On not being Angus McKie, Cam Kennedy, Eddie Campbell, Brian Bolland, Alan Grant, etc,etc.

I don't know when it happened, but at some stage I gave up trying to draw the comics I enjoyed reading and went for the quick thrill of drawing funny comic strip characters.

The result is that drawing in a more 'realistic' (it's a drawing, just lines on paper so that's not a great description, but you get my drift) style is more difficult for me. That's not to say it is somehow easier for the guys mentioned above (British cartoonists), it's just that they make it look easier, or at least more natural. For me, my drawings are a bit contrived at the moment, possibly through decades of trying to make my cartoons look flat, but they will eventually loosen up and whilst I might never become as good as those mentioned, I will eventually be happy, or happier with what I can produce.

Anyway, the latest pages of Johnny Morte have been redrawn and I'm likely to put about ten of these on online, as soon as I letter them. They will replace the pages that are already there.

I haven't changed the story much, but the drawings are more angular and I think a little sharper looking - I won't be able to tell until I see them online.

Todd Goldman bites the bullet

Well, at any rate he has fessed-up to purloining the Purple Pussy, to a point, but not to the other obvious rip-offs:

:FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

POST POP-ARTIST, TODD GOLDMAN, CONTROVERSIAL PAINTING CLEARWATER, FL, April 11, 2007-

Popular post pop-artist, Todd Goldman who has made a career of making fun of the world with his sarcastic commentary and cartoon icons, has mistakenly used the design of an another artist in two of his recent paintings. Todd’s painting, “Dear God, Please Make Everyone Die”, was inspired from a drawing he received unbeknownst to him belonging to an underground web comic artist David “Shmorky” Kelly.


In addition to painting, Todd designs t-shirts for his clothing company, David & Goliath. Todd and his design team create and receive thousands of design ideas every month. It’s no secret that Goldman creates a lot of his painting ideas from his t-shirt designs. Goldman says “I made a judgment error and didn’t research the background of this particular submission. “My intention was not to copy Mr. Kelly. I have never seen his work before and would never intentionally knock-off someone else’s idea.”
Goldman has issued a formal apology to Mr. Kelly and has stated that he will not be using his design again in the future. As a gesture of good faith, Goldman has pledged not (to) profit from his mistake. He will instead donate his proceeds from the painting directly to Mr. Kelly or his charity of choice.


Yeah well, paying up is really the least he can do. Note the language in the last paragraph, 'not profiting' from this 'mistake' is key, and it is an attempt to make some wriggle-room in order to avoid accusations of fraud. Well, you know what, when an 'artist' with a reputation like Todd Golman's uses someone else's work for his portfolio and gains more acclaim from that usage, he profits indirectly from it, so he's really going to find it hard to wriggle out of that one. I reckon paying up big is the only way forward.

As for the numpty (good old Scottish word) who suggested on a forum that this is legitimate use and it's like Andy Warhol using a Disney image, er, no it's not. The one in the position of unequal power in this relationship is the (Lord knows why) 'acclaimed artist' known as Todd Goldman, who has ripped-off a 'lowly' web comic artist. Not cool, not classy, not professional, not ethical, simply not done.

Check out these links:

Mike Tyndall

New Las Vegas Sun article

So it Goes...Tiddely Pom.

Kurt Vonnegut, that often dark and heavily satirical veteran of the US counterculture, the brilliant author of Slaughterhouse-Five, died yesterday, aged 84. Go read at least one of his books.

Why create, when others can do it for you?

What's the difference between cartoonist David Kelly, and 'world-renowned artist' Todd Goldman'?

(Let me be honest, I'm not really a fan of David Kelly's cartoons, they are not my style, but they look more impressive artworks to me, than the stuff that Goldman produces - except when...well, read on...)

You don't know the answer, then maybe this will will enlighten you - this drawing is from Kelly's Purple Pussy, from his archive, from 2001:

And this is from a much more recent gallery collection by 'world-renowned' artist Todd Goldman:


I think I can spot one or two similarities. Of course the major difference is that 'world-renowned' artist Todd Golman gets a tasty six-figure sum for his, er, originals!

The following sites cover the story in more detail, and one or two even pick up on the apparent likeness of Goldman's Eve L to Roman Dirge's Lenore character. * A quick addittion: both my daughters are fans of Lenore and have some comics and stuff - Roman Dirge mentions the offender on his blog:

Dirk Deppey's Journalista

Juxtapoz

Something Awful

You Thought We Wouldn't Notice

Digg.com

Metafilter

Comicbook Resources

Scott Kurtz

Fleen.com

Something Positive

A non-cartoon related note: Edinburgh's Council Tax (a nice little earner)

This is the document (click for larger picture) that shows that my Council Tax bill has been too high since I moved here. It has now been lowered from band G to band F, backdated to the year 2000. Prior to this, I have now discovered that my old my flat was also incorrectly banded at band G, the same band as several Georgian houses in millionaire Heriot Row and the management flat at the Balmoral Hotel, and one band below The Edinburgh Club on Princes Street - but an obvious mistake, no doubt:>)

Now, I'd have to leave you to make the creative leap for yourself, but consider the following, several of my neighbours are still in the G band, whilst the rest of us (on this small exclusive estate) are now in band F, despite the fact that Edinburgh Council clearly now know that nobody here should be being charged that much. Over at nearby Fettes Rise, one poor punter is in band G, while all their neighbours are in band F, and in nearby Fettes village, a handful of people are blissfully unaware that they are paying more than their neighbours for the same services. This looks even more bizarre as a pattern when 1/2. 1/3, 1/5 and 1/6 are all paying band F, but the poor schlub in 1/4 is paying band G; which also means, by the way, that they are paying more for Water and Sewage than all their neighbours. The Council Tax rates for Ferry Road and Inverleith make for interesting reading too, as they range from A to G, which is one hell of a sweep, and deeply troubling.

Meanwhile, a man who recently bought a flat in Leith, where I was born, had his band reduced from; you guessed it G to F, and seems pretty pleased about that, and also seems blissfully unaware that using the correct criteria for rating Council Tax, how much the house in reasonable repair would have sold for in 1991, that in the early 1992 you couldn't give property in Leith away, so there's no way the flat he's in would have realised that price in 1991. In fact, according to research conducted on behalf of Bank of Scotland by NOP World in 2005, the average first time buyer in Scotland paid £40,918 for a property in 1993, and at that point in time, according to several articles in the Scotsman, Edinburgh ranked below several other Scottish cities in house price inflation.

http://www.hbosplc.com/economy/includes/29-01-05_StampDutyScotland.doc.

Now, is it my imagination, or does the letter 'G' appear frequently in the preceding passages?

HAW, HAW, Satire!

I can't understand why or when cartoonists decided that satire meant simply switching positions, but they did. You know, Price Charles in a room with a plant and the plant complains about him and stuff like that; it's very predictable - unless I do it that is, then it just looks all new and shiny, to me at least. So here is, literally, a satirical quickie.

As soon as I see the clip of the RAF guy on the news advocating that his troops grow beards to get respect in Afghanistan, I jot down a drawing, quickly, with a trusty felt-tip pen:

Now, I'm in a rush so I don't want a lot of palaver and I can't be arsed reaching for the lightbox so I quickly trace the thing on a new sheet of cheapo typing paper using a non-photo blue pencil, but I add a little more detail:

At this stage I would just ink it and scan it into the computer as the scanner can't see the blue lines unless I scan in colour, so no need to erase and risk fading the lines or tearing the paper.

As I said though, I'm in a rush so I scan in and change the drawing to 'gray scale' and darken the lines a little and then, again because I'm rushing, I draw with the mouse in Photoshop and put some basic lines in place - remember this is just a rough.

Now, I click a new 'Layer' and rename it and then I click 'multiply' and I can colour right up to and even under the black lines. My rough is almost ready to send by email:

Just as soon as I 'merge' this bad-boy (the colour layer) with the rest of the drawing. And there we go, took about 10 minutes in total, but the finished drawing will take longer, providing it gets the nod, of course. Meanwhile, I have my blue pencil sketch ready for possible changes, and inking, and suddenly I'm ahead of time, rather than behind.

Geoff Hassing's ideas factory

I was just talking to Geoff Hassing (you'll see some of Geoff's work alongside mine in National Lampoon's, Funniest Cartoons of the 21st Century) who was wondering if we all come up with gag ideas in different ways, and I think it's an interesting topic.

I mentioned the gag you can see below, which I think I can maybe only sell to one of my clients; maybe. Here's how it came about, I was working in the wee small hours writing gags and I had a DVD on in the background (bearing in mind I'd recently watched The Illusionist and The Prestige and had even flicked through an old Luther Arkwright comic) of a Phillip Pullman story called The Ruby in the Smoke; which starred Billie Piper of Doctor Who fame. Now 'Ruby' is a period piece, but with modern pacing - which is quite pleasing, and the other movies are also period pieces, and the comic is a sort of Prussian Empire sci-fi piece, like David Lynch's version of Dune, so I was always going to be influenced, to some degree, in that direction.

The UK cartoonist David Langdon, who himself could be called, albeit affectionately, a period piece - once referred to the process of thinking up cartoon punchlines as 'controlled mind-wandering'. I kind of like that, because you sort of do let your imagination run - but not riot.

You see, you have to target certain markets with your cartoons, that's just a realistic acceptance that this is a business, and whilst you want to be as creative and as funny as you can be, you do have to obey the constraints of the publication you are targeting. So for instance, you might be thinking about office furniture and a torture chamber, this train of thought could have been started by a news article, a line of movie dialogue, a cartoon you saw, a joke you heard, whatever, and you will combine these ideas in search of a gag. But you will limit the ideas you can wring out of this scenario depending on how which market it's going to. For instance, if it's going to the Saturday Evening Post, it'll be tamer than it would be if it were heading for the Wall Street Journal and that cartoon would be tamer, and less wild, than a cartoon heading for, say, Playboy.

Whilst controlling your ideas like this might seem a little restrictive, at first glance, it actually works to your benefit in the long run, because you can go on to develop the idea in stages. So instead of beginning with the most 'out-there' idea, and ending up with only one, perhaps difficult to sell, cartoon, you work your way up slowly, and with any luck create a number of good cartoons, suitable for a variety of markets, as you stretch the idea to its wildest conclusion. I suppose it's a sort of humour by degree.

Anyway, I roughed this cartoon out and it was one of a batch I drew up the following day; but I didn't send it because I didn't think it was that funny. However, Geoff likes it and I think I'm maybe coming round. I do think it'll be a good fit for one of my clients; so in that sense it is not a very good cartoon:

Phew!

Okay, having got over the fact that even people who 'only draw for a living' can long to do something else, I have another tip for those of you who get bored cartooning; change pens.

I was almost single-handedly resposible for the influx of Faber Castell-Pitt brush pens into the UK (see the cartoon fiend blog) Before he died, my chum, the cartoonist Chris Paterson, used to send me the things from Florida because you just couldn't get them over here. Then cartoonist Tim Harries found a place in Walses that sold them and then I managed to find a couple of online sources, so I bought a hundred, and then a hundred more.

You don't need to be eagle-eyed to spot the difference between the cartoons I have drawn for Prospect Magazine over the years, and those I drew for Punch Magazine back in the 1980s. The lines on the newer cartoons are very, very, thick, and the Punch cartoon lines are spidery-thin. Most, if not all, of the Prospect drawings were drawn with a brush pen, but the early stuff was drawn using Indian ink and a dip pen with a Crowquill nib (those things stuck you in the thumb every time).

So, recently, I've been using a nib again and I'm quite liking the drawings I'm producing. Incidentally, like a lot of other people out there I can't see what I've drawn, properly, unless it's reflected back at me. I used a mirror to look at the things years ago, but seeing them on a programme like Photoshop, or on a web page works just as well now. Anyway, I've been drawing things like my comic strip, which has now been in development for about 15 years, with a dip pen using a variety of Manga nibs; Saji-pen, G-pen and Maru-pen, because I really wasn't happy with the way it looked using a brush pen.

I must say it has, metaphorically, put quite a spring in my step and I am already drawing cartoons that have to be over in the US this month, using my nibs. On the strip front, I'm really quite pleased with the way it's looking, and having finally managed to reach a compromise with myself about public/private art, I'm getting to the stage where I can say I'm happy with the whole thing. So much so that I'm even colouring it.

Not Proustian.

I gave up cartooning, about ten or fifteen years ago, and went into academia, principally to brush up on my writing skills - such as they are - but also because I felt a need for something else. In retrospect it was probably something as obvious and fundamental as a need to mix with people who weren't particularly interested in cartooning. No, that's not really true, I'm covering my backside there, but as this is just between us I can be completely honest; what I felt then was that cartooning was both pointless, and not a very sensible job for an adult. I felt I needed to do more, and that I needed to specialize in something to be able to do so. I chose Art and enrolled in what would become a lifelong learning programme.

I've been lucky, though, I think. I've been taught, through the Open University, by people like Tim Benton, Angus Calder, Arthur Marwick, Lizbeth Goodman, and many, many, others, and through them I've met poets like Jack Mapanje and Jackie Kay (who broke my clock), and some of the hardest working students, of all ages, sizes, shapes, and colours. When I went on to university for a second degree I was lucky to be there when Nicholas Royle was teaching English Lit, and Literary Criticism, and when John Burnside was there to sharpen up my challenged penmanship.

So, I suppose you're wondering out loud, what made you go back to cartooning? Well, I'm glad you asked because there are two answers to this; the first is because my son was going to Switzerland on a Rudolf Steiner School exchange and he wanted a new pair of enormous trainers for his size 12 feet, and I got back into it for extra lolly. The other reason is that I was inspired back by some of the brilliant work I discovered online, and in books. I mean, over all those years away I kept up with stuff, I bought Punch and Private Eye and the New Yorker and the like, but I never saw anything new or brilliant in the shrinking world of gag cartooning that lit my fuse. What I did discover and rediscover though was the work of Robert Crumb, and Charles Burns and Peter Bagge and Dan Clowes.

It was this new type of graphic novel, like Ghost World, or even the old type with comic collections like Bagge's Hate, a literate package of words and pictures that brought me back in. You see I'd been drawing and doing a tiny bit of writing but I wanted to do more, so I studied Art History and then I went on to study English Literature and I think that I had progressed so much as a reader, as a consumer of texts, that what I did had become very, very unchallenging to me, very disappointing, and I couldn't see any way to make it better. But here it was, this new thing, this old thing made new, repacked and remade; here was a symbiosis of art and text that was more than comics had so far been, it was, and I felt that with a growing string of letters after my name that I was now in a position to recognise it, literature that blurred the persistent boundary between low and high art. I had found cartooning I liked, that I could try to do, and that I had an understanding of and could put into words what I liked about it and why.

I suppose what I'm getting at is this. Just because you can draw cartoons doesn't mean you should. I drew cartoons as a job, as a way to make money, and it eventually became just what it sounds like, a daily chore, a grind. I didn't go away and have a Proustian or Joycean epiphany or anything like that, I just did what I hadn't done when I was younger; I learned about life and read a few books and introduced myself to more influences and quietly matured. When I finally sat down in front of a sheet of paper again I had grown up. That was something I couldn't do while I was younger.

So, and this is a purely personal list, here are some books you might want to look at if, like I did, you feel your pencil is beginning to droop (I've added some newer ones, of course):

Charles Burns: Skin Deep, Big Baby, Black Hole, et al.

Dan Clowes: Ghost World

Harvey Pekar: American Splendour, etc.

Peter Bagge: Buddy Bradley and Hate, and everything else

Art Speigelman: Maus

Robert Crumb (a safe introduction would be something with Bob and Harv's Comics (Robert Crumb's work on American Splendour) in it. But then everything, if you can get it.

Now obviously you can add Joe Sacco and Marjane Satrapi and Renee French and others to this list but these are the texts that sucked me back in and I'd certainly recommend them if you ever find yourself in the same place I did.

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.