Strip for Hourly Comic Day 2018

I had another go at doing an #HourlyComicDay strip.

Click to see larger versions of page one and page two.

Hourly Comic Day, which happens every year on February 1, involves, logically enough, drawing a comic panel or panels every hour for all the hours you are awake and sharing it on social media.

This is the first time I've done it since 2015, which was the first one I did. You can see that here. It was later published in the anthology Dirty Rotten Comics.

I managed to do it on the actual day this year, rather than a day late, and I completed it before I went to bed this time! It was pretty exhausting though, as this year I was also determined to make it a full two-page strip with the addition of some double-size panels.

As ever, it's a bit rough around the edges and there's plenty I would change, but that is the nature of the project, drawing and publishing quickly without refining too much.

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Strip for Hourly Comic Day

This is my first attempt at doing an #HourlyComicDay strip.

Click here to see a larger version

The concept has been running for a few years now. It takes place on February 1 (though like some others I did mine the day after, some did it the day before) and involves drawing comic panels every hour for all the hours you are awake (I stuck with one panel) and sharing it on social media.

It's just for fun and is certainly an interesting (and quite tiring!) exercise. I was fairly pleased with the result though there is lots I would change. But that's the nature of it, it's drawn and published quickly. It's probably a bit wordy and doesn't really have a narrative flow, but then I was making it up as I went along.

Doing something outside my normal cartoon work, and definitely outside my comfort zone, was fun. If do it again next year, I might try a different approach.

Click here to buy Royston's cartoon book

Topical cartoon: Closure of The Dandy

Topical gags can sometimes fall victim to the twin perils of print deadlines and other cartoonists coming up with the same idea.

This one, about the closure of The Dandy comic after 75 years, was accepted by Private Eye last Thursday but they phoned today to say that regrettably they won't be using it in the new issue, which is out tomorrow, as two similar cartoons have since appeared in national newspapers.

Such situations do crop up from time to time and a daily publication is always going to have the advantage. All is not lost, however, as the Eye still pays a (smaller) fee in such circumstances and I can still give it an outing here on my blog.

I was a little unsure about doing a cartoon on this subject, as my son is a Dandy fan and I know people who work for it, but I aimed for poignancy rather than a cheap shot.

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Cartoon exhibition: A Beano beano

Last week I went to a preview of the Beano and Dandy Birthday Bash exhibition which is currently running at the Cartoon Museum in London. Here's a short review I wrote for the PCO blog:

I attended the preview of Beano and Dandy show and can report that, as you would expect, it's great fun.

For the cartoonist geeks among us it's a chance to peer up close at original artwork drawn by some of the much-loved masters of comic art, such as Ken Reid and Dudley Watkins.

But there's plenty for the younger comic readers too, including activities and quizzes. Can you name all nine Bash Street Kids?

The exhibition spans eight decades and takes in all the Beano and Dandy characters you'd expect to see, from the iconic figureheads of Dennis the Menace and Desperate Dan to much-loved characters from the past such as Brassneck, Winker Watson and Pansy Potter (The Strongman's Daughter, of course).

A highlight for me was the wartime strip showing Lord Snooty taking on Adolf Hitler. Der Führer is unhappy that the Beano is keeping the British nation cheerful and vows to get rid of it. But Snooty and his pals have other ideas. A classic.

I'll certainly be returning with my kids, and I suggest that anyone with a love of British comics puts it on their must-see list for the summer and autumn. The exhibition runs until November 2.

The museum is running Beano and Dandy events for children throughout August, including family fun days, cartooning masterclass sessions, and chances to meet Beano artists. For more, visit the Cartoon Museum website.

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From the archives: Early "fame"

I came across these cuttings while having a sort out the other day. The first two are from nearly 20 years ago when some friends and I ran a self-published Viz-inspired comic called DoodleBug.

We sent copies out to various media outlets, most of whom ignored us. We did get a mention on the John Peel Show though and, for some reason, five glowing reviews (not bad as we only did eight issues!) in the now defunct Record Mirror. These are the last two. Click to enlarge and read the text.



The cutting below, worth posting for the dodgy hair and glasses, is from 1994. Universal Post was a magazine for students in Sunderland. It was independent, not connected to the university, and was my first regular paying gig. For a couple of years I did a strip every fortnight (A4, landscape, two decks) and they paid me £20 for it. Not a great deal of money even then, but I put it all into a separate bank account and eventually it paid for a holiday abroad.

I submitted some of the strips in a competition for student cartoonists run by Zit comic, to which this article refers. Click to enlarge and read the text.



Check out the "comedy" pose and me pretending to draw a strip I'd finished ages ago! By the way I didn't come second, there was only one winner and everyone else was a runner up. I think the paper decided second sounded better. The bit about me being drunk is a scurrilous lie.

Royston's portfolio website

Art vs Blogs

I'm a fan of Eddie Campbell, the comic-book artist best known for illustrating the graphic novel From Hell. His autobiographical comics are great, particularly How to Be An Artist (which features the priceless opening line "How to sucessfully be an artist - not to be confused with becoming a successful artist ...)

Anyway, he has now joined the "blogosphere", as people insist on calling it, with The Fate of the Artist. A blog in which the author appears as himself. His only concern is that he will now put into his blog what he once put into one-page diary strips. Let's hope that doesn't happen. Thanks to Linkmachinego, as ever.

Moore please

Here's one to look forward to: British comic book legend Alan Moore is to appear in The Simpsons, according to his local paper. The plot involves the great Comic Book Guy character, of course. Thanks to Linkmachinego.

Hey Joe

Underground comics artist Joe Matt has gone and got himself a Myspace page, which is pretty surprising if you've read his work as he portrays himself as something of a technophobe. The profile in itself is very entertaining, a cut above the usual Myspace stuff. Matt draws the aptly named Peepshow autobiographical comic, which is so revealing in terms of detailing his personal obsessions that he makes Robert Crumb look like he's withholding. And the good news is that the ludicrously over-due issue 14 is out soon. The last one was 2002!