End of the Year Awards.

I have a post or two to finish for the FPI blog, but I'm hoping to make this the last blog post here, on Rod McKie Illustrations and Cartoons, this year. I'm following the lead of our political masters and vanishing on my "staycation" until January the 12th. So, do whatever it is you all like to do over this period and enjoy yourselves. Next year is going to take some tackling, so refuel those batteries.

As I was just discussing the CAT awards with Jonathan I'll start with them.

Jonathan mentioned that anyone can nominate the people they think should win. That is a good point, I think, and looking at the way a bunch of cartoonists lobbied the Sun not to drop its gag cartoons, and stopped the illegal sale of cartoon art by auction in Edinburgh not so long back, I think cartoonists can argue for change and I think Jonathan is right, it is important to bring this point to your attention.

However, I'm not not sure about the Young Cartoonist award because I'm not sure how relevant it is, especially if we are honest about the future of a "young cartoonist", and especially today. Being able to draw one good, funny, cartoon, will not lead to a career in cartooning. If we are to be honest, and that is one of the things I am desperately hoping will come from this discussion, there are hardly any full-time professional cartoonists left in the UK, unless you include the cartoonists who work in book publishing and comic book production, and the CAT awards don't.

Let me just make clear the points I made to Jonathan. As a cartoonist, and one who practises capturing likenesses (not very well) I know very well that caricaturing is a skill.

As a gag cartoonist I sometimes feel life just isn't funny enough for more gag cartoons, and only the editorial cartoonists, or political cartoonists like Nick Newman, should be using the space.

But, if I make those points when I'm trying to convince everyone that British cartooning needs to become more inclusive to survive, and that the narrow focus by the London-based cartoonists on their own little universe is going to see that universe collapse, I won't make my point.

If the Cartoon Arts Trust awards, in the form they are in, is all we are ever going to have in the UK, then obviously one has to be thankful for small mercies, on the other hand, why not try to increase their scope?

My example of Kieran Meehan for comic strip artist is not because I think he is a better cartoonist than Charles (Peattie), in fact I personally prefer Peattie's drawings. But it's an example that I think is valid. Kieran Meehan has achieved, by getting his strip syndicated by Kings Features, where it has survived a name change, something that many British cartoonists over the decades have dreamed of doing. For that reason alone I think he deserves respect. I could just as easily have suggested the Rogers for Andy Capp, which continues to attract new fans in the US.I'd even put forward Roger Kettle for a lifetime achievement award for his writing on Beau Peep, Andy Capp and A Man called Horace, but these awards are, as far as I can make out, avoiding the slightest reference to modern culture.

Anyone who has read this blog will know that this narrow view of cartooning is one I have tried to counter for decades. If you read Moore and Reppion's Albion Comic, you'll know a bit of the story of IPC's burning of the comic art, and if you read this blog in any depth you'll know the whole story; back in the day before the University of Kent opened its doors to a wider range of cartoon art I tried, with the help of Liz Ottaway, to get them to save IPC's decades of comic artwork that was earmarked for incineration. At the time, only "editorial" (yes, now you're getting it) cartoons were accepted into Kent's collection and Liz Ottaway couldn't even talk the place into using a broom closet to house the comic pages - not even those by Stan McMurtry (Grimley Fiendish after Baxendale) and Steve Bell (Gremlins). It worries and disappoints me, in equal measure, that today, in 2008, we have a cartoon awards ceremony that seems to take a similarly narrow view of what is a worthy cartoon.


Anyway, it's out there, and if even one more cartoonist is talking about it and thinking about it, then that's a good thing. AS Tom Spurgeon (a belated Many happy returns Tom; welcome, officially, to middle-age) pointed out on his blog though, it was more a post focusing on British cartooning, and my own awards ceremony is the same:

Great Cartooning Acheivement: Hands down it's a tie between The Beano and Gary Northfield for Derek The Sheep, the first creator owned strip to ever appear in that publication.

Best Comic: Laura Howell's Johnny Bean (The Beano again). The winner of the Best Comic Strip at the 2006 International Manga and Anime Festival, and the first regular female Beano cartoonist, and the cartoonist behind Toxic Comic's Robin Hoodie and DFC's The Mighty M, wins hands down.

Best Cartoonist: I dislike giving this to Wilbur Dawbarn, but there is no escaping it, Wilbur is the cartoonist of the year. I pretend that the flies he draws on his character's trousers in his Private Eye cartoons look like erect penises, but he shrugs it off. I tried to sow the seeds of doubt in his mind, but he keeps on regardless.

Best Graphic Novel: Oliver East's Trains are Mint. Yes, they are.

Best Mini-Comic, or self-published book: I'm giving this to Gerard Whyman for his collection of his cartoons, Oddly Distracted, for two reasons, one is that you don't see enough cartoon collections these days, and the other reason is I think this is a great example of how gag cartoonists can take control of their own destiny. Also, this book is great value and Ger is funny.

Best Comic Artist: Jamie McKelvie for Phonogram: The Singles Club.

Best Graphic Story: Tom Gauld for all manner of things, including his work in Kramer's Ergot #7.

Best Web Comic: This is a tie between John Allison's Scary Go Round, a perfect example of a well-round digital universe and Darryl Cunnigham's Super Sam, presented as a series of, currently, 64 colourful and exotic pages.

Best Illustrator: Danny Allison, who this year won the Flair Illustrator of the Month award for his Nature Magazine cover of April 2008, melting Greenland.

Best Editorial Cartoon: I think Alex Hughes making a haulage truck recognisably the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is a fantastic example of cartoon art used to make a political point, without being boring to look at. The drawing works as a political cartoon and could even be transformed into a comic or a kiddies book character. It just works as a brilliant artistic idea.

Best Caricaturist: This is better than "best caricature" which sounds like a one-off. I'm tempted to give a double award to Alex Hughes for the Gordon Brown haulage truck, and I was also tempted to suggest the Al Hirschfield-inspired Gary who has shown a lot of flair recently, I think, but instead I'm going to give this award to the rather excitable Jonathan Cusik for his illustration of John Prescott's TV show on the Class system, which encapsulates almost every aspect of the series in one drawing, and for generally being in the same league, almost, as MAD Magazine's Tom Richmond.

Lifetime Achievement Award: I'm happy with Raymond Briggs. He is fantastic, and I still have my Fungus book, and my Fungus stationary set.

Best Cartoon-related Blog: Lew Stringer's Blimey it's another Blog about Comics. A great blog, hours of fun.

Best Pocket Cartoon: Fuck Off!

Cartooning in the 21st Century at Forbidden Planet

I had to condense my thoughts on the Cartoon Art Trust Awards a couple of posts down, but I've widened the debate on the Forbidden Planet blog, and thanks to Joe's editing it kind of makes more sense. I try hard not to let the things veer off into a tangential rant, but it sometimes happens. Not this time, I think, I'm fairly focused on this one because it also relates not just to something I am interested in, but directly to my future.

In the next post on the FPI blog, which is sort of part 2 of the current one, I attempt to offer up some suggestions about new possibilities for cartoonists in the coming, difficult, years.

Let me just remind you not to email me about this, that goes double for you Reston.

Again with the emails! Look, it should be clear to you, without having to resort to close-reading of the text, or to look for unwitting testimony, or to read too closely between the lines, that I am criticising the Awards ceremony, because it has a narrow definition of what a cartoonist is.

A more inclusive cartoon awards ceremony that recognises excellence in web cartooning (maybe Darryl Cunningham whose comic pages on the FPI blog number around 60), in comic book work (Jamie McKelvie, for instance, for Suburban Glamour or Phonogram - who, incidentally, despite a large body of work, would fit the existing "young cartoonist under 30 category"), in syndicated comic strip work (Keiran Meehan for getting his comic strip Pros & Cons syndicated by King Features), in international excellence (perhaps Tom Gauld for his work in numerous collections and in the Harvard Business Review and the New Yorker and the gigantic Kramer's Ergot 7), in graphic novel writing and drawing (Bryan Talbot for Alice in Sunderland), would surely have been appropriate now, more than ever, than simply having a teeny pocket cartoon in a British newspaper.

All these people are cartoonists, and brilliant cartoonists at that. The narrow definition of cartoonists promoted by this award ceremony, looks like a jaded and old fashioned idea that has had its time. What we have then, if we accept the challenge, is an opportunity for the Cartoon Art Trust to broaden its horizons and to embrace a wider range of categories and of cartoonists that will be more representative of cartooning in the 21st century - and at the same time will bring mainstream, web, and indy cartooning together. That, I have to tell you, would be an awards ceremony worth attending (although that voting panel would have to go and be replaced by the cartooning community at large). And I am surprised that the Bloghorn crowd are so against that idea.

The grim truth is that in what seems like no time at all to me, the 2,000 monthly cartooning opportunities that once existed every month when I was a beginning cartoonist have reduced to around 200, and that has been during a period of economic upswing. We are now in recession and heading for a depression. How many of these traditional cartooning markets will survive? I don't know, but there are cartoonists out there who are already making use of non-traditional markets, and creating excellent work, and there is a disconnect between them, and awards like this, which suggests to me that these cartooning awards lack vision.

Cartoonist Nelson Dewey Flips you the Bird.

I think that Pat Byrnes was inspirational here, not in a bad way, but he did encourge Nelson Dewey to come up with the "birdicon"; and here it is.

.l..

From Pat:

I encourage everyone to spread this meme. And note the time and date. Tuesday, December 16, 2008, 4:05 PM CST, Nelson Dewey invented the birdicon. That should be in its Wikipedia entry. What an honor it has been to witness history in the making.

I'm sitting here laughing at the sheer beauty of it. Once again, Nelson, that is so brilliant. I can't wait to use it.


And there you were thinking those cartoonists all look so innocent.

Technical note: you'll need lower case L from the Verdana font to send your greeting.

The NE Ice Storm and the Lynch family

A quick dedication to Mike and Stacy Lynch, who looked like snow-people recently. I'm guessing, knowing the guy's work ethic, that Mike will have been thinking up ideas the whole time he was shovelling snow.

Lost in Translation, found in a Karaoke bar

I'm a big Bill Murray fan. We didn't get SNL back in the day so my first glimpse of him was in a pirated copy of Stripes, available as a VHS and Betamax video. Of course in those days a video movie cost £60, and the public had to wait 2 years to get the things (I am in no way condoning the practise, but that was then and these days movies come out quickly and they are easily affordable). Ahem (clears throat and ties to move on unnoticed).

I loved Lost in Translation, which combines a lot of elements that just do it for me. If they had spent time in Akihabara in that movie, reading manga, I'd watch it every day, instead of just once a month. Those of you who are familiar with the movie will remember being impressed with Bill's karaoke prowess.

So, anyway, Chris Hastings, who created Dr McNinja, is texting Ryan North, and he bumps into Bill Murray, as you do, and a Lost in Translation-type karaoke night ensues.

Bill Murray giving it laldy.


Couldn't happen here. In England you might be unlucky enough to get crashed by Michael Barrymore, whilst here in Scotland it might be the Krankies, or worse Jackie Bird. Any of these options would ruin your night.

Sacred v Profane

This could come in for a lot of criticism from Jonathan, the master wit and caricaturist, who before I deleted his stupid post called me "big nose". I say this because Leonard Cohen and I could have been separated at birth, so maybe he'll crack a joke about "big noses" togeteher, that will just floor us all.

Music has always been a mixture of the sacred and the profane, and Leonard Cohen's use of symbols and imagery in his poetic lyrics illustrate that perfectly. I'd have to say though, much as I love to hear the blessed Leonard sing his own work, the late, and much missed, Jeff Buckley's version of Hallelujah is, for me, the definitive version.

These days the split between the sacred and the profane in the music world is quite clear, pretty much all the singer/songwriter work is sacred and to be cherished, and the crap that spews forth from boy bands and the X-Factor, and the like, is profane. It is crass and it is hallow, and it is product. It is the musical equivalent of a sub-prime mortgage bundle. If you must have a copy of Hallelujah, make it Cohen's own, or Buckley's interpretation - or you will be contributing the the fall of mankind.

Jeff Buckley "playing and singing" Hallelujah.

Leonard Cohen singing Hallelujah

One year on, the corpse is online.

I wrote a post a while back, around a year ago about a Narrative Corpse-type project that a bunch of us were working on, and I'd forgive you for thinking that nothing might come of it because it was a pretty big project, put together for and by the cartoonists themselves.

The Narrative Corpse-type Project thing

Those of you who have worked on projects that involve ftp-ing the hi-res files and the lo-res files into the editor, know that all sorts of communication problems can develop even on a small individual project; let alone one on this scale. When you add those problems to the difficulties people often have fitting the actual work into their busy schedules, and around anything else that happens over the course of a year, you can understand why some larger projects just never see the light of day. That this one did survive was a testament to all the cartoonists involved, of course, and to Mister T, who nudged us over the finishing line.

I'd like to post every page here, but then why put it on its own blog, right? So I've chosen of few examples of my favourites pages (except mine which I have to add because it's my blog) from the project, which involved many of my favourite indie cartoonists. I think this list is fairly comprehensive, but if you are looking in and you took part and don't see your name here, drop me a line:

Fufu Frauenwahl

Sean Aaberg

Tobias Tak

T. Avery

Hans Rickheit

Fufu Frauenwahl http://www.fufufrauenwahl.com/
Sean Aaberg http://lambiek.net/artists/a/aaberg_sean-p.htm
Cheese Hasselberger http://www.houseoftwelve.com/
Hans Rickheit http://zeitgeist.numachi.com/chromefetus/
Tobias Tak http://www.tobicomix.co.uk/
WW Craghead http://www.wcraghead.com/weblog/blog.html
Brent Smith
Thayer Bray
Maurizio
Ian Murphy http://www.greathugethings.com/
Alex Buchet
Mark Campos http://lambiek.net/artists/c/campos_mark.htm
Hack http://www.hackcartoons.com/
Levi Jacob Bailey http://www.noeyescabinfever.blogspot.com/
Blaise http://www.slashart.com/
Juniper Tangpuz
Giles O'Dell http://www.zoonbats.com/
Kletz
Peter Rapp http://www.peterrapp.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/index.html
Rod McKie
Shannon Smith http://www.shannonsmith.net/
Michael Canich http://uselessweaponry.blogspot.com/
T. Avery (Ed) http://www.cheatingatsolitaire.net/
Matt Furie http://mattfurie.betternonsequitur.com/
Brian McKenzie http://www.bdmckenzie.blogspot.com/
Zeke Clough http://shoogooble.blogspot.com/
David Paleo http://monsterwithoutacause.blogspot.com/
Dale Martin
Aeron Alfrey http://www.skeletoncave.blogspot.com/
Hunter http://www.webcomicsnation.com/hunter/
Dan Steffan http://lambiek.net/artists/s/steffan_dan.htm
Alejandro Alvarez http://www.mackwhite.com/BushJunta7.html
Chris Pottinger http://chrispottinger.tastysoil.com/
Ray Frenden http://frenden.com/
David Robertson http://berserkotron.piczo.com/?cr=1&rfm=y
Andrei Molotiu http://www.blotcomics.blogspot.com/
Barry Rodges http://www.capeday.com/index.php/site/story/barry_rodges/
Jon Chandler http://bonehousebooks.co.uk/
Christopher Mostyn http://squatthrust.wordpress.com/
Marc Palm http://swellzombie.blogspot.com/
Mat Brinkman http://lambiek.net/artists/b/brinkman_mat.htm
Ian Harker
Eric

Okay, here is the theory, the cartoonist before me sends the Ed (the heroic T. Avery in our case) a rough of his final panel, that final panel-rough is sent to me and I write my page, or pages, based on the events in that final panel. I then send the rough of my final panel into the Ed who sends it along to the next cartoonist. While both the cartoonist that precedes me and I are inking our pages, the next cartoonist writes his narrative following on from my final panel-rough and then sends his or her final panel-rough into the Ed, and on it goes. Here is the sequence that I was in the middle of, sandwiched between Shannon Smith and Peter Rapp:

Shannon Smith

Me

Me again


Peter Rapp (this is a cool page, I think)

Coyright, 2007-2008, all the respective Corpse players.

I Loved Oliver Postgate

I hate it that Oliver Postgate is dead. More than anything that has happened in recent years, his passing reminds me of my own mortality. I think that as we get older it becomes more and more difficult to avoid a certain amount of self-pity creeping into our grief. My childhood memories now carry an added tinge of sadness, because Oliver is gone, and my generation will not be far behind him.

He could easily have been an evil genius, you know. He could have been a Svengali, a mesmerist using the power of that unique voice for nefarious purposes. And what a voice it was, a personification of the Pied Piper's tune that had all us kids from near and far running to sit cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV. As adults it had the effect of instantly evoking those memories of that care-free time and helped at least one, me, survive many a panic-attack. I loved Bagpuss. I loved Noggin the Nog. I loved Oliver Postgate.

Did Oliver and Peter win any cartoonist awards? They must have, I can't think of two people who influenced cartoonists, in one way or another, more than they. I remember one night Tom (Sweeney Toddler, School Belle, etc, etc,) Paterson and I trying hard to dredge the name of Grakulus from some dark hidden place and making the common mistake of remembering it as Drakulus - when we should both have been working on some comic pages. Joe, over at The Forbidden Planet Blog has posted a nice tribute to Oliver.

Confine your comments to the blog, please.

Can I ask you to please confine your comments about these bloggings to the blog, and not to email me personally? I have it kind of segregated, you know, there is Rod the Blogger, using a conversational register and he's kind of talky and all that with loads of time to talk. But Rod the cartoonist is a small businessman who draws cartoons and illustrations and conducts a lot of business online, so unless it's an email about work, or we are great chums, don't email me. I won't read your emails, I'll just bin them, so if you have anything to get off your chest do it here. Manup for crying out loud!

Anyway, apropo the post below, let me just drag something I said in the comments round to the front here, so that you can feel where I'm coming from:

I think that British cartoonists like Keiren Meehan, with his comic strip being syndicated worldwide by Kings Features Syndicate, is way more deserving of a British cartooning award than someone who draws a single-column jape for any British newspaper or magazine. I'd also put forward the Rogers', Kettle and Mahoney, for bringing a new young audience to Andy Capp, and a number of the UK's small press and mini comic producers and mainstream (DC and Marvel) comic writers and artists, who as far as I'm concerned have done much, much, more for cartoonists and cartooning than any of the names below - except the blessed Raymond Briggs, of course. Maybe that's the problem, these "awards" are designed to accomodate the old fashioned material the publication's concerned use.

Understand of course that this is just my personal opinion, as a cartoonist and illustrator who sells his work worldwide . Your opinion may differ, but if it differs substantially write it on your own blog, don't jam up my fuckin' email box with your rants, you peckerheads.

It's Weird But...

Borghal's piccy.

Okay, I know you'll think this is weird, but I can't write anything at the moment because of the Feng Shui (wind water). I'm afraid my Qi is just all messed up at the moment, man.

I have two set-ups you see, computer, scanner and printer, in one area and it faces "in-the-way" (no directional sense , sorry - might be East). In the other room I keep a laptop and all-in-one printer where I draw. Where I draw faces "out the way", through a picture-window, to landscape - it's the opposite of this. That is my writing area. However, my laptop AC adaptor blew, and I have to get a new one, but I forgot and ordered P.G Wodehouse's Woodhouse Playhouse; thanks largely to Brian Fies and Mike Lynch and I suppose Raina Telgemeier,

Digression: Stop Press; how cool is this, I just added the link and spotted that Raina Telgemeier has original art from The Baby Sitters Club books, up for grabs. What a great present.

because a conversation concerning all three was on my mind when it should have been Fujitsu cable.

So here I am, reluctantly sitting at the computer facing the wrong way, and for some reason it makes me uneasy and unproductive, so I'll leave shortly and go watch John Alderton as Mister Mulliner, and Pauline Collins as a variety of very attractive, plummy gels.

If you ever wondered why cartoonists are lone creatures who dislike working with other people, you now know why - they are just a little bit off-kilter. I'll be back when the Feng Shui works, and when my new cable arrives.