate are a lovely touch.

Growing Paynes is up next, and this issue is notable for the number of characters that passed me by - others include First Class (a tale of four startlingly-coiffeured schoolkids which makes some concessions toward a more trendy drawing style and 'streetwise' attitude, whilst still retaining its slapstick heart), Timmy Mallett lookalike Blinky, Sneaker (drawn by Nick Brennan), David Mostyn's Molly (who appaears to be a standard Fuss Pot-style character) and Brain Duane, drawn by the marvellous Tom Paterson. Back to Growing Paynes, and although Trevor Metcalfe is the credited artist, it looks strangely like a 'jam session' between him and Robert Nixon. The parents are Metcalfe-style, whilst Percy Paynes himself is pure Robert Nixon. Either way, an attractive strip with a cute ending.

Next up is an advert for Meccano, followed by First Class, and Robert Nixon's take on Beryl the Peril. He'd softened her look from the Davey Law years and it didn't hurt the character one bit, although this particular strip is a bit 'nothing'. (The) Smasher by this stage was drawn by Brian Walker, and a bit of wheelie bin-based knockabout fun leads to a Mad magazine-style ending with the time-honoured "*!!@!**!@!" in place of actual expletives which makes the poor lad blush!

Next up is a full-page advert for Kellogg's Corn Flakes featuring a cartoon rooster called Cornelius. A caption at the bottom of the page advises us to tune into 'Page 300 of Cartoon Network Toon Text', a sign of the exciting new multi-channel era we were entering.

Blinky takes up the next one and a half pages, and while it's a good strip it could have easily been condensed into one page for greater impact. The remainder of the second page is an advert for a Beryl badge, free with next week's Dandy.

Love that Gnasher badge! Not as good as the hairy one with the googly eyes, but still, a nice reminder of the days before Dennis and his hound were turned into neutered Disney wannabes.

Barrie Appleby's Cuddles and Dimples takes up the next three pages - another good, lively (if somewhat artificially extended - the last frame is a splash panel that takes up an entire page!) strip. This is followed by a Meccano advert and Topper refugee Foxy. He doesn't get blasted by the farmer this time, instead receiving an altogether less violent comeuppance. (That said, he still manages to set his own tail on fire!)

Next up is an advert for a Lego pirate ship, and as we all know pirates weren't cool until those Johnny Depp films came along and had kids everywhere peeing their pants, so it's kind of hard to imagine 1996 kids getting too excited about this, or the resolutely un-sexy eye-patched, heavily bearded and toothless actor playing the pirate. What do I know? I was twenty-two in 1996. Maybe they loved it.

Nick Brennan's Sneaker takes up the next page, and whilst this strip is hobbled by a slightly obvious and well-choreographed outcome, it's still nicely drawn and Brennan does at least know how to draw a snide, sneaky, smarmy character. David Mostyn's Molly has a nice 'art shot' as its centrepiece, a bird's eye view of a giant rollercoaster, but that's about all.

Brain Duane is drawn by Tom Paterson, and hence is beyond criticism. There's an(other) advert taking up half the second page of Duane's strip, this time for Sun-Pat peanut butter. Winker Watson is next, complete with a slap-up feed finale (you can't beat the old comics for this kind of thing!), before Robert Nixon's Korky the Cat (with his nephews Nip, Lip and Rrip) round the whole thing off nicely. A decent enough strip, and at least they're not playing sodding American football in this one. (I also notice Korky has a white nose again, and there's a slight error with the spot colour in the third-from-last frame.)

All in all, not a bad way to spend 42p. And most importantly, it was still recognisable as the Dandy we all knew and loved. Funny how just fifteen years ago already seems like a million...

Hold the bus!

2012-01-13T10:09:00.000-08:00

Old drawing but I like it. Originally part of a post I had to delete because it was ultimately meaningless and a waste of space. (What do you mean, "like everything else on this blog"? Bloody cheek!)

Jerry Winston

2012-01-09T06:17:00.000-08:00

Four pages of the usual self-serving petty misanthropy from JW, one of my favourite characters.

He is actually based on a real person I used to know, who came within a hair's breadth of getting a record deal, then the other four people in his band decided they "didn't want to take it that seriously" and walked out on him. His disgusted reaction to this - "SPLITTERS!" - pure Life of Brian - has featured regularly in my comics ever since.

And no, I'll never reveal his identity, suffice to say that following this near-miss with fame and fortune he returned to the calm waters of obscurity.

Here's a cartoon strip that's never been seen before

2012-01-09T06:13:00.000-08:00

...Mostly because I found it at the bottom of a drawer this morning. There's no date on it but I'm guessing it's circa 2003 when I started drawing small press comics again. It's also drawn on cheap, rough, arse-wipe paper for some odd reason, which accounts for the less than stellar linework. (A bad workman always blames his tools...) I honestly have no recollection of writing or drawing this! Also, it looks as if there was meant to be another page, as it ends suddenly. Enjoy reading it anyway.

Remember when children's comics didn't treat children like idiots?

2012-01-09T06:08:00.000-08:00

This 1978 Krazy page by Frank McDiarmid is the kind of thing I'm talking about. Jokes that, whilst undoubtedly corny, do rely on a certain knowledge and appreciation of wordplay, as well as assuming the reader has at least some knowledge of different breeds of birds, together with artwork that beautifully straddles the fine line between illustration and a more 'cartoony' style. The birds are realistically drawn (until you look at their eyes and their facial expressions) as well as being recognizable as the breeds referred to in the jokes, and just to remind you that it's a comic and not a school worksheet, Frank throws in a lovely comedy bird-watcher.

What was that schools programme with the old woman crying?

2012-01-08T09:19:00.001-08:00

When people of a certain age start waxing nostalgic about things that frightened them when they were little, the usual culprits are never far away. Clowns, Raggity from Rupert the Bear, the jumping grasshopper / frog thing from the titles to Vision On, the Banana Splits, Animal Kwackers (i.e. low-budget Yorkshire television knock-off of the Banana Splits), the Moomins, public information films ("I am the spirit of dark and lonely water..."), the twins in the Shining, the title sequences to Near and Far ("Girls and boys come out to play" given a BBC Radiophonic workshop once-over with TARDIS scraping noises thrown in as a camera zooms out of a playground and ends up in space) and Picture Box, the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the BBC2 'girl and clown' test card...I could go on.

But something else tends to crop up, something that left an indelible mark on thousands of schoolkids, but which nobody seems to know exactly what it is, outside of "that weird schools programme where a television set showed nothing but an old woman crying".

Occasionally the odd smart-arse will say "Oh, that was an episode of Dramarama!" or "That was Mr Magus Is Waiting For You!".

Well, it wasn't.

After extensive and brain-aching research, I have uncovered the identity of this startling bit of nerve-jangling spookiness that some maniacs at ITV were foolish enough to unsheath on schoolchildren mid-way through the morning.

Ladies and gentlemen, your nightmares have been haunted for years by a three-part series in the Middle English strand of programmes called Interference, written by the acclaimed children's author Jan Mark.

A real pants-soiler that wouldn't have seemed out of place in the Hammer House of Horror series, right down to the child actors, the sinister use of music replete with ominous 'thudding' sound effects, the inventive shoestring-budget direction and the sludged-out Eastmancolour film stock, Interference told the simple story of a family (whose father is a real turd) goes on holiday to a remote cottage that appears to be haunted, most notably by an elderly woman whose voice can be heard on the phone, on the radio, on the hi-fi, and - most notably - on the television, accompanied by a heavily distorted image of her tearful face. As it turns out, it isn't a ghost in the electricity generator. It's a manifestation of the family's unspoken suffering at the hands of the father. As soon as he fucks off, the haunting stops and things return to normal. A pretty heavy concept for kids to grasp, but the 'haunting' sequences - accompanied by a heavily distorted and electronically tweaked crying noise - was as scary as all fucking hell. No way would a series like this be shown mid-morning as part of an educational programme nowadays!

Do I have screen grabbage? Oh yes.

And the whole thing's on YouTube if you feel like soiling yourself all over again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOVohCSLeno

Glad to clear that one up for you. You're welcome!

Last post before Christmas

2011-12-21T06:05:00.000-08:00

The final two calendar illustrations and a portrait of Zoryna Dreams from 1998. I did send it to some magazine or other but they weren't interested. Phooey! Online porn has most probably finished them by now anyway.

Oh yes...happy Christmas to all my readers!

Ghosts of Christmas past

2011-12-15T07:27:00.000-08:00

1990, to be precise, and here's an excellent illustration by Spitting Image artist Paul Cemmick from that year's TV Times...

I like the whimsically cute depiction of Floella Benjamin and French and Saunders as elves. (That's the only time you'll ever hear or read me use the words "whimsically cute" and "French and Saunders" in the same sentence!) There are other nice touches, like the 'Hawwods' wrapping paper around Jonathan Ross's presents, and Harry Secombe's "cof (sic) up!" sweatshirt logo.

Now this should bring back memories of the days before DVD...

We used to have 'videos' back in 1990, kids. Let's see what was available...

Prominence is given to Batman and A Fish Called Wanda, both whacking great successes from the late eighties. Though I must confess to being a trifle disappointed with A Fish Called Wanda. Being a Monty Python / Fawlty Towers addict, it just didn't have the high volume of laughs I was expecting and most of it seemed to be John Cleese working through his very nationality-focused inferiority complex with some good old Brit-bashing. Am I alone in thinking most of Otto's insults ("a bunch of badly dressed, stuck-up, intellectually inferior, sexually repressed football hooligans") towards the British were just John Cleese getting something off his chest? Anyway, not a big fan of that film. Just so you know.

I used to love Robocop when I was a teenager and stupid. Probably seem pretty crap if I watched it now, so I won't watch it now. Just remember it as something I enjoyed at the time. "I'll buy that for a dollar!"

I got suckered in to renting Dirty Dancing after all the rave reviews it got. The bloke at the video shop gave me a shocked look and said "That's a girl's film!" The thing that puzzled me was how a scratchy old 7" single in the final scene managed to make a live band magically appear out of nowhere. In full, unscratchy, unmuffled CD quality stereo sound as well. Bloody nostalgia, it's not what it used to be...

Scum's there. "Where's yer tool?" "What fuckin' tool!" Two token 'bits of blue' huddled together as well - the unfunny but essentially harmless and good-natured Flesh Gordon and one of those crappy Electric Blue videos that promised much but delivered a lot of soft-to-the-core amateur night nonsense. The woman on the cover is the lovely Natalie Banus, and she is nowhere to be seen in the video itself. Yes folks, Blitz Video (late of Barrack Road) fielded a duffer yet again.

The Evil Dead is described here with a totally straight face as "probably the most unpleasant horror film ever made". (I'm guessing the advertising copy writers had never seen Cannibal Holocaust, Last House On the Left or the supremely vile porno-horror cross-over Forced Entry.) Fair enough, it was verboten for a while and a genuine video nasty. But this 1990 VHS was a censored version, for God's sake!

Well, that's what Christmas 1990 looked like. A bit crap. But at least the Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie was on.

Three more calendar designs

2011-12-15T07:07:00.000-08:00

Edited on the 18th January. I never liked the original July picture much so I replaced it with this one.

Christmas is coming!

2011-12-07T07:58:00.000-08:00

Hopefully I should have the yearbook finished in time for...next Christmas. Ain't life grand!

Christmas Crapper - part one

2011-12-01T06:51:00.000-08:00

Works in progress...

2011-11-29T07:51:00.000-08:00

A couple of prospective calendar illustrations, a book cover and two babes. You know you love it!

"Forums and blogs, suddenly filled with the barely-concealed glee of a thousand old, bitter, failed cartoonists who declare they KNEW it wouldn’t work. I say they’re failed cartoonists because you can usually follow the trail of bun crumbs back to their own portfolios, as they’ve clearly tried to infiltrate the world of children’s comics but obviously never quite made it. Instead of crying salty tears into their own pisspoor efforts, they bitch and whine their stupid opinions online, content that there’ll always be some other bitter tit who feels the same." - Jamie Smart 2011.

Meet the Rectums

2011-11-29T07:44:00.000-08:00

The bien-pensants at Cook'd and Bomb'd hated this strip. Good. In the old days it was called Meet the Arseholes. I changed it after I became aware of the German(?) cartoon series Kleines Arschloch by Walter Moers.

Sammy Shanks - the Beloved Entertainer

2011-11-29T07:39:00.000-08:00

Looking back I wish I'd based Sammy's 'look' more closely on Les Dawson. I think it would have suited him...

Whattock Hunt

2011-11-29T07:36:00.000-08:00

Not too happy with the title logo and maybe the artwork's a bit rough and ready in places but I had a great time drawing it. Imagine Whattock as an animated cartoon with Arthur Smith's voice for added fun.

The Goddess Lucy - remastered

2011-11-29T07:33:00.000-08:00

This is something like the third time I've drawn this story. First set of original artwork got lost. Second lot got given away to an author friend. So I've had to draw it again just so I've got my own 'file copy'. What? Didn't you know cartoonists tend to be anally retentive? Enjoy!

"What are we going to do now?"

2011-11-16T06:24:00.000-08:00

"When I look back, the fondest memory I have is not really of the Goons. It is of a girl called Julia with enormous breasts" - Spike Milligan on his 75th birthday.

Spike Milligan is one of my all-time favourite comedians and writers. Some people don't get the big deal with him, and that's fine - I don't get the big deal with the Office or the Mighty Boosh. When he made the above comment, he was of course referring to one of the co-stars of his long-running Q series (1969-80, plus There's A Lot Of It About in 1982), Julia Breck.

A couple of years ago I got to interview Julia via e-mail and she remembered her time on the Q series fondly - "I can't believe we got paid for all that larking about!" - and had only good things to say about Spike. She also revealed that she was now a resident of France and is a skilled artist and model-maker, with a particular interest in miniature figures and doll's houses.

Julia Breck-Paterson, as she is now known, also revealed that she created two portraits of the legendary Spike, and it's my privilege to exhibit both of them here. I particularly like the ribbon working its way around Spike with the Q catchphrase "What are we going to do now?".

The Goodies on the cover of Sparky (1975)

2011-10-10T07:33:00.001-07:00

The Dandy aren't even doing anything new with all the celebrity references...at least Sparky had the sense to go with celebrities kids would actually know and like.

Ed McHenry's fantastic mastheads for 'Mystery Comic'

2011-10-03T09:51:00.000-07:00

Mystery Comic was a comic-within-a-comic feature in IPC's Cheeky Weekly for thirty-seven weeks in 1978 and 1979. As with Whizzer and Chips and Shiver and Shake, it was a pull-out section in the middle of the regular comic, though it wasn't promoted as such on the cover - it was just a comic that Cheeky was always trying to get his hands on. And with mastheads like these, who could blame him?

The maroon-tinted border of the top example is Ed's work, whilst the 'Tub' strip is by Nigel Edwards. And what a border it is! Ed takes a Mad Magazine approach to these early covers (also adopted by R.Crumb for his Weirdo covers) and the result is tons of fun for kids who enjoy reading and re-reading comments over and over again. See if you can spot (among others) King Kong, a legionnaire with his hat on backwards, some woman from Coronation Street, Frankenstein's monster, a 'masked scout', Tommy Cooper, someone with a goldfish bowl on his head, Sherlock Holmes, a ventriloquist's dummy and a Roman centurion. The actual logo incorporates Sid's Snake from Whizzer and Chips...for some reason!

This masthead has a musical theme. I love the contrast between the goofy, affable electric guitar and the snooty, disapproving violin. And the stereotypical 'French horn', complete with striped jersey and beret.

The 'creepy crawlies' variant isn't one of Ed's more inspired works, but it's still fun!

Food glorious food. Actually, the short scene in the Muppet Show where Elton John says "even my lunch loves me" - and the camera pulls back to reveal Muppet food items - freaked me out slightly when I was a kid. No such danger with Ed's happy-looking foodstuffs. Note the ring doughnut (with a bite taken out of it) forming the 'O'. Not quite sure why the pop bottle has a moustache though!

I think this one, the 'sci-fi' variant, is my favourite...and I'm not even a sci-fi fan! I like this one because it was reprinted, complete with the original 'Tub' strip (again by Nigel Andrews) in one of the Cheeky annuals, and I used to stare at it obsessively. It was a clear influence on some of my 'faces' cartoons, which you can find elsewhere in the blog. See if you can spot Dan Dare, a Smash martian, several Star Wars characters (obviously George Lucas's lawyers weren't reading Cheeky!), Tom Baker as Doctor Who, Doctor Spock, a dalek, and Urko from Planet of the Apes.

It's this kind of craftsmanship and attention to detail that I love about old comics, which suggests the artists were really into their work and took care to entertain the kids instead of rushing through each strip to get it over with.

Let's get back to what this blog's all about, shall we?

2011-09-15T06:15:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm working on a new online comic. Here are some work-in-progress extracts. They may appear a bit ragged around the edges, but it'll all be smoothed out when the thing's actually finished.

I've taken down a lot of the older, now irrelevant posts from this blog to free some space for future projects. After a lot of thought, I've also decided to disable my secondary blogs, Bring Back Comedy and the Screen in the Gutter. Believe me, I'm more sorry about this than you are.

As usual, any or all praise, comments, criticism and so on can be sent to the usual e-mail address.

The Dandy saga rumbles on...

2011-09-13T06:51:00.000-07:00

In my day we had the Beano and the Dandy, nowadays it's the Porno and the Randy! They've given Biffo the 'bare' a whole new dimension!

Well...after the ructions of the past few days it looks very much as if the writing is on the wall.

http://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2011/09/11/desperate-dandy-comics-celebrity-relaunch-backfired/

"Scots publishers DC Thomson tried to reverse the comic’s sales decline a year ago by introducing celebrity-based strips and even a Big Brother-style voting system. But the firm has admitted it is “disappointed” after half the readership abandoned the title and sales plunged to just 7,448. A spokesman even referred to the Dandy as a “blot” on an otherwise successful period."

Why does everything have to be filtered through a gauze of mass-media shite?

This kind of thing can be funny if it's done well. Sparky, when it was at its most anarchic and offbeat, had the Goodies on a 1975 front cover singing 'Funky Gibbon'. But this was no token piece of "down with the kids" celebrity arse-kissing. On turning to the back cover, the slapstick stooges were being crushed underfoot by a loveably gormless King Kong lookalike. Similarly, a late-period Sparky cover featured Tommy Cooper taking off his fez to reveal a fez-shaped head underneath. A simple joke, but a funny one, and affably disrespectful in the best Sparky traditions.

Similarly, IPC comics in particular had a run of characters and strips that were obviously based on (or spoofs of) existing television programmes or personalities - Micky Mimic was self-explanatory (though quite what 'the kids' made of Micky's impersonation of then-PM Harold Wilson, I'm not sure), but there was also Sheerluck and Son (clearly based on the Two Ronnies' Charlie Farley and Piggy Malone characters), Angel's Proper Charlies (Charlie's Angels with a cunning gender twist), The Teeny Sweeney (two kids, one of whom had a Dennis Waterman-style feathercut, haring around on a cartie solving juvenile crimes), Buytonic Boy (the Six Million Dollar Man), Crowjak (Kojak with an ornithological twist), It's A Nice Life (the Good Life), Faulty Towers, Strange Hill... the list goes on and on. If you must feature celebrities in your comics, at least take the damn piss, don't passively suck up to them. That's what Look In was for. (Besides, TV Comic had cornered the market in properly licensed 'as seen on TV' strips, and was the only place you could see the Pink Panther, Mighty Moth and Tom and Jerry between the same covers, so fair enough.)

"Household names such as Harry Hill, Cheryl Cole, Simon Cowell and Jeremy Clarkson were drafted in to try to appeal to a new generation of readers."

Yeah, that'll work! Who needs good stories, memorable characters, great artwork and actual jokes? WE'VE GOT CELEBRITIES!

Duh.

Over on Lew Stringer's blog...

http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2011/09/days-of-thrills-and-laughter.html

"Sales of comic have been falling for decades. Some of today's critics forget that many of the titles they hold up as exemplary examples of How Comics Should Be Done didn't actually last very long. (Monster Fun, School Fun, Shiver & Shake, and Jag to name but four.) Proof, sadly, that a top quality product has never been a guarantee of success. In a perfect world it would be, but it isn't in reality."

Slight flaws in the logic there - Monster Fun and Shiver & Shake were both cut from the same cloth, examples of a brief trend toward funny horror comics. Trends die, and these comics died with it. Graham Kibble-White's book on British comics contains a fuller overview of this situation, and is well worth reading. As for School Fun, I'd hardly call that an example of "how comics should be done" - the presence of Coronation Street School (Arf! It's the cast of Coronation Street as kids!) immediately wiped out its credibility as far as I was concerned, and as any self-respecting kid knows, the words 'school' and 'fun' sit together about as comfortably as chalk and cheese.

"Today, kids have a multitude of distractions; TV, DVD's, games, mobile phones, the Internet, sports centres, and, very often, solvent parents who can afford to take them on trips at weekends. Flat pictures on paper must seem very primitive in comparison. The more distractions kids have had, the more sales of comics have fallen."

Fair point, but doesn't some portion of the blame lay with those "solvent parents" who don't bother reading to their kids and instill an anti-intellectual attitude in them from an early age? I was lucky because my dad loved to read and he taught me how to read, and as I said in an earlier post, the work of Richard Scarry, Charles M. Schulz and all those old-school DC Thomson and IPC artists and writers made the journey much more pleasurable. How many kids today get to see such good work on a regular basis? More to the point, who's actually producing good stuff for kids to look at?

Lew touches on this subject himself...

"Some UK comics themselves have become "younger" in tone to try and appeal to struggling readers but conversely this may have a negative effect in putting off better readers who consider such tactics "babyish". Ironically it could be argued that today's children need comics more than ever, as an entertaining stimulus to reading."

I couldn't agree more! Incidentally, whenever some draftpak sneered "huh, comics are for babies", I used to reply "So when did you last see a baby lying in its pram reading the Beano?". Shut them up every time. A bit like the radgie kid (he knows who he is) who told me "Comics are stupid - I could do a comic in two minutes". I challenged him to do just that, and the best he could manage was a few stickmen. If you're going to sneer at someone's tastes, at least have the brains to back your arguments up or make them logical to begin with.

"Comics used to be approximately the same price as a bar of chocolate or a packet of crisps. Today, that would mean a comic should be about 60p. Unfortunately they're between £1.50 and £3.99, an inevitable result of retail giants charging huge sums for shelf space and falling circulations causing higher unit price costs."

Another valid point. I actually remember my first copy of Viz cost a princely 60p, and back then there was just one shop in Northampton that sold it - Blitz Videos (now long defunct) on Barrack Road. As regular readers will know, self-publishing is quite a hobby of mine - having had some bad experiences with the business end of things, it looks as if I'll continue either self-publishing or doing internet only stuff until a worthwhile, honest publisher approaches me (I'm buggered if I'm running after them) - and believe me, it's a slog in itself trying to find any kind of shops anywhere that are willing to make room for a small pile of A5-sized magazines on their counter. I can only imagine (and it's giving me no great pleasure) how hard it is for legitimate publishers being fleeced at every turn by the retail giants who make the fucking rules up with both eyes fixed firmly on maximum profit.

"I know some fans think that publishers should just put out more product and experiment to see what sticks. If it was that simple, we'd see a return to the days of the 1960s/70s with new comics appearing all the time. Sadly, the retail system has changed. Today, publishers are more at the mercy of retail giants who are only interested in license-based comics and titles with cover mounts (or bagged toys). It really is a struggle to get a new comic off the ground, and extremely expensive."

I'm on Lew's side with all of this.

Quick message to the retail giants...

Seriously. Fuck you for helping to destroy all that was good. Fuck you very much.

*Deep breath*

Charles M.Schulz noted that newspaper comic strips - and he was the author and artist of the very best of them all - was always held in low regard when he was growing up in 1920s-30s America, and that being a comic strip artist was not worthy of anyone's ambitions. I've come across this very same poxy attitude hundreds of times. Being an artist - even an avant-garde abstract artist whose paintings are nothing but ugly dun-coloured smears - is cool, being a comic artist is nerdy. When I was scraping a living as a freelance artist, even my fucking business advisor told me to "get a part-time job to support yourself so you can do your comics as a sideline". How insulting that is to anyone who knows how time-consuming comics are, especially to those like me who want to do a decent job. Cartooning is a full-time fucking job in itself. It's not a hobby, it's a way of life. That's why cartoonists tend to be "nerdy". They sacrifice a lot - social life, friendships and the like - in order to pursue their dream. Robert Crumb wrote about focusing all his energies into his left hand (his drawing hand) and "living on paper" - which sums it up perfectly. If you love drawing, you'll happily endure poverty just to carry on doing what you love. It's like being a rock musician in some regards - you put up with the rows, the squalor, the endless road trips, the tedium, the lame crowds, just for the occasional 'buzzes' that make it all worthwhile. Some people are just born this way. You can't explain it to the practical-minded layman.

Frozen Jack strikes again!

2011-09-12T06:21:00.000-07:00

Ugh. What a rancid start to the week this is.

Kidr77 brought this to my attention, from the blog of Jamie Smart, the artist who draws Desperate Dan and other stuff for the new-look Dandy.

My bitter, whining, failed cunt's interjections are dotted throughout.

An open letter to the internet.

When The Dandy relaunched last year, it caught a lot of attention. As Britain’s oldest comic institution, it had the weight of history behind it and any attempts at revitalising the form would naturally take some punches. What it did was quite daring, it scrapped the magazine format it had been slowly creeping towards, and instead declared itself a bona fide comic once more, filled to the gills with a variety of cartoons. Initially it also did away with the cover-mounted freebie toys, a risk in today’s market. What it wanted to be, was a modern version of the comics we grew up with. Unashamedly silly.

A modern version of the comics we grew up with?

Like it or not, that's exactly what Viz used to be when it was shifting over a million copies per issue! I was thinking about this last night, in fact. Even the most casual of readers was able to draw a clear and distinct line between Viz's characters - who often came complete with striped pullovers, shorts and hobnail boots - and the likes of Bully Beef, Dennis the Menace, the Jocks and the Geordies and countless others. Sure, Viz was sweary, smutty and violent, but it always had a firm sense of everything that had gone before. It doesn't take a genius to spot that a character like 'Tubby Johnson' (bill matter - "he's fat, and he doesn't give a fuck!") is clearly Tub, Fatty Fudge, Tom Tum or Big Fat Joe minus the concessions to respectability. Biffa Bacon is obviously Bully Beef with a bovver-boy makeover. He even had his own Chips or Walter figure for a while, in the form of the long-suffering Cedric Soft.

A knowledge of - and a respect for, however diluted and irreverent that respect seemed at times - the comics "we all grew up with" was a key ingredient to Viz's success. It looked, felt and even behaved like a children's comic that had spent too long behind the bike sheds drinking cheap cider and smoking stolen fags. The imitation comics that followed in its wake (including my own early nineties comic, Klam) lacked this self-awareness. They were too wrapped up in copying all the wrong facets of Viz to notice what was going on beneath the crudeness and the swearing.

And now the Dandy is reduced to being ... what, exactly? "A modern version of the comics we grew up with". An ersatz version of itself. That's a lofty ambition right there.

Recently the response came back – sales had dropped by a half. What a crushing blow to such a noble attempt.

Inevitably, sensing blood, the parasites have come out. Sensing a wounded animal they’ve pounced, picking at it from a safe cowering distance. In this canyon of the internet, the wretched scabby vultures don’t waste a second. Forums and blogs, suddenly filled with the barely-concealed glee of a thousand old, bitter, failed cartoonists who declare they KNEW it wouldn’t work. I say they’re failed cartoonists because you can usually follow the trail of bun crumbs back to their own portfolios, as they’ve clearly tried to infiltrate the world of children’s comics but obviously never quite made it. Instead of crying salty tears into their own pisspoor efforts, they bitch and whine their stupid opinions online, content that there’ll always be some other bitter tit who feels the same.

Noble attempt or not, don't you think the old, bitter, failed cartoonists had a point? Or aren't they allowed an opinion, because they're old, bitter, failed cartoonists?

The vast majority of film critics aren't directors, screenwriters, actors, photographers or technical people of any stripe. Does this mean they shouldn't be allowed to do their jobs?

This reminds me of when I was a kid and we used to use some of the blandest, most poorly-designed textbooks imaginable at my school, complete with illustrations that looked as if they were the work of a bored gibbon with a lazy eye. When I commented on the poor quality of the illustrations, there was always some wanker who'd snap "It's better than you could ever do - at least his work's in print".

Katie Price (Jordan) has several books in print, and they're still shit. Do you see where I'm going with this?

As for "trying to infiltrate the world of children's comics", I used to write and draw for Acne before it bit the dust. I created the characters MC Crapper and Nicky Hunt. Fair enough, Acne was a bit more 'grown up' than the usual kids' fare, but it still fit into the Oink! / Bog Paper / It's Wicked mould quite nicely.

As for "my own pisspoor efforts", I've had exceedingly positive comments on my work from people like Alan Moore, Peter Bagge and Jay Lynch. More recently Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden complimented me quite fulsomely on my drawing commemorating forty years of the Goodies. I've had work published in newspapers, magazines and comics. I self-publish these days because I choose to.

Worse is the personal attacks they make on the art. The Dandy was bold in allowing new, unexpected artists to take the reigns on some of their popular characters, to try new things and shake the medium up a bit. The range of material inside was a joy, and should be applauded. But the criticism coming back at it was unfounded, and purely subjective. I’ll say this now, I can take it. I’ve been doing this long enough, and had enough whiney criticism thrown at me that it swiftly stops being hurtful and fast becomes funny. When you realise you’re being criticised by the angry, bitter internet, with all its confused rationale and hypocritical vitriol, it becomes more of a trophy – the fact you’re invoking such a reaction means you’re doing something right. But I’ve seen the attacks on the other artists, some of them brutal, and it’s nothing but childish jealousy. It dismisses all the years of work someone’s put into their craft in one sentence.

WHOA. Where do I start?

Over to the Kiddin' Around blog (http://kidr77.blogspot.com)...

"The immodest self-praise that Mr. Smart heaps upon himself and his colleagues in the 'how NOT to draw comics' brigade is equally subjective - and therefore doesn't have any more validity than (according to him) those of his critics. As for his assertion that "the fact you're invoking such a reaction means you're doing something right." - talk about deluded? I rather think the falling sales prove he's doing something wrong and confirms, contrary to his biased assertion, that the criticism was very far from being "unfounded" indeed. And to call criticism "nothing but childish jealousy" and to presume it comes from those with unachieved artistic aspirations merely demonstrates the depth of his delusion. I'm willing to bet that the majority of criticism comes from ordinary people who have never even considered a career in comics, never mind pursued one."

Incidentally, here's Kid's version of Desperate Dan. And for my money, it's a lot better than the current incarnation.

Back to Jamie Smart...

It’s pathetic. An opinion is one thing, and an informed critical opinion can often be very helpful. But a snide, bullshit swipe at something that was trying to do good is callous. The Dandy was standing up for British comics, and the artists were chosen because their artwork delights children. And it did, any naysayer can say their kids didn’t like The Dandy but they’re not taking into account the thousands that DID, and the untapped audience that would if they could just be reached. For every grown adult who says I draw comics like an idiot monkey, there’s a score of people who love what I do. Complaining that someone’s style is wrong is like saying custard is offensive – it means nothing. It’s your opinion. Instead of frothing it up with the nastiest words you can muster, try not thinking about it. Try getting on with your own life. Try doing something constructive instead of whining like a bitch.

"Complaining that someone's style is 'wrong' is like saying custard is offensive"? What is this, an episode of the Mighty Boosh? How random.

The reasons for The Dandy audience slide could be many (distribution, advertising, competition etc). I thought they were doing something really right, you can say I’m biased because I work for them, but I would have applauded it even if I had not. Even if they’d rejected my work, I would have promoted the relaunched Dandy. It deserves a huge amount of respect for trying, and I really hope it can find a way to keep going. I’ve a few suggestions but hey, I’m sure they’ve a few plans too.

Over to Kiddin' Around again...

"Of course there are many other factors involved in the circulation decline of magazines everywhere, but these conditions have existed for a while. The MAIN reason that sales of The Dandy have deteriorated so drastically in such a short a time is that readers have simply abandoned it because it failed to deliver. For that, Mr. Smart has to accept his fair share of culpability in the situation, rather than posture as a misunderstood genius whose efforts and talent are unappreciated. That's like saying it's the fault of the audience. We see such petulant, childish, arrogant behaviour on our TVs every week, whenever the X Factor judges tell some social inadequate that he or she can't sing, or dance, or whatever. Simply put, just like them, Mr. Smart lays his own failures at the door of his critics."

It's worth considering that statement - readers have simply abandonded it because it failed to deliver.

I don't mean to be petty with this, but not long ago I saw a copy of the Dandy abandoned on the pavement. On flicking through, there was one page missing - the page where you had to fill in a 'likes and dislikes' questionnaire to win an iPod. This is a touch different to my own comic-buying days, where I used to cut out and keep Gordon Bell's Pup Parade strip each week, sticking them in a scrapbook, because I loved his style so much.

Instead of hiding in your dark corners, internet critics, seeping out at the first sign of trouble, you could have been cheering on a bold move in children’s comics. You could have stood up for the greater cause, you may even have enjoyed some of the work inside if you’d made the effort to look past your own bitter opinions. But you’d rather criticise someone else’s work, than do something constructive yourself.

"You could have been cheering on a bold move in children's comics". Well, when someone makes a bold move in children's comics, I'll be cheering it on.

Kiddin' Around says "It's ... far easier to create shit that people don't want, and then blame the audience for not wanting it. IF The Dandy is 'destroyed' (and we all hope it isn't) then it was the misguided and ill-advised new direction which is responsible for its destruction. That's something the high-and-mighty Mr. Smart would do well to consider, as he hurls his bad-tempered, vitriolic insults at the backs of a rapidly departing audience. The Dandy destroyed? Then YOU'RE one of the ones responsible for doing it, fella. Remember that, as you sulk under the cockroach-infested, piss-stained blankets of a rickety, woodworm-ridden bed of your own making. You describe anyone who has been vocal in their criticism of the recent incarnation of The Dandy as "whining like a bitch". People in glass houses, Mr. Smart? For one who isn't shy about using your own blog to vent your frustrations and indulge in self-obsessed ranting, how bloody well dare you berate anyone else for doing what you regard as the same thing. The words 'pot' and 'kettle' spring to mind.

Why not simply follow your own advice? "Instead of frothing it up with the nastiest words you can muster, try not thinking about it. Try getting on with your life. Try doing something constructive instead of whining like a bitch." Indeed. Now why not try drawing a strip that will increase The Dandy's sales, instead of driving readers away in droves?"

Meanwhile, here's an idea.

Remember DC Thomson's Classics From the Comics? Relaunch that as a weekly, only with a less unweildy title, and thirty-two pages of reprints of the wildest, funniest stuff ever to rampage across their titles. I'm talking John Geering's Bananaman, Puss an' Boots and Smudge. I'm talking David Sutherland's Bash Street Kids when Teech still used his cane. I'm talking the most wacked-out and zany stuff ever to grace the pages of Sparky, Topper, Nutty and Beezer. Just go for broke, and make sure you employ someone who knows their stuff as editor. Put it all out there and I can guarantee you the kids will love it.

Funny stuff is funny stuff, no matter how old it is or outmoded it appears.

Something to think about there whilst the Dandy sheds ever more readers in its desperate attempts at appearing cool, trendy, with-it and other phrases.

I really shouldn't be doing this, should I?

2011-09-09T06:28:00.000-07:00

I don't set out to wind people up or 'troll', but it is amazing how speaking your mind can get you into all sorts of trouble.

Readers of this blog (that hopefully means you!) will know that I've had some less than complimentary things to say about the modern-day Beano and Dandy in recent months. I'm sick of saying this, but I love the Beano and the Dandy. They were part of my childhood. They, along with the works of Charles M.Schulz and Richard Scarry, taught me to love reading, to love books, to love illustrations.

What I hate is what they've become.

Today, I noticed this on Lew Stringer's blog...

Those that claim some strips in The Dandy are poorly drawn, or look like they're done by children, are not only being insulting to the creators but they're also completely wrong. One might not like the styles, but a simpler or more abstract approach does not mean it's below professional standard. In fact there is nothing in The Dandy that could be classed as "poorly drawn". The aim isn't to draw realistically, and if one looks at the artwork thoroughly there's a sound structure and consistency to each style. Complaining that the modern style isn't "as good" as, say, The Dandy of 1970, is as off-target as saying The Dandy of 1970 wasn't as well drawn as Ally Sloper's Half Holiday.

I feel like 'frozen Jack' in the Shining every time this tedious circular argument comes up.

Progress, for its own sake, is bogus. Different is not necessarily good.

There, that's my point of view. Simple really, isn't it?

Progress is necessary only when it's absolutely necessary. Different can be exciting and unusual. But when it's neither, it can't hide behind the "at least it's different" excuse because...well, how can shit be different to shit? How can nothing be different to nothing?

Beautiful art deco buildings like the one above were torn down without a single backward glance all over Europe and America directly after the Second World War in the name of "progress". In many cases they were replaced by this kind of crap...

Some people found this 'Brutalist' school of architecture appealing, largely because it was "different" and "progressive". Nowadays only the most aesthetically challenged of people will say that these eyesore heaps of concrete are anything other than ghastly. It's amazing quickly yesterday's "different" and "progressive" turns into tomorrow's garbage.

By a similar token, how many people thought the Young Ones was great when it first aired? It was great. Simply because, at the time, television comedy needed a good kick up the arse, and the Young Ones was at least (here comes that word again) different. But has it aged well? Put simply, no. It's 95% unwatchable these days. Apologies if you're still able to watch it without cringing, but that's just how I feel.

Mr Stringer writes "a simpler or more abstract approach does not mean it's below professional standard". Conveniently, everyone has their own idea of what actually constitutes professional standard. Some of the cartoons in Private Eye are eye-hurtingly ugly, but they almost always have a funny idea or a joke behind them, so you can forgive the crude art. My problem with the modern day Dandy is much the same as my problem with the UPA cartoons of the 1950s. They were produced by people who knew their trade inside and out and were capable of total greatness, yet because they felt this burning desire to be "different" and "progressive", they chose to abandon everything they excelled at just for the sake of standing out from the crowd.

"There is nothing in The Dandy that could be classed as "poorly drawn" ... that's a matter of opinion. Compare and contrast the 21st century Bully Beef and Chips with their retro counterparts.

And the Jimmy Hughes version...

And to think there were people who thought Jimmy's style was crude and ugly! Look at how 'alive' that one panel seems. Look at the sense of depth and perspective. Look how you can tell Bully Beef is savouring his cruelty, and, at the same time, eagerly anticipating what havoc he's about to wreak next. All this with a few simple lines! You can almost feel Chips's panic as he hot-foots it away from his nemesis. That's what I love about the old Dandy. The modern frame just looks dull, flat and lifeless in comparison.

As you might expect, Lew's post attracted a fair number of comments.

Jack Silver wrote "I can believe those figures. The Dandy of today has none of the old Dandy we loved, there's a scary old bald man on the cover, the writing in the bubbles looks childish, the "art" looks rushed and hard to follow, the "jokes" are not funny, the celebrity stories are inappropriate. They should have followed the example set by Beano and sticked to the formula that worked."

And I couldn't agree more! Despite the jarring concessions to a shallow modernity and Dennis the Menace's bland Disney-style makeover, the Beano is much the same today as it always was. So why can't the same be said for the Dandy?

According to Lew, "the old formula WASN'T working". Maybe not, but the pre-umpteenth makeover Dandy of, say, the late nineties, was selling a fucksight more than eight thousand copies.

1000MB wrote "It is a real shame to see the decline of two British icons. Im 14 myself and I collect old comics and annuals. The way I see it is after 1986 The Dandy just got ... more discusting. I remember looking at a recent Dandy Annual it was just awful having characters where you see them being sick and actually seing what is in their sick is just horrible. I know they have got to try and reach a larger market but making it discusting is not the answer. I know this has changed since but it gives a bad image to the comic. You see if you have an adult looking at that particular annual they would wonder what on earth happened to their beloved comic."

Isn't it nice to see a fourteen year old collecting old comics and annuals? Makes you feel all warm and fills you with hope for the future.

Anonymous wrote "All comments about drawing styles are subjective. But all that matters in the end are sales. It's a product. These poorly drawn strips are on the level of JOECARTOON. Sure, people don't mind seeing this standard of cartoon for free, but few will pay for it. That's why he shut down his website last year and put stuff onto Youtube. Are Dandy's distribution and display problems the cause of its dramatic decline in sales? I think it's [due to the] content. Content is king. There are better things to pay £1.50 on even in comics..."

Lew ain't having any of that shit... "As for the strips being "poorly drawn", sorry but you're completely 100% utterly wrong. The styles may not be to your taste, and you may not LIKE them but the ability is there. Take my word for it, the structure of the strips is sound."

So there you have it. Opinions are verboten. You are one hundred percent WRONG. Deal with it.

Another anonymous poster wrote "I have an 8 year old nephew. Would I buy him the Beano? Maybe. Would I buy him the Dandy? No!!! What market is this "comic" for? It is a hodgepodge of styles! Where is this "sound structure" on some of the strips? Good writing? Good design? Good draughtsmanship? In the end maybe you cannot analyse it all. If it is such a great commodity, it would not have lost almost 50% sales. The banks collapsed because of poor judgement and short term thinking by "experts" in the banking field. Maybe the Dandy's collapse is a reflection on the poor judgement of talented people!"

To reiterate, I'm not saying the likes of Phil Corbett, Jamie Smart and the rest are bad artists per se. I'm just saying their work doesn't suit the comic I grew up with. If you expose kids to great artwork, good writing, funny stories (blah blah blah, I'm sick of hearing myself explain this), they will appreciate the effort that went into that work. They may not show it at first, and it may not be immediately obvious, but trust me - they will.

Another anon put it more strongly - "The strips in the Dandy ARE poorly drawn. There are artistic standards that art is judged by, take it from ME. Nothing is a match for a Ken Reid Jonah or a Jack Prout Black Bob or Bill Holroyd's Brassneck. The standards have been dropping for 30 years and it's worse than ever now. Put it out of its misery - the REAL Dandy died when I was a youngster."

Harsh words, maybe, but deeply felt.

Bradford wrote "I'm going to make a suggestion now and it might be controversial and unpopular with some people but here goes. As someone said here content is king. Children do not like The Dandy as is. My suggestion is, sack the artists and replace them with people who work on comics that sell better! Watch your circulation rise."

A muddled point, but worth considering?

Anon (again!) wrote " You come across as being very reluctant to accept any criticisms of the Dandy Lew. Your fear of biting the hand that feeds is transparent. Cheque in the post? Most children know quality when they see it, or not as the case may be. Content IS king, but the material in The Dandy today isn't even a Queen's corgi. (With the honourable exception of Nigel Parkinson)."

Lew's response? "Don't judge me by your standards". That's you told.

Anon jumped back into the fray with "You don't know what my standards are, but the chances are they're higher than yours. Drawn any comic strips about devil worship recently?" Ouch!

A Dandy Fan From Long Ago wrote "I've followed this "debate" with some interest and patience. As Raven said on Comics UK this week no comic should be beyond criticism. I have noticed that whenever anyone on this blog has tried to pass negative comment re: The Dandy you immediately shoot them down in flames. Mr.Stringer, your attitude comes across as blinkered and somewhat aggressive. There is obviously something wrong with The Dandy or it would be attracting a far bigger fanbase than it currently is!! A head in the sand attitude is not good for the comics industry. This is why we no longer have the great comics we used to. Everyone ignored the iceberg. If you're open for debate, allow people to comment without jumping in every five minutes to argue against them."

Ah sod it. I really shouldn't be doing this, should I.

The best Peanuts strip EVER

2011-07-28T07:25:00.001-07:00

I love the idea of a school committing suicide. I often wished mine would.

Scamp - issue one

2011-07-26T06:04:00.001-07:00

Let's not get pretentious here; I felt like drawing a comic book inspired by the old pocket-sized 'glamour magazines' from the 1950s, so I did. And I hope you all enjoy it.

The Beano and the Dandy...is their journey almost over?

2011-06-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

According to these sales figures (presented 'as is' in the form of a .PNG document e-mailed to me by a friend), it looks as though the seventy-odd years of cow pies, catapults, carties, softy-bashing, dodges, mortar board-wearing teachers, permanently hungry bears and ceaselessly chipper underdgos will soon be consigned to the dusty cupboard of history.

The Dandy has been in trouble for a while - people have been predicting a merger with its cheeky younger brother for decades now - and the 2007 and 2010 revamps don't seem to have helped matters. But what about the Beano? Surely the 'old reliable' of children's humour titles is bulletproof? Well, it doesn't look that way at the moment. Beano editor Alan Digby left the building earlier this year, after a forty-year career with DC Thomson, and this year's Beano Summer Special - which used to be an absolute highlight of the comic year - is a Classics From the Comics-style reprint number (nothing wrong with that, I love old comics!) on sale exclusively at WH Smith's. Why is this? Apparently because newsagents don't like having 'old stock' cluttering up their shelves for months at a time. I've read the special and it is superb. My advice to people who are worried about the future of the Beano is to pop down to your local Smith's and buy it now. You won't be disappointed.

Private Eye took the unusual step of reviewing the 2011 Beano annual in their book review column, and noted that Dennis the Menace now wears a bland Disney grin instead of the menacing expression most of us grew up with. The Eye's critic also noted that a close eye really does need to be kept on the Beano, because once the final curtain is brought down, it won't be coming back. I couldn't agree more...but really, it's not the Beano we knew and loved, is it?

One of the major problems with both comics is that whenever they try to embrace modernity, the efforts fall flatter than the average pancake. Reading phrases like "it's all gone Pete Tong" or "See ya! Wouldn't wanna be ya!" in a Fred's Bed strip is an uncomfortable experience. When Dennis the Menace was briefly the recipient of a very nineties makeover (shades, shellsuit, personal stereo, trainers) in the early part of that decade, there was much consternation in the tabloids, and the changes were duly scrapped. A proposed makeover for the Bash Street Kids ended much the same way. But a look through a recent Dandy is even more of an upsetting experience. Desperate Dan, Korky the Cat and Bananaman now bear almost no resemblance to their original selves. This is the same lazy thinking - "the kids won't like it unless they can relate to it" - that gave us those horrible posters, t-shirts and stationery items featuring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck dressed up in hip-hop clothes and doing that all purpose "look how much attitude I've got" smirk. It shows that the people in charge of the characters have no confidence with the original material that has managed to entertain millions without any kind of enhancement.

Here's a reminder of the fallout that greeted the relaunch of the Dandy as Dandy Xtreme a mere four years ago...

To try and smooth things over before the shit hit the fan (or the fans hit the shit), Dandy editor Craig Graham told the BBC News that "we discovered The Dandy readers were struggling to schedule a weekly comic into their hectic lives. They just didn't have enough time. They're too busy gaming, surfing the net or watching TV, movies and DVDs. They still enjoyed The Dandy, but if they were going to buy it themselves they expected more than just 'a comic my dad used to read'."

In the words of a poster on the World of Stuart forums, "What a load of horse-shit. And what a sad situation for the industry to be in. Like fuck six-year-olds have any kind of "busy schedule" that they somehow can't fit a fucking comic into. The Dandy isn't War and fucking Peace - it's a thin comic that takes fuck all time to read".

Well, quite. A more thoughtful comment came from a blogger who wrote "Eight-year-old kids should never ‘be in the loop’, they need not know of a single trend and the only must-do should be occasional homework and fun-having. If we don’t do something about this vile trend of the ‘adultification’ of children we’ll end up with an even meaner, more aggressive society than we already have. We’ll have kids that have no childhood and no ignorance of the horrors of the world".

(Does anyone else find it weird that kids are getting more and more like miniature adults and adults are getting more and more childish? I could go off on a right old rant on this one, suffice to say, if you are over twenty and fat you have no fucking business wearing shorts. You look like a massive, angry toddler.)

On the Comics UK forum... "Now it includes page after page of 'barfing', 'pimping', 'gross farting', 'kicks in da butt', 'mega farts', 'Dude, you got wacked!', 'turds' and 'eggy pumps'... Do MOST kids really speak like this? Mine certainly don't. Incredibly, on page 7 there is even a photograph of a child pretending to lick shit off his hand!"

I remember mentioning this to the usually unshockable Alan Moore (we live in the same town. Small world ain't it!) and even he thought this was a bit much, musing "Coprophilia and paedophilia...not the Dandy I used to know"!

Comments from Lew Stringer's blog...

"Time will tell if this actually appeals to kids. I don't remember actually finding farting, crapping and snot being that funny, even when I was little but hey, if it works for them. I'm fed up of whining about things that aren't aimed at me. If kids love it and it makes them money, go for it but please, PLEASE, someone have the guts and stump up the money to put out a decent alternative kids comic."

"Maybe there is an 8-year-old boy out there who likes crap-eating gags and vintage Dud Watkins strips from before the war...although at least they haven't done a Desperate Dan strip which has Dan laying monster turds and wafting eggy farts towards Aunt Aggie."

Dandy Xtreme didn't last, and was ditched after three years to make way for the current incarnation, simply called the Dandy again.

Comments regarding that experiment...

Manic Man said "I really didn't take to what has been done over the last few years with classics like Bananaman, Dan or Korky.. Some of the new strips are good, even though I'm not a fan of Harry Hill, but it does seam very heavy on the media side.. Too much based on current 'flavors' in TV then in more long lasting characters."

My own comment - "Seriously, when did children's comics get so UGLY? Much of the new Dandy looks as if it was drawn by twelve year olds during a boring history lesson. What happened to the craftsmanship, love and attention that went into the meticulously drawn, hugely attractive Dandy strips of old? Do people think kids won't like or relate to artwork that doesn't look 'mod' enough? I dunno..."

An anonymous poster - "Only Nigel Parkinson displays anything resembling a professional drawing ability - the rest is utterly amateurish verging on doggy-poo.
No wonder comics are going down the toilet, given the crap that's printed on them these days...massive failure."

Another anonymous quote - "I thought the subject under discussion is whether the new Dandy is actually any good or not, not just whether the kids of today will like it. If the new Dandy is rubbish, that's a step backwards regardless of how well it sells. It's a matter of quality not popularity. The Sunday Sport apparently shifts by the ton, but that doesn't make it a quality newspaper."

And another (there are a lot of shy people out there!) - "I have nothing against a variety of styles as long as they're of a professional standard. However, going on the evidence of the new Dandy itself, Jamie Smart can't actually draw. I'd suggest that just because the comic is for children doesn't mean it has to look as if it's been drawn by children."

The days of the Pie Eaters' Club and the Menaces' Club now seem so far away...

Sometimes you're inspired, and sometimes you're not.

2011-06-22T07:03:00.001-07:00

What do you do when you've no ideas, and you've "run out of things to draw"?

You keep drawing.

I'm serious about this. Between 1995 and 1999, I drew very little. I'd gone straight from leaving school to being a published freelance cartoonist and that left very little time for practice, the very thing that helps you improve and evolve. Drawing wasn't fun any more. It felt like a task. Freelancing, by and large, isn't much fun. I admire cartoonists who can churn out hack work to order strictly for money, but I'm not one of them. I started drawing seriously again after seeing the documentary film Crumb (VERY highly recommended). Even if you don't care much for his style, or the content of his work, R.Crumb makes drawing look easy. He makes it look like anyone could do it. And he makes it look fun.

One of the most liberating things about Crumb's work for me is that, over the years, he's pretty much drawn, in his own words, "whatever I fucking please to draw". That's the way to go. Of his LSD-inspired sixties work, he said it was a joy to do because it didn't have to make any sense, and it didn't have to be funny! I call this the Spike Milligan school of drawing. If it's funny to you, it's funny. So what if nobody else thinks it's funny? If it's funny to you, that's all that matters, because at least you're trying something different, not hacking it out.

I entered the world of cartooning through the back door, a suitably arse-based analogy for the plethora of adults-only comics that were floating around in the 1990s. Most of them were, of course, awful, but it was always good to see your work in print, even if you were being paid bugger all. I launched my own Viz knock-off, Klam, which ran for six issues (including the 'dummy') between 1992 and 1994. But even that became boring. I was working too much to a formula. The very early issues of Viz (collected in the Big Hard One) might not be regarded as classics, but for me, they're the most fun to read, simply because Chris Donald and company had the freedom to do whatever they liked. And they did, from surreal fairy stories to extreme violence, from witty social commentary to coarse parodies of popular television. (Their parody of Grange Hill, with a sociopathic and all-too-realistic PE teacher, is sublime.) There really was nothing else like it around, and this generated an excitement which - somewhat predictably - tailed off when everyone and his wife started reading it and the likes of the Fat Slags and Roger Mellie became cultural reference points rather than mordant satire offered from the sidelines.

But, again, I digress. If you ever feel like you've run out of ideas, just keep drawing. Anything you want. Anything that comes to mind. Design your own album sleeves, film posters, magazine covers, anything. Put them out there! Don't be ashamed to show them to anyone - feedback is important. Nothing flatters an artist like being told "please do more" by someone.

To illustrate this theory, I've scanned some images I've come up with over the past few days. I'll leave it to you to decide which ones I drew whilst feeling inspired, and which ones were an exercise in "just keep drawing". After all, you may have a different view on things. Enjoy...

More stupid stuff

2011-06-08T07:26:00.001-07:00

More of the Goddess Lucy

2011-06-08T06:30:00.000-07:00

Special thanks to LF Barfe for the scan.

Three new ones

2011-06-02T10:13:00.001-07:00

'Visions' is an unused comic cover from a couple of years ago. Sorry about the shoddy quality of the scans but I'm working with unfamiliar equipment...any excuse!

Three new ones

2011-05-31T06:54:00.001-07:00

Apologies to Jack Vettriano. He did the Singing Butler, my version's called the Miserable Maid.

Bit of a change of pace. (Not a huge one, admittedly.)

Partially drawn on a train, which is why the line quality's iffy. Still pleased with the way it turned out though.

Two new drawings

2011-05-25T07:26:00.001-07:00

If I Ruled the World and Drama Lessons (two new strips)

2011-05-20T04:54:00.000-07:00

Some illustrations rescued from my MySpace account

2011-04-26T09:49:00.001-07:00

Whoopee! comic celebrates the silver jubilee

2011-02-03T10:14:00.001-08:00

Bit of patriotic tub-thumping, and who would begrudge them that? Centre spread from the 11th June 1977 issue, drawn by the late Robert Nixon, AKA Rob Lee. How many characters do you remember?

Daily Star slates the new-look Desperate Dan

2010-11-01T07:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/160083/Desperate-Dan-makeover-is-not-so-Dandy

I can't add much more to that...

The Dandy relaunched - HUGE disappointment

2010-10-29T07:22:00.001-07:00

WHIRRRRR!

What's that noise? The sound of Dudley Watkins, Ron Spencer, Jimmy Hughes and all the old-school Dandy artists turning in their graves.

Seriously, when did children's comics get so UGLY? Last year, I had a moan about how the DIY ethos of the punk era had a knock-on effect to the wider world of comics and magazines in general (with Oink! being one of the worst offenders), and how so many fanzines nowadays have a rough-as-guts, couldn't-care-less look about them, and I was a bit cautious of coming across as a grumpy old man...but much of the new-look Dandy (which has at least dropped the ridiculous 'Xtreme' tag and gone weekly again) really does look as if it was drawn by twelve year olds during a boring history lesson.

Or, to quote 'anonymous' posting on Dandy cartoonist Lew Stringer's blog, "I would say that the new Dandy is absolute rubbish. Only Nigel Parkinson displays anything resembling a professional drawing ability - the rest is utterly amateurish verging on doggy-poo. No wonder comics are going down the toilet, given the crap that's printed on them these days. The new Dandy? Massive failure". (A bit harsh on Lew Stringer, given the years of genuinely good work he's done for IPC comics and Viz among others, but it saddens me to say that even his work has taken on a bland, stylized look for the new Dandy.)

What happened to the craftsmanship, love and attention that went into the meticulously drawn, hugely attractive Dandy strips of old? Granted, it was never my favourite comic as a kid (though some of the annuals were surprisingly good fun), but it was always reliably well-produced, well-written and nicely drawn. Do people think kids won't like or relate to artwork that doesn't look 'mod' enough? Same argument I had at school time and time again with kids who preferred Dogtanian and Battle of the Planets to genuine classics like Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny...

Sorry to be negative here, but my love of cartooning and comics was sparked by the people who gave us plenty to look at and plenty to read...people like Baxendale, Tom Paterson, J.Edward Oliver, Dave Sutherland, Charles Griggs, George Martin, Ken Reid, John Geering, Jim Petrie, Gordon Bell, Ken Harrison and so on. Even the much-maligned Jimmy Hughes (The Jocks and the Geordies, Bully Beef and Chips) had an excitement and energy about his artwork. An energy and excitement that seems missing from the new look Dandy. Sure, the 'old Dandy' may look archaic to modern readers, but there's so much love and care invested into each frame it's hard not to appreciate it, not just as a comic strip, but as a piece of art.

Peter Gray manages to scale new heights of wrongness with his observation that "The Dandy is a bit Wow, Krazy, Monster Fun, Tv Comic, Oink, Nipper, Hoot, DFC and Oink rolled into a Dandy!!"

Meanwhile, Digifiend says..."they design the strips for kids, not for nostalgics". In other words, it doesn't matter if it looks shit, it's only for kids, they'll never know the difference.

John Kricfalusi no doubt upset a lot of people with his jibes at the UPA cartoons of the 1950s, which have a similar central bone of contention to my reservations about modern children's comics. If I may quote him...

"As the 60s dragged on, the cartoons drifted further and further away from both good design and good animation - in other words against both UPA and Disney."

Bananaman, Korky and Desperate Dan, like them or not, are still iconic characters. In their present incarnation, however, they're virtually unrecognizable. So what's the point in keeping them alive? Why not just present the new designs as new characters, instead of actively shredding your own legacy in this way?

"General classic animation principles were considered radical by the 1980s."

In much the same way that the Dave Sutherland Bash Street Kids strips of the 80s looked like the work of a super-talented being from an alien planet compared to the rough-as-guts strips in Oink! - I appreciate that the artists were trying to bring a looser, sketchier style to the world of children's comics, but they could have done that without making the whole thing look so scruffy and disorganised. (It's hard to think of a DC Thomson classic era artist with a looser style than David Law, but I love his old Dennis and Beryl the Peril strips, simply because he had the knack of making anything look funny!)

John again... "The revolution these great animators started opened the door to non-skilled amateur artists to compete with them and doomed quality animation".
Interesting sidenote...Leo Baxendale chopped and changed his style a fair bit over the years, most notably in the Willy the Kid books, even throwing in a few pages that were supposedly drawn by Willy himself, but even then, Leo couldn't bring himself to produce something that really looked as though a child had drawn it!

"If it's fun, it's a cartoon. If it's bland and sterile, it's design".
Words of wisdom from John K. I don't get the deal with obviously skilled cartoonists who throw away everything they're good at for the sake of making their styles look hip and cool.

I know there's a difference between too much detail and just enough. Some of the underground strips by S.Clay Wilson were just too eyeball-rapingly complex to fully appreciate, and it's always been a personal struggle of mine not to cross-hatch everything to death, but surely it's not too much to ask of someone out there to start producing good looking comics again?

Sensory overload can be fun. And educational. If it's done correctly.

UPDATE (9th September 2011)

Not very subtle but fuck it...

The Goodies at 40

2010-10-13T09:21:00.000-07:00

The BBC aren't planning any repeats or a theme night or anything. What bastards.

UPDATE - Thanks to Tim Brooke-Taylor for writing to me to tell me how much he liked the picture! (1st November 2010)

Brand new never before seen pictures from the house of Turnock...

2010-10-07T07:22:00.000-07:00

These are some pictures I've been working on recently. I had intended to hold back on some of them and upload them in instalments, but since I'm here, and I have access to a scanner, I thought I'd put them all out there...enjoy yourselves!

RIP Lucy 1992-2010

2010-07-03T05:31:00.001-07:00

And God asked the feline spirit
Are you ready to come home?
Oh, yes, quite so, replied the precious soul
And, as a cat, you know I am most able
To decide anything for myself.

Are you coming then? asked God.
Soon, replied the whiskered angel
But I must come slowly
For my human friends are troubled
For you see, they need me, quite certainly.

But don't they understand? asked God
That you'll never leave them?
That your souls are intertwined. For all eternity?
That nothing is created or destroyed?
It just is....forever and ever and ever.

Eventually they will understand,
Replied the glorious cat
For I will whisper into their hearts
That I am always with them
I just am....forever and ever and ever.

Couple of old comic strips scripted by Nigel Buckland

2010-04-08T07:03:00.001-07:00

Have a gander at Nigel's website... http://www.dogsizedcat.com

Some pen and ink drawings I made, working from photos

2010-02-16T09:35:00.000-08:00

Vicki Peterson of the Bangles with her husband.

Shelly Poole, formerly of Alisha's Attic, now solo.

Sabrina Salerno.

Jennifer Connelly in either the late 80s or early nineties.

Chloe Vevrier.

New artwork uploaded (finally!)

2009-08-19T07:22:00.000-07:00

Instead of keeping a dream diary I've been drawing them instead...

I'm trying not to use proper text in the drawings so as to keep them 'universal'. Instead I'm using made-up squiggle 'language' which doesn't mean anything!

Really pleased with how this one turned out.

I thought "I put more work into each frame of a comic strip than some artists put into a whole strip - why bother with strips any more? Why not just do single frames?"

I like postcard humour.

The look on the doctor's face cracked me up first time I pencilled it.

Not entirely happy with this - I think the blonde's hair looks like cardboard. May revise it at a later date.

This is based on a real-life incident, believe it or not. The 'victim' of the shaky ride wasn't quite so attractive though. To cop a line from Viz, she had "Spaniel's ears"...enough said!

Tried to caricature Philip Glenister and John Cleese bottom right. I'm crap at caricatures - just can't seem to get a likeness. Bah.

Northamptonians will remember Delta Books on Abington Square. Here's a (slightly stylized) reminder of the good old days.

Two characters I never tire of drawing...I wonder why?!

Great (and prophetic) line from the Goodies

2009-05-06T08:12:00.000-07:00

"In my day, we had the Beano and the Dandy - nowadays, it's the Porno and the Randy!"

The pitfalls of self-publishing, the fanzine revolution and the downfall of children's comics

2009-04-24T06:58:00.001-07:00

As any fool knows, the punk rock boom of the late 1970s was beneficial in a number of ways. It was also the death knell of a lot of things that were, you know, whisper it if necessary, really quite good.

As Johnny Rotten famously asked a restless audience during the Pistols' notorious first US tour, "ever get the feeling you've been cheated?". Yes, frequently.To put this into some kind of perspective, I'm no big fan of punk rock, but it had to happen, I suppose. I've nothing against the likes of 10CC, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Supertramp and so on, but the bottom line must surely be that the overblown rock dinosaurian epoch had surely belched its last overfed groan by the time punk rock appeared on the scene. All of a sudden, analogue synth-noodling old gaffers who'd been quietly toiling away on three-album-set adaptations of a Rupert Brooke poem or some Eastern mystical theory were shocked into ominous silence by two-minute brash bursts of trebly guitar, berserker drums and snotty, sneering bellowing from ad-hoc groups of fucked-up inner city 'kidz' like the Clash, the Buzzcocks, the Sex Pistols and soforth. New wave followed and revitalised the charts, which suddenly became less about singles exquisitely crafted over months of expensive studio time by ELO or Dr Hook and more about short, sharp bursts of killer tunes, great hooks, craft, verve, style and quickness instead of bellybutton-gazing profundity...which is as it should be!

BUT...what's with the endless "punk nostalgia"? Punks surely wanted to destroy the past, rip it to shreds, gob on it and start again with a clean slate. By 1980 or thereabouts, punk was effectively dead, having served its purpose admirably, and most of its hardcore adherents had morphed into nu-mods or 'casuals' and were "well into" Blondie or the Jam. Worse still, some of them became new romantics (a pox on you, LeBon, and your ilk). Punk was a small movement that had a widely-felt impact that still reverberates to this day...though whether we really need the hordes of Green Day clones is open to question. So how come just about everybody born circa 1960-65 claims to have been "well into punk"? This just strikes me as absolute fatuous bollocks, a desire to re-invent the past in order to appear cooler and 'au fait' with 'the kids'. I remember the late seventies - well, I remember them about as well as anybody born in '74 can - and for every punk rocker I spotted on the street there were far more puttering along quite nicely with their Thin Lizzy / Carpenters / Abba albums.

Sorry to break it to you like this, but a Shadows Greatest Hits compilation was the number one album for six fuckin' weeks during the summer of punk rock.

Put bluntly, the ratio of punks to 'squares' (sorry for sounding a bit Rik Mayall / Young Ones here) was about ten squares to one earnest punk, maybe even twenty to one. Even when punk came to television (a bit late, admittedly, but then the Goodies covered the punk thing pretty comprehensively in their 1977 episode Punky Business, and even that PG-rated treatment caused a bit of a stink at the BBC) with Not the Nine O'Clock News (oh yes...Mel 'n' Griff were as punk as FUCK back then!) and later the Young Ones, these programmes were almost universally slated, pilloried and complained about, except by their core audiences. Same deal with Spitting Image - though having looked back on the first couple of series recently, all that really ever had going for it was novelty value.

So what's going on, thirty years after the fact? Every fucker who was able to finger-paint their own names with the contents of their nappies at the time of 'God Save the Queen' claims to have been a gobbin', snortin', glue-sniffin', safety-pinned and razor-slashed punk rocker! "Oh yeah, always watched the Young Ones, fuckin' right, great programme"... in reality they were probably packed off to bed by half past seven and didn't watch it until it was repeated for the millionth time in the 1990s when Mayall and company were fully paid-up champagne socialists still paying lip-service to their fans by planning to topple the government with fart and knob gags from the safety of their Devonshire estates.

"I was well into punk", says every bastard cultural commentator and BBC nostalgia-fest talking head, who was probably listening to Joe Dolce's Shaddapa Ya Face or St Winifred's School Choir at the time, and only REALLY 'got into punk' last week, when the sub-editor told him or her or IT to go out and buy a couple of compilations because they'd be doing a 16 page pullout next weekend, with contributions from Malcolm McLaren and everything. Even Julie Burchill, the self-styled "hip young gunslinger", admits nowadays that she'd wind down after reviewing a Ramones gig with an Isley Brothers album! She HATED the bands she RAVED about on the page, which surely makes her a fake, a quisling and a fraud...a bit like every bastard else who buys into the "punk was the most important thing to happen ever" ethos. It's a 21st century version of the ubiquitous clapped-out hippy bore who told people "If you can remember the 60s, man, you weren't there". Stop it with the learned behaviour and received opinions bollocks. I was sixteen in 1990. All I wanted from life was to be able to play the intro from 5.15 by the Who and make an honest living from this cartooning lark. Chances are there are a few people of my age who had even sorrier circumstances or were equally 'unhip' (or even moreso), but that wouldn't wash with their 'crowd' so they invent stories about Spike Island, baggy jeans, tie-dye, listening to I Am the Resurrection and being "like totally blown away" by Fools Gold, especially the ultra-rare 12" remix which they bought...not at the time, but a couple of weeks ago. Thank God for Ebay, eh, you fucking chancers? You bluffers?

That said, a fairly positive thing to come out of the punk 'DIY' ethos was the fanzine. People discovered that they could write down any old guff eulogizing their band of choice, get it printed up anywhere photocopiers could be found, and sell it to like-minded people down the pub or across the counter at their local record shop. Very few people, however, took up the challenge and put together a decent-looking publication that could compete with the mainstream music press on its own terms. Not only was that prohibitively expensive, it was also uncool.

Sticking it to the man with barely readable, poorly photocopied, badly-designed fanzines was where it was at, dude! This was all very well until the ethos of the messy 'zines began to bleed over into the 'real world' of the legitimate press, most notably into the world of children's comics.

Around the mid-eighties, some bright sparks decided that the Beano, the Dandy, Buster and so on were getting a bit stuck in their ways, and bugged IPC to let them give the kids something a bit messier, a bit ruder and a bit more rough around the edges for their pocket money. That something turned out to be Oink!, a junior Viz, if you will, and the effect it had on the children's comics industry was twofold. Firstly, it meant a more open acceptance that kids find jokes about arses, willies, shit, vomit and piss hilarious. Secondly, it meant a pretty drastic decline in the standard of published artwork. Oink! had some very good work within its pages - Tom Paterson was a contributor, as was the pseudonymous(?) J.T.Dogg who drew the beautifully-presented Streethogs - but much of the work in Oink! was scrawly, patchy and downright ugly. Most of the cartoonists responsible for this stuff simply weren't cut out to work in the comics. The days of Ron Spencer, Ken Harrison, Dudley D.Watkins, Trevor Metcalfe, Dave Sutherland and virtually any other artist of the 'old school' - i.e. those who wanted to create a comic page that was a work of art in its own right - were suddenly numbered as the contents of Oink! handily lowered the bar for the standards of published comics everywhere.

Here, have a look at this. A typical page from Oink!...

And try this for size...

Looks pretty much like an amateur fanzine, doesn't it? I admit, I bought Oink! myself for quite a while, but most people I knew bailed out after only the first few issues, largely because some foot-stamping from the moral majority caused the editors to drastically tone the content down and it all got a bit childish for its own good. Plus, there's a definite sense about those later issues that they were written at kids rather than for them. The main men behind Oink! - namely Patrick Gallagher, Tony Husband and Mark Rodgers - took great pride in taking the piss out of the Beano and the Dandy because "they've been running the same strips for years", without ever stopping to consider the reasons why. The Bash Street Kids, Little Plum, Minnie the Minx, Dennis the Menace, Desperate Dan and so on ran and ran because readers liked them. Every strip was likely to be a well-plotted, well-scripted affair with top-quality artwork and enough gentle anarchy (if that's not a contradiction in terms) to tickle the average schoolkid. Whereas Oink! strips were, literally and metaphorically, all over the place. From issue to issue, Oink!'s strips were wildly variable in their content and execution, often taking the form of an illustrated prose poem, or an exercise in surrealism, or a single-frame throwaway gag. Kids respond most strongly to simple stories told well and good, interesting narratives, not a load of pretentious 'experimental' bumph that only makes sense to the people who wrote and drew it. And their claim that they were doing something "different for kids" with Oink! is also scuppered by the fact that the early to mid seventies had seen a rash of childrens' titles that deviated substantially from the norm - Shiver and Shake (a 'horror' comic and a standard 'naughty schoolkids' comic in one, similar to Whizzer and Chips admittedly, but with a nicely macabre streak), Monster Fun (a Ronseal title if ever there was one), Cracker (DC Thomson's tentative first stab at a comic that was slightly barmier than the rest), Sparky (which rebranded following its launch as a youngsters' paper and quickly became one of the most surreal and maniacally funny titles on the shelf, even having the Goodies on the cover at one point), Cheeky Weekly (toothy wisecracker ambles through a week of related hi-jinks with a supporting cast of memorable misfits and a disconcertingly sexy lollipop lady), Krazy (very much a junior Mad magazine, only arguably funnier and without the Americanisms), Plug (Bash Street goon goes solo with a full-colour title full of film and telly parodies), Nutty (Thomson's embrace the wacky theme and give the world Bananaman in the process)...

Sadly all these titles wound up going down the tubes, some faster than others. Blame reader apathy, blame poor sales, blame whatever you like, but the sturdy old warhorses of the trade rumbled on and on, unaffected by the spurious 'revolution'. Even IPC's ultra-traditional Buster managed an impressively long run (1960-2000), picking up the pieces for Oink! after that title was cancelled and continuing to run several of its stronger characters in what purists would claim to be an "emasculated form". Despite trumpeting Oink! as "greatest comic ever made" and "on the whole...a work of genius", TV Cream's website has some salient points to make about the comic...

"Horace 'Ugly Face' Watkins [was a] really badly drawn parody of comic strip later turned into horrendous soap opera apread half the comic with no jokes where it explored the real emotional issues of a boy shunned by society" - I can vouch for this. At one point, when it looked like readers were getting pissed off by the whole thing, the saga turned - apropos of nothing - into 'Rambo Watkins', a half-baked First Blood parody, in the hope of dragging readers back into the proceedings.

"Burp, which stopped making sense after about ten weeks and became unfathomable set of images" - Again, very true.

"Self indulgent articles where readers sent in references to Oink! in local press (normally referring to it as vile downmarket rag) " - there was a lot of this. "Look! We're a vile downmarket rag that just happens to be published by the mighty IPC empire! We may be 'product', we may be sell outs, but we're still pissing off the establishment!" Can you say 'desperation'?

"Went weekly at beginning of 88 but was cut to 24 pages and seemed to go a bit childish, then four months later reinvented as monthly 'magazine' with new logo and 'new' all over cover when it was trying to be Viz and alienated youth audience with far too many cultural references." - I caught (what would turn out to be) one of the last issues and it was grim.

Late last year and early this year, three 'DIY' comedy magazines hit the shelves of Northampton record and comic shops. I won't name names but they were all piss awful. The artwork, without exaggeration, looked like the scribbles in the back of a child's exercise book (see examples above) and the level of 'humour' was practically non-existent, just the spurious characters (though they were so one-dimensional, I hesitate to call them that) talking utter nonsense and saying things like "if you don't join in this game you're a goth". They really were that grim. They were being given away free, so the creators weren't getting rich, but the galling thing was that despite the absolute lack of memorable (or even well-executed) content, the production values - printing, collation etc - was well above average, which suggests utter decadence along the lines of "well, I've got fuck all talent, I've just produced a heap of steaming shit that's only likely to be of interest to me and my mates, rather than dumping it on the internet I think I'll get a professional print job done and clutter up shops with free copies in the vain hope of drawing some kind of reaction to my self-indulgent, incoherent babbling". And a lot of DIY comedy seems to go down a similar, depressing route.Another aspect of their efforts that really pissed me off is the fact that there are genuinely talented people out there (I know quite a few of them personally, so excuse me for getting a little bit nepotistic here) who would love to be able to self-publish and would kill to get a professional print-job done on their fanzines, but they lack the funds to do so. Every time I put one of my self-published comics out, I try to do the best job possible with the design, layout, artwork, script etc in an attempt to reach the widest possible audience (within the confines of a 'comic for grown-ups', naturally), but I'm not always able to afford the best quality print-job. In a way, this isn't too much of a problem because all the great comics from my youth were printed on paper apparently sequestered for the school toilets, but the eyes of potential customers will always be drawn to the slicker, professionally-produced efforts rather than the funky, hand-stapled, clearly DIY comics, however good the contents are.

Willy the Kid (1976-78) - Leo Baxendale's lost comic masterpiece

2009-04-22T08:04:00.001-07:00

Leo Baxendale is undoubtedly one of the great British comic geniuses of the twentieth century. I'd put him up there with Spike Milligan. Whilst I'm the first to admit that I sometimes cringe at the amount of adulation laid at his feet, when you're reading Baxendale at his best you can't help but shyly concede that the man deserves it.

Baxendale's work wasn't like Dudley Watkins' work. His style changed all the time, chopping and changing between frantically-detailed (and recognizably realistic) panoramas to loose, Mad magazine-influenced slapstick tales and relaxed, enthralling storytelling, very often within the same publication. His linework could be as tight as Ron Spencer's or as neurotic as Robert Crumb's, depending on his mood. He frequently ghosted the work of other artists during his tenure at the Beano, including the aforementioned Watkins, and wound up being one of the most ghosted artists of all time himself - Tom Paterson, Dave Sutherland, Mike Brown and several others have all had a fair crack at replicating Baxendale's style. In fact, for many years, I thought Paterson was Baxendale labouring under an alias! But his sense of humour was another matter.

The mid-seventies saw Baxendale in truly anarchic mood. Having jumped ship from DC Thomson to Odhams Press and finally settling at IPC, Baxendale rewarded the company with some of his finest work ever - the Badtime Bedtime stories, Sweeny Toddler and Grimly Feendish to name just three examples. But he knew, despite the much remarked-upon second wave of popularity children's comics were enjoying during that decade, that things just couldn't go on like this. He left IPC and decided to focus all his creative energies into producing just one book a year. In 1976, just before Christmas, enter Willy the Kid, an eighty page annual published (on arsewipe paper, it must be said) by Duckworth publishing, retail price, one English pound.

The Willy the Kid annuals - or 'books', as they were known - were unique, in as much as the character wasn't affiliated to any existing weekly publication. He just burst out of his box, once a year for three glorious years, rampaged through a world of unlikely pets (worms called Elvis, flies, goldfish, vultures labouring under the misapprehension that they were budgerigars, dogs called Kojak and cats called Satan were all part of Willy's collection), clockwork Daleks, sausage rolls, heavy-booted bullies, pongy socks, dozy pals with names like Stan, Ollie, Dumbo, Candy and Goggles, rude siblings, acne-ridden no-hopers, witches in Gestapo uniforms, corpulent spoilt brats and hopping mad parents.

Freed of the constraints of IPC's editors - who once famously nixed a Sweeny Toddler strip that featured the evil infant filling his nappy - Baxendale created something that was both comfortably old-fashioned (Willy always wore an ill-fitting child-sized suit - or was it a school uniform? - and scuffed shoes) and disconcertingly new. There was a level of black humour, off-colour gags, rampant rudeness, sarcasm and baffling surrealism in Willy's world, and sometimes it was better concealed than others.

When Willy typed a letter to his fans, it was inevitable that his pet worm would get tangled up in 'Mister Baxendale's electronic tripewriter' leading to some shoddy spelling and mis-aligned lettering, and there can't have been a kid in the land who didn't snigger when they noticed how naughty Willy had typed the word 'farts', crossed it out (whilst conspicuously failing to obliterate the offending word) with five x's, and hastily replaced it with 'darts'. Yet earlier in the very same book, the more eagle-eyed reader will have noticed something rather more daring - a hand-scrawled letter from Willy, in which the word 'cunt' appears twice, each time crossed through but still very definitely recognizable as the word Peter Cook and Dudley Moore were bandying about with such schoolboyish glee on the first Derek and Clive album, released that same year.

As if that wasn't enough to give parents palpitations, get a load of this exchange from the 'Willy Meets the Loch Ness Monster' story in the first Willy book...

A mouthy, corpulent, toothy bully, tiring of tormenting Willy, spots Willy's pal Henry (helpfully identified in a Baxendale side-comment) approaching, and thinks to himself "Here's a little black lad! I'll have a go at him!". Cue a verbal onslaught of the kind unthinkable in a children's book, then as now...

"Hello sambo! Stupid nignog! Did you stay under the sun lamp too long? Did you get stuck in the electric toaster? If you go to a fancy dress party you'll be able to paint white spots on yourself and go as a domino! Har har!"

Henry, in true Baxendale fashion, responds to this taunting by casually knocking out all the bully's teeth with one knockout left-hook ("SMASH!"), barely blinking or breaking a sweat, before greeting Willy with a warning that his headmaster was on the warpath, as if nothing had happened. It's also worth noting that Willy reacts to the bully's racist barrage with a fearsome, red-faced scowl, his look of utter disgust obvious even to casual readers - there can be no doubt whose side Baxendale is on here. Henry's reaction, on the other hand, is one of calm, almost zen-like acceptance - until, of course, he gets within punching distance! (The bully then suffers the indignation of having his teeth glued back in whislt unconscious - in the wrong order, and with one left over - by a hapless boy scout intent on doing his good deed for the day!)

It's scenes like this that are probably keeping the Willy books from being reprinted in anything like a universally available format. (Baxendale has self-published a Worst of Willy the Kid compilation - check www.reaper.co.uk - but with an asking price of £140, it's strictly a hardcore fan item.) But, like it or not, racism existed in the seventies - it's still with us decades later - but it was a shock to see it commented on quite as boldly as it was in that first Willy book.

Baxendale also uses the Henry character for a couple of daft throwaway gags in a later story - he's seen "dreaming of a black Christmas" and constructing a black snowman - but these vignettes are no more hurtful than the 'darkies' and 'nignogs' thrown around in most British comedies (Love Thy Neighbour and Spike Milligan's awkward mis-step Curry and Chips, to name but two) of the era. In fact, in Baxendale's hands, they're kind of charming.

Besides, Henry gets off lightly compared to the supporting characters in Baxendale's Spotty Dick strip - Dick, a spotty youth with big feet and a tiny brain, leaves school and gets a job at the local zoo. In short order, Dick's clumsiness (and over-enthusiasm) causes his immediate superiors to be trampled by an elephant (which looks like something from a hilarious Edward Lear nightmare), swallowed by a python, squashed by Rodney the rhino (Dick is charged with "scraping poor Mr Kneebone off Rodney's bum") and eaten by a crocodile. With no-one left to run the zoo, Dick promotes himself to head zookeeper, just in time for his old headmaster to wander into the zoo with a party of squat charges (one of whom sports a Hitler combover and 'tache) and muse "I thought you'd end up being a loo-keeper...but here you are, a zoo keeper!" The strip ends with "three cheers for Spotty Dick" and a sign informing us that it's a 'Happy Ending'...never mind the poor buggers who were trampled, squashed and eaten!

I could write about the Willy books all day. Ideally, I'd like to say "read them for yourself" at this point, but they've been out of print for decades and aside from Baxendale's own self-published collector's piece, there's no sign of them being repackaged for comic buffs or a new generation of readers anytime soon. This is a shame, because now that both the Beano and the Dandy feature humour of an altogether blacker (and occasionally bluer) hue, I can't help feeling that a reprint of the Willy books in one handsome, fat volume would be a surefire Christmas best-seller. And for God's sake, don't censor any of it.

Are you listening, Duckworths?

Who's Renown - live gig review - The Gardener's Arms, Northampton, 29th March 2009

2009-03-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

Well! What a fantastic early birthday present...on the eve of my 35th birthday (no jokes about Sanatogen and walking frames, please), a band paying tribute to my all time favourite rock band, the Who, come to my home town and play a private gig just for me! Well, okay, that's not exactly how it happened, but it seemed that way - to say it was a quiet night at the Gardener's Arms would be an understatement. If it hadn't been for Who's Renown's pulverizingly loud (and remarkably high quality) PA system, you could have heard the tumbleweeds blowing across the floor! I don't know what went wrong - I know I'm not the only Who fan in town, and the gig was certainly well publicized, but it seemed as if Who's Renown were a kind of musical neutron bomb, removing all traces of life (myself and a handful of others excluded) but leaving buildings standing! But if last night's fantastic show is anything to go by, Who's Renown don't let poor attendances faze them - in fact, they appeared at times almost to be playing as if their lives depended on it, in true Who fashion. I imagine Keith Moon and John Entwistle must have been looking down from rock and roll heaven with huge smiles on their faces, chuckling into their brandies.

WHAT THEY PLAYED

First set
I Can't Explain / Anyway Anyhow Anywhere / Pictures of Lily / You Better You Bet / Amazing Journey / Sparks / Behind Blue Eyes / Tattoo / Go To the Mirror / Bell Boy / Baba O'Riley / Boris the Spider / Who Are You

Second set
Doctor Jimmy / The Kids Are Alright / Happy Jack / I'm A Boy / The Seeker / I've Had Enough / Squeeze Box / I'm Free / Pinball Wizard / Don't Even Know Myself / 5.15 / The Real Me / Substitute / Won't Get Fooled Again

Encore
Summertime Blues / My Generation / See Me, Feel Me - Listening To You

The Who's individual playing styles are as distinctive as fingerprints, and notoriously hard to replicate, which understandably makes the idea of a Who tribute band something of a worrying prospect to some die-hard fans. But my own worries were dashed from the moment the band lashed into I Can't Explain. They may not leap around like the Who, or even look much like them, but the sound - the most important factor for any tribute band - is almost note-perfect. The bassist rewrites the rule book for bass players, the drummer thunders around his kits like a demented chef rummaging through the pots and pans, the singer roars himself hoarse, causing windows to vibrate on the high notes, and the guitarist hovers over his Gibson SG (actually an Epiphone SG, but who's splitting hairs?) like an angel of death, pounding out earth-shaking power chords, volcanic solos and the occasional hauntingly melodic passage - he excelled himself on Behind Blue Eyes, 5.15, Sparks and Pictures of Lily, a personal favourite of mine and seldom performed (these days, anyway) by the genuine article. In short, it was pretty much exactly like the real thing. A lot of live music fans missed out on a brilliant show - we can only hope they come back to Northampton soon. People might well try and put 'em down, but for me, I'll accept no substitute.

Check 'em out at http://www.whosrenown.com/

Miscellaneous illustrations and strips

2009-03-16T10:31:00.000-07:00

Some stuff rescued from my long-dead Geocities account. (Remember Geocities? Quite popular before MySpace. Honestly!)
Strip written by Vids presenter Nigel Buckland (http://www.dogsizedcat.com)

Illustration from Breakdown issue 1.

"Looks like it was drawn by an epileptic neanderthal retard", according to some twat.

Another illustration from Breakdown issue one.

Mad magazine type parody of Family Guy

2009-03-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

Remember when Family Guy was funny? More to the point, remember when Mad magazine was funny? It really was! Honestly!
I think Mad magazine and its "golden age" is a subjective thing. Purists will tell you that the comic was at its peak during its earliest days in the fifties, when Harvey Kurtzman was in charge. I wasn't even alive back then so I can't comment one way or another, but I reckon Mad's golden age depends on when you started reading it, and whether or not you were a cynical little bastard who thought the world was insane, the media was full of hypocritical and inane hogwash and you were too sarcastic to have any friends. So my "golden era of Mad" would be the 1980s.
As for Family Guy? Lost the plot when series three ended. Everything after that - blah. (Actually, the 'Family Guy viewer mail special' at the end of series three wasn't so hot either...)

Breakdown covers

2009-03-16T10:05:00.000-07:00

Between 2002 and 2005 (ish) I published seven issues of a comic called Breakdown. Here are the covers of six of them...I never got around to scanning the seventh!

Breakdown had its day... I sold the biggest number of copies at Spinadisc and Pied Piper, two (former) record shops here in Northampton, whereas the very serious comics fans who shopped at Phoenix (again, no longer in business) apparently didn't want to know! Their loss...

Welcome to my blogmare...I hope I didn't scare you...

2009-03-16T08:27:00.000-07:00

Well, this is it. I've been promising to get a blog by me, about me and for interested parties off the ground for quite some time, and at last I've decided to make the effort, so here it is. You can expect all kinds of neat stuff in the coming weeks-months-years, only don't whine if the updates are sporadic at best because I haven't got a computer at home, I'm as poor as a church mouse and this cartooning lark takes up most of my available time. As Jay Lynch commented on his recent cover for Mineshaft magazine, "cartooning is the number one occupation amongst morons - the hours are long and the pay is low". But it beats the crap out of working in a high street music shop. I know, I've been there. And it's not a pretty story.

So, what to write about for my first blog? How about some lovely new illustrations from the comic I've been working on since I got the boot from my last job back in January? The comic's going to be called Lump It! and this will either be a centre-pages pull-out poster, or if that turns out to be too expensive, the back cover. Click to enlarge, that should work. But do me a favour, don't steal anything from this blog. E-mail me first. leejamesturnock@yahoo.co.uk Or, if you're trying to sell me penis enlargers or mail order brides, don't bother. Really. I don't need them.

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 Greene(?) 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...

I know it's a bit knackers really but I was still learning my craft.
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!)

The sad truth is, a lot of the Viz rip-offs (with a few notable and noble exceptions) weren't even the work of dedicated cartoonists, or people who were in it for the love of drawing and the sharing of laughter (and all that horseshit that gives us hope when funds are low). They were the work of profiteers, or even in some cases the work of ex-squaddies, bricklayers and tyre fitters, people who had no empathy with the world of comics and cartoonists and just wanted to squeeze a few quid out of the latest trend. It's the same in all media. People are rarely looking for the next big thing, they're too busy looking for something that's already happened. When Monty Python took off, everyone was looking for the next Monty Python. When Take That took off, the world was suddenly knee-deep in shit boy bands. So it goes.

One comic I worked for (naming no names, suffice to say it catered to the lowest common denominator and outmired and outlasted its rivals) was run by a couple of writer-cartoonists who seemed to run on an 'idiot who knows nothing / idiot who knows everything' dynamic. One of them was easy-going and friendly, the other one was remote, bitter and cynical. They hired a third staff member who refused to work in the same room as them. It was bizarre. I spent a day at their offices and it was a mixed experience. I clearly wasn't on their wavelength but they were tolerant about it. They never published anything else I offered them, but they were constantly making promises. They said they'd send me a drawing board, a set square, technical drawing pens and all sorts of other goodies but nothing arrived. Their intentions were good, but good intentions come cheap. Making good on your promises is another matter entirely. Most of the Viz clones died out almost as fast as they arrived, and I began to hear horror stories from other cartoonists about companies declaring themselves bankrupt, leaving their contributors owed thousands for their work - only to start up again weeks later under a different name with all debts wiped out!

Around this time I decided to publish my own comics and bollocks to the lot of them! If they failed, I was only ripping myself off. And I'm still doing it, in 2009! Here's the cover of my latest epic, which (all being well) should see print by the end of the year. Watch this space...