Cartoon Fiend updated!

I've been busy on the Cartoon Fiend blog, where I've added interviews with Peter (Apocalypse Nerd, Hate) Bagge, Rick (Baby Blues) Kirkman, and veteran gag cartoonist Dave Parker.

The Cult of Bod!

Man, that Ian Ellery just blew my mind. He stuck a finger up my nasal-cavity reached in and swirled my brain around, like a swizzle-stick agitating the ice in a huge glass full of something like Martini with ice, metaphorically, of course, when he brought up Bod on the UK Cartoonists Forum.

You know, when I was younger, kids TV was pretty trippy. I mean, you think the Teletubbies is trippy? Come of it, they had really weird stuff, back in the day. Now Bod, Bod was weird by any standard, and seeing it now, it seems even weirder. I mean, I'm asking myself just how big an influence on modern culture Bod was. Was Sacha Baron-Cohen (Ali-G) a Bod fan? It sure looks like it.



And then there's Moby, and comedian Harry Hill, there's no way that they 'accidentally' look like Bod, if you ask me, there's some kind of universal media-type Bod cult going on out there.

Feel there is something missing in your life? Join The Cult of Bod - IF YOU DARE!

The Cartoon Fiend!

Okay, here's what happened. I know a lot of cartoonists, and I'm a real cartoon fan - what you might call a geek (for cartoons). I have always been obsessed with cartoons and comics, which is why I became a cartoonist. Anyway, I thought it might be a good idea to start a blog that contained nothing but interviews with cartoonists, so The Cartoon Fiend blog was born, but, and here's the interesting part, they would all answer the same questions.

Anyway, it's turning out pretty well, apart from the anonimity that is. I was being a little bit coy about my identity, playing the Fiend if you will, but I filled in a blogroll thing which gave me a search engine on the site and has something to do with site-watching and feeding and things. And right there beside the 'search button' is a 'profile' link, and I click it and lo-and-behold the the site announces who I am. So, what can you do? I am the Cartoon Fiend - there, I said it.

Rod McKie, aka The Cartoon Fiend, at work.

So far, the Fiend, sorry, I, have posted interviews with Chris Browne, the cartoonist behind Hagar the Horrible and Raising Duncan, Sandra Bell-Lundy, who draws Between Friends, prolific magazine cartoonist Randy Glasbergen, who also draws The Better Half, multi-talented cartoonist and designer, Stephanie Piro, who also works on Six Chix, the prolific, and hugely talented book illustrator Christine Tripp, and enormously funny UK-based magazine cartoonist Kevin "KES" Smith. I'm adding more interviews daily. Including one from the shy, reserved, and seldom controversial (Malcolm) McGookin.

Awards Ceremonies

As a British cartoonist I've always Admired the NCS of America's Reubens Awards Ceremony. It's a real black tie affair, which I appreciate, and then there's parties and dancing (because ladies go to the thing) and Kareoke, and even lolling around in and around a pool afterwards. I tend to contrast it with my dim-memories of the British event. Which I remember as being almost entirely male-affairs, and always in London, during the rain. Of course my memory might be coloured, yellow, because the last time I was there I returned with Jaundice.

Here's the Hogan's Alley photo collection from the Reubens 2004 weekend, and the Reubens 2005.

Anyway, this year I know a few of the people up for the US awards, and I'd like to wish PAT BYRNES, GLENN McCOY, DAN COLLINS, GARY McCOY, TOM RICHMOND, and MARK PARISI well for achieving the great success of being nominated for these awards. Whoever wins, it will be well deserved.

My chum, Dan Collins, who of course is always introduced as 'Hustler Cartoonist Dan Collins' is one of the cartoonists up for the Greetings Cards awards. I try not to refer to him as 'Hustler Cartoonist Dan Collins' because although he is one of Hustler's best, and sharpest cartoonist, that moniker plays down the other facets of his cartooning personality. In addition to working for Hustler, Dan is also an editorial cartoonist, an illustrator, and has a new book coming out soon through Fantagraphics. Dan is also one of America's leading Greetings Card artists. I've likened him to Britain's great Greetings Card artist, Donald McGill, I genuinely think he is that good.


There is, of course, another massive cartooning awards ceremony in the US, The Eisners (I was a huge Will Eisner fan and I still collect The Spirit comics and books), which I'm pleased to say has a Web Comic category. Here's a list of last year's Eisner winners. I think that the excellent Copper, is just about my favourite web comic these days. For a while it was Bee Comix, which I still really, really, like. But the standard is so high these days that we really are spoiled for choice. Here's a selection of some of, in my opinion, the best web comics out there:

The superlative Copper
The groundbreaking Supernatural Law
Ssh, Secret Friends
The massively talented Hope Larson
Dicebox, brilliant
Love Bee
Girl Genius, well, genius
Huge talent, Roger Langridge's Hotel Fred

The excellent Little Dee by Chris Baldwin
Adam Reed's superb Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life
The Perry Bible Fellowship Archive.
Fantastic comics from Raina Telgemeier.

Jason Thomson's marvelous, The Stiff
Just super, Templar, Arizona, by Spike
Astronaut Elementary and other wonderful comics, by Dave Roman
Scott Kurtz's phenomenally popular, PVP

Little Cenobites mini comic

I'm still waiting for Shoitcrock to get here, but that's hardly surprising as it's parcel post, which takes forever. I've put the mini comic Kim, Dominique and I did, together as an Adobe Acrobat file, which you can download here. Either right-click and 'save target as' into your 'My Documents" folder, on IE, or click and Acrobat will open it online and you can save it. On Firefox you can click it open with Acrobat, or right click 'save link as' and it'll save the file to disc.

Little Cenobites (feat' Little Pinny) and Other Tales, mini-comic.

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

My goodness me. Talking about smoking cartoons, I drew a cartoon about anti-smoking regulations in 2004, it was about New York and it featured a 'Smoke Easy'. Well, I sold the cartoon to my favourite crime-fiction magazine Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, but it's a bi-monthly publication and it takes a while for cartoons to appear, and today my copies arrived. It's next month's issue, June 2006, so I won't put the cover up as a spoiler, but I'll put a copy of the cartoon here, shortly:

Thank you Stephanie.

My friend, cartoonist Stephanie Piro, sent my daughter Dominique a surprise package today containing one of Stephanie's brilliant tees. That's right, in addition to drawing the syndicated stripSix Chix, and Fair Game, and cartoons for the book Love Me or Go To Hell : True Love Cartoons, multi-talented Stephanie also makes badges and strikingly original t-shirts.

For the first time in weeks my daughter has a smile on her face and a spring in her shuffle.


A quote from Stephanie.
About Six Chix.

Hey Matt

Matt, I sent that one out a month or so ago. Maybe Phoenix used it, I'm not sure. I didn't know people could post. Hope you're well.