A bit back-trouble

I've done very little for the past 2 weeks on account of back-trouble. I really injured my back badly early last year. I have a treadmill nearby where I work and I was doing a quick 10 minutes on it when I saw my wife approaching the house - everything is open plan, it's not as if I can see through walls. So, I decided I'd impress her with a silly walk on the treadmill, but she didn't have her key and she buzzed the intercom and the noise startled me and, long story short, I twisted some stuff (to use the medical jargon).

So, if I happen to be lying down on a rug, belly on the floor, drawing while a DVD plays in the background (in the wee small hours it is so relaxing), it really aggravates the strain - and I did and it did. So I was too uncomfortable to do anything much, but it is improving.

Anyway, I've drawn a bunch of funny cartoons, fingers crossed, so I'm back in the game, and saved some Anime screenshots on the laptop, which I'll transfer to the PC and then upload to the IManga blog tomorrow; in order to get it up-and-running. Also, I put a page of my alleged autobiography Lerpertown together and I'll post it on Web Comics Nation and 5 more pages of Johnny Morte on Comic Space over this weekend.

Johnny Morte on Comics Space

I just put the first 5 pages of my comic book Johnny Morte, on Comic Space. I've finished the first comic book and I set out to make it just one of six, but the story has branched out and grown, which is a nice development.

If you do pop along to give it the once over, do make a point of visiting Salgood Sam's comics page. It's brilliant. Really.

Livin' It.

I took a few days rest to read some Manga, Atsushi Kaneko's Soil (his artwork reminds me of Charles Burn's drawings) and Seizon (Life) by Nobuyuki Fukumoto and Kaiji Kawaguchi. Both excellent stories.

I also watched a couple of movies, including The Night Listener, The Prestige, and Pan's Labyrinth. I've been a fan of Armistead Maupin since Tales of the City was shown over here, and I enjoyed the mildly sinister tension of the movie. The Prestige was a terrific Victoriana sci-fi tale of prestidigitation, in which everyone was terrific and David Bowie, with his few moments on screen, as Alan Turing, was electrifying - literally. By the way, isn't it ironic that Britain's first Super Casino (the Labour party and Bliar wanted to build 40 Casinos) is being buit in Manchester and will be reached by walking alon Alan Turing Way? Because as any mathematical genius will tell you, the Casinos never win!

Pan's Labyrinth knocked me out though. I'm a fan of Guillermo Del Toro's work and I have Cronos on dvd, but it won't stop me getting the collection which includes Pan's Labyrinth, Cronos, and The Devil's Backbone.

But, I'm back to work and I've rattled off some cartoons and put two pages of Lepertown up on Webcomics Nation. These two pages have a dual role, as they also appear in my book, Tommy Apple.

The Wisenheimer school of Cartoon Art

As you might expect of a highly respected member of the cartooning business, I am a member of a secret cartoon society, heck bent on World Domination.

Well, noticing that several new books and courses on cartoon art are springing up all over the place, some of our illustrious members have decided to give masterclasses in cartooning themselves. Who better, you might say, than a society of internationally renowed illustrators to teach begining cartoonists the secrets of cartooning?

So, here we are with Lesson 1, which pools together the internationally recognised talents of Mike Lynch, Christine Tripp, Michael McDonnell, Dee Adams, Dan Collins, Gerry Mooney, Jason Nocera, Kevin Coffee, Maritza Campos, Brian Fray, Jon Herman, Ann Farrell, Ted Goff, Karsten Schley and Steve Bright.

1. Scan Your Cat.

Okay, I hear you, you're thinking this is on a par with Arthur Spooner's piano lessons, or a dancing class by The Office's David Brent. But fear not, the next step, is drawing body parts.

I Manga coming in a day or two

I think I have time to post the first I Manga Blog post this week. I had a long hard think about what to launch it with and I swithered about reviewing MPD Psycho first, just to be cool, but good sense has prevailed and I'm going to go with Naoki Urasawa's epic seinen manga, Monster.

I've drawn a few batches of cartoons, and they are pretty good, I think, and I've caught up with my Webcomics Nation posts (I'm managing to add episodes of Dirty Dick's Bottomless Pond), so I'm ever so slightly made up.



There's just one part to add. I don't know if I prefer doing it this way, you know, uploading a page at a time. A lot of the Lepertown stories are like this, a few pages long and I think I prefer posting them in complete finished form. It's just that it can be a lot of extra work. It's still fun, to a degree, I suppose.

I've been watching episodes 10-11-12-13 of Ugly Betty. My God, you won't believe what is happening! I did though, I kind of sussed it early on, but then it is a genre piece dealing in stereotypes and I think that's part of its appeal. I'm still enamoured with the Betty charcter 13 episodes into the series, which is comforting. However, as usual, the Halloween and Xmas episodes will be shown here sometime in March or April. You'd think Channel 4 was run by morons...Oh, wait, it is.

I know I'm behind with The Cartoon Fiend blog, badly behind with it and I can only apologise to my hugely talented interviewees. I promise I will bang a whole bunch of interviews on it shortly. I'm going to upgrade it to Java Blogger first though, so fingers crossed.

Dirty Dick's Bottomless Pond.

Up past the Horseshoe (a cul-de-sac), and then along the Lang Loan (the Long Lane) past the Tip (rubbish dump) and along a little and then cut left sharply, through the brambles, and there it was, Dirty Dick's Pond. It had been a quarry at one point, they say, but would that explain the fish? I doubt it. Anyway, we spun a lot of myths around it, the key one being that it was bottomless. I've spoken to people, of a certain age, from all over the world, who grew up in rural or semi-rural surroundings who remember a place just like Dirty Dick's Pond.

I've posted it on my Web Comics Nation page and I'm going to try (I usually upload entire stories or single pages) to upload the story over the next three uploads. Fingers crossed. Here's page 1 of 4:

Also, I don't know if this'll interest you, but it should. I'm posting a Manga Blog called IManga soon. It's going to be really self-indulgent and feature my favourites and it'll be really graphics heavy. I'll put a link up here after I get it sorted.

I Manga

I've been a day out, twice, when it comes to posting my Lepertown comic on Web Comics Nation, but that's not bad given that I'm experiencing dizziness, discomfort, and I'm not walking too well. I know, all classic signs of a heavy New Year, but I became teetotal in 1983 after I returned from a cartoonist event in London as yellow as the canary yellow suit I once owned. It may be my blood pressure, I'll have it checked.

Anyway, this is the latest page. The State Leith Cinema, at the foot of Leith Walk and along Great Junction Street until you reach the bridge, is still there and there are plans to save this beautiful little Art Deco building rather than bulldoze it, as Edinburgh Council once planned to do. Long before I read comics, before I could even read, I followed the adventures of Batman and Robin there, every Saturday morning; sometimes with all my cousins and often on my own. The only thing I ever wanted to be when I grew up was a super hero with a secret identity:


Nik Scott, who is one of my fellow National Lampoon cartoonists from the book mentioned below, and with whom I have planned for years now to work on some stories by Joyce, was talking to me recently about the increased publicity and credibilty graphic novels are attracting in Australia. Funnily enough, I was just reading Eddie Campbelll's blog post on The Independent on Sunday's special cartoon issue from October last year (2006), which I missed, and which his daughter sent to him in Australia (like Nik, Eddie is an ex-pat), and I was thinking exactly the same thing. This is a key moment, I think, for the genre. Whilst Manga sales are dipping slightly in Japan due to readers using new technologies, it is becoming ever bigger in the US, and in other parts of Europe, and the books we refer to as 'graphic novels' are simply part of that market and that movement. Illustrated literature, comics, sequential art, graphic novels, call them what you will...we are all Manga now.

Dirk Deppey - Living Resource.

I had some respect for Dirk Deppey before yesterday. He has been singularly resposible for increasing and informing my interest in Manga and Anime over the last year, and I have been inspired by his knowledge and enthusiasm of the subject. However, after last night, that respect sank into the category know as 'deep', as in I now have 'A Deep Respect' for Dirk Deppey because he, way over the Atlantic there, in the US, on his most excellent blog, Journalista, did something that BBC Scotland failed to do on their news programme last night, he mentioned the tragic death of Harry Horse. Of course it shouldn't have come as any surprise that a man regarded by many as a living-resource on cartooning would be aware of Harry's work, but I was astonished that even a double-death in Shetland involving of of Scotland's best children's author/illustrators wasn't worth a mention on what is suppossed to be Scotland's national news.

The BBC Scotland news is usually very bad anyway, especially now that it champions 'good news' over bad, and 'infotainment' over factual reporting. But its percieved West Coast bias, well, to be honest a Glaswegian bias, which means that if someone in Glasgow who once drew Dennis the Menace farted, it would blow anyone from anywhere outside their feifdom right of the programme, appears to be plumbing ever deeper depths. Last night I was suppossed to be 'cheered up' by some brats winning some unspectacular line-dancing competition. It is now neither news nor entertainment; it is, to use a fine old Scottish phrase, Utter Pish!

My thanks to my good friend Mike Lynch (no mean blogger himself) who reminded me to visit Dirk's fantasic blog again. I shall stick it in the links section forthwith:

R.I.P Harry Horse and Mandy, his beloved wife.

The death of Richard (Harry Horse) Horne, (Scotsman article here) and his wife Mandy, is incredibly sad. In fact, it's heart breaking. For once, words almost fail me and so I've put a bunch of links together so you can read about it for yourself.
Some things are are just unbearable.
Harry was an incredibly talented artist who produced works of astonishing beauty and great strength. From his New Yorker caricatures, his Horse Box for The Scotsman, his editorial work for Glasgow's Sunday Herald to his 'floppy bunnies' for Penguin Books his work was versatile and vibrant. A great British talent, he will be sorely missed.

Atlantis Rising - The Sunday Herald

Penguin Books Bio

More Tommy Apple.

Today's Lepertown episode on WCN is a one-pager from my Tommy Apple story. I've redrawn this now because Old Robert, as he looks here, didn't look right to me, but I was really loathe to redraw the entire page because of the running panel (the one with the dog and the boys in mid-flight). I think I kind of captured something there, and I might not be able to do it again, so I may redraw some panels and patch this part in. Well, glue it into place and rescan the page into the computer.

Happy New Year

Actually, in work terms, New Year was over long ago. In drunky terms of course, it was not. So I hope you have all recovered and resolved to be better human beings than you were last year.

Anyway, quite literally millions of people have asked me (2 people *see notes below) what my Lepertown Comic at WCN is about. Since, I just failed to see the following episode on the site after, apparently, uploading it, I suppose this is a good opportunity to post it here, along with a quick paragraph about the series which features one-page and multiple page stories.

My Dad's hair was amazing back then. It covered his face and went down past his collar and he just scooped it all the way back with his comb into a sort of wave-like quiff. It was always jet-black and shiny and he soaked it in Bay Rum which was a sticky orange liquid. When I covered my body in it I looked like McGill from Man in a Suitcase. I looked like a film star.

Leper Town may, or may not, have been the original name of Liberton, a small village on the outskirts of Edinburgh, where I grew up. We were told that it was a Leper colony at one point and I think that since we all seemed to think that Leper's were Zombies that it was kind of cool, so we wanted to believe it. Some of these stories are from the larger work that began as Strange Fruit but has evolved into Tommy Apple, but many are drawn exclusively for the WCN site.

Thank you DC/Wildstorm and the Albion team.

I was just made-up to recieve 3 copies of the collected Albion today (can I call it a graphic novel?), from DC/Wildstorm - courtesy of Fed-Ex. In addition to being a complete set of the comic, it carries a bunch of extras, a bit like a DVD, and has some wonderful old vintage British comic reprints: Janus Stark, The House of Dollmann, The Steel Claw, Kelly's Eye, (I loved the artwork of Solano Lopez) and others. The introduction by Neil Gaimen struck a chord and his rememberances of comics like Fantastic and Terrific and the transgressive appeal of The Spider seem like a shared collective memory to me, and will, I suspect, to many other comic lovers. As you will have guessed, I raced through it quickly so I can look forward to reading it later (see below about my problems with delayed gratification).

You know, there's just a couple of panels of me in it (see below), but they were kind enough to send me 3 copies. I think I had about 15 of my cartoons in National Lampoon's Favourite Cartoons of the 21st Century, and they only sent me 2 copies. Tight-fisted bastards.

Happy Holidays.

My special holiday greetings go out to the fantastically talented Leah Moore, John Reppion and their team, and to the extremely hard working and very funny cartoonists/illustrators Vlad Kolarov and Buck Jones, wishing you all health, wealth and happiness for the forthcoming year. Lang may yer lums reek! as we say in these parts.

A (comic) book of delights, that's Nick Mag.

I hate posts on noticeboards and websites where people say 'a lot of people ask me' and you think well who? Who are they who ask? I don't know people who ask. Why do they ask you? More often than not they are just making it up, I think. I mean, I've been doing this a long time and the only time 'people' ask me anything is when I'm in the pub and they say 'you're a cartoonist, do you know ...?' and I answer 'he/she is dead'.

However, other cartoonists ask one another things all the time, but usually in a round-about way, so as not to arouse any suspicion. Like this: 'How are you, I hear such and such a publication is now taking emailed submissions; are you aware of this?' This usually means that they have picked up an unsubstantiated rumour, but if you verify it and maybe supply a contact address, they can check it out. I think that the maroons who send out those Nigerian banker-scam 'phising' emails could learn a lot from cartoonists.

Anyhow, I am often asked (I've been asked twice now) 'what do you consider to be the best cartooning publication out there'? Well, in terms of sheer creativity, and energy, and space and for experimentation, I'd have to say, Nickelodeon Magazine (US). Susprised you eh? I've never failed to be astonished by the sheer energy in the magazine and I know of no other publication that so successfully mixes artists, illustrators and cartoonists from the indy and mainstream scenes. In any one issue you might find work by Kaz, Sam Henderson, Johnny Ryan, Charles Burns, Robert Leighton, Aaron Reiner, Dave Pilkey, Raina Telgemeier, etc, etc, etc. It is like, at times, a barely contained whirlwind of artistic styles and talents, which is a big testament to the skills of the editors involved. I just wish we had something like it over here (whisper: the British version blows).

Updated WebComic Nations site with the Tammyclava.

I suspect a lot of the trends of the 60s were inspired by surplus goods. The 'trend' for haversacks as school bags came around quite nicely to use up the surplus of gas-mask bags in the Army and Navy stores. The Tamaclava probably came from a similar source and would have been some kind of Naval thing, I suspect. Anyway, we woke up one day and everybody had to have one. That's about the long and the short of it.

You can read the entire comic at WCN

Got a new Prospect in the post today

I did some real slap-happy painting with this cartoon for the January 2007 issue of Prospect (Good Heavens, the new year jobs have begun already). I've done a bunch of art-related cartoons over the years, but not too many Magritte's, which is odd because he strikes me as the most cartoony of artists, well, outside the Lichtenstein, Warhol, Blake pop art circuit. I mean, c'mon, that's a skyful of Herge's Thomson Twins, no? Or are the Thomson Twins really an homage to Magritte?

The Bunty

Ha, my cousin Allan always made fun of me for reading American comics, and yet all the time he was laughing at my DC/Marvel/Charlton/Harvey, etc, collection, he was collecting The Bunty, a comic for girls and his favourite story was The Four Marys.

Anyway, I have been keeping my Lepertown Comic (sort of comic) up-to-date at Webcomics Nation and I posted this, which I thought I'd put here for anyone who, like Allan, fondly remembers the Bunty, for Girls.

As usual, click the image to see the larger version.

Early Comic work

I got a note in the post asking for some original comic pages from THE PAST (imagine 'the past' is written all wiggley). There are some examples on the web somewhere, but as you know my Online cartoonist site is down and well, I'm not really sure I'll put it back up.


Anyway, this page is one I quite like, it's part of the introduction of the character Skid Kidd (they called him Mike Kidd, but I tried to smuggle in Mark Kidd, so he'd be SKID MARK - didn't fall for it, though). When I started out, I was drawing with a conventional Parker fountain pen with a very rigid, unbending nib. I knew how I wanted the comic pages to look, and had no idea that I was, at the time, continuing the tradition of Clean Line drawing. Herge's Tintin, is perhaps the best example of European Clean Line drawing, but Heath Robinson's Punch cartoons are another and Winsor McCay and George McManus's comic strip work are superb examples of American Clean Line work.



I spent a lot of time with Beano artist Tom Paterson during this period, regularly thrashing him at Pool and Snooker. Around that time we put our own comic idea, Squelch, together, but it didn't work out and Tom sold his main character The Wet Blanket to the 'Viz for kids rip-off' Oink:

Super Hero Guys

Well, I finished redrawing the Super Guys (see below). I've posted the entire story on Web Comics Nation, but tightened it up a bit and changed the title. Last I heard, only one of us was dead. That was unexpected and tragic though because the guy was around, or under 40 when he died. We lost touch, latterly, but I lived next door ti him for years and we collected comics and things together. He was the one in the Batman suit. I think the others are still living.

I become older on the 28th of November.

It came and went, and I do feel older, but then I always did. I am still in my 40s. I am worried about becoming 50 one day, but then I worried about becoming 14, 16, 18, 21, 25, 30, 31, 35, 39, 40......................



Anyway, the genre of autobiography allows us exorcise some of these demons. I just put another story on my Webcomics Nation page. Here's a taster of page 1: