Football cartoon: Game for a laugh

I know nothing about football, but I still managed to get a cartoon on the subject published. Probably because I'm the person who always has to have this infamous rule explained to them.

Walking the walk

An art critic puts his money where his mouth is and learns how to draw.

Warning: pen talk ...

I've been experimenting with brush pens for the first time. A few years back I used to draw very precisely, over pencil lines that were later rubbed out. But in recent years I've drawn more loosely, on a piece of paper over a rough placed on a lightbox, but I carried on using the same technical drawing pens (Rotring or similar). They're good for precise work but the results are not always great with looser stuff. Anyway, brush pens were recommended to me by a couple of fellow cartoonists and I'm very happy with the results so far. They're more fun to use, though you do have to get used to drawing quite a lot bigger.

Thanks to Darren at the always excellent linkmachinego.com, for a very nice link today.

Days and confused

Cartoons changed my perception of self the other day. No, really. I was looking through a compilation of Oor Wullie and The Broons strips from the 1960s (despite the name, and my middle name Alexander, I'm not Scottish, but I was raised in the North East of England and the two Sunday Post strips were popular at the time) when I found a strip for the Sunday following the day I was born. Trouble was, the date listed would mean I was born on a Wednesday and not, as I had always been told, a Thursday. Further checks on the net proved that my birthday was, indeed, a Wednesday. So my Mum always told me “Thursday’s child has far to go”, but it turns out that I’m Wednesday’s child ... “full of woe”! Still, it’s probably the natural state of mind for us struggling cartoonists.

Cartoon Museum update

Well, after a visit to the Cartoon Museum, my earlier doubts have been dispelled. It’s very well done, and it's great seeing so many varied examples of cartooning on display. And there certainly seems to be plenty of people interested. Apparently they’ve been getting 450 people through the door on Saturdays – quite impressive, particularly for such a small venue. I think also that an important aspect of the museum is that it raises the profile of cartooning in this country and provides a focal point for the public and the media. So get along, support the gallery, and let’s hope its great start continues.

Here's the website again

The most pretentious album sleeve-notes ever written?

From Worlds of Possibility, a Domino Records compilation. I’m still trying to work out if it’s a joke.

“Perhaps this is a return to just saying things. That sounds like it’s in the area of right. Good songs build rooms in time. Think of “Tacoma Rain” or “Woodchilde Masquerade” and no one’s even written them yet, for goodness sake! Yes there are second aspects to all this. Good times will turn lies into truth, and the advantage still pours haltlessly into the hands of the untrue, boring and useless but we’ll keep at this basically moral work, until those garnet palisades are flush with exits and our eyebrows have become like snowy ledges because there is nothing like your love in all this world.”

An over-reliance on italics to really stress things is never a good sign.

Carry On Parenting

While reading a Postman Pat book to my young son, I came across the words "the vicar is excited". So, more to amuse myself than anything, I found myself emitting a Kenneth Williams-style "ooooh!" after I read that line. Unfortunately, my son, who is three, thought this was possibly the funniest thing he's heard in his life and has been coming out with "oooohs" at every available opportunity ever since. This was some weeks ago now. Apparently he's even been teaching his pals at nursery to do it. I am a bad parent.

Museum piece

I'm going to be in London next week and will take the opportunity to visit the Cartoon Art Trust's new Cartoon Museum, the opening of which you may have seen covered in the national media (I think it's undeniable that it got far more publicity than is usually afforded to cartoons as a result of the Muhammad controversy).

I have mixed feelings about it because I find that when you view a lot of cartoons in one go they stop being funny. That's often my experience at exhibitions I've been to in the past. Also, I'm not sure about the use of the word "museum". I think "gallery" may have been better. They could have stuck "national" on the front to give it gravitas! Anyway, I'll reserve judgement until I've been.

What's in a name?

I'm collecting dreadful names of local bands. These are the best ones I've heard so far.

Jamnesia
Browser
Publicity
Mental Floss
Seventh Hell

How bad must the rejects have been when the best name you can come up with for your band is Publicity?

Give 'em a cat cartoon

People love cat cartoons. And I find I do more gags about them than any other animal. Maybe it's because cats are a lot like humans: i.e. lazy, selfish and devious. And I say that as a cat person. These were recently in Reader's Digest.

Religion and cartoons

I once had a bit of a run-in with the religious powers-that-be over a cartoon strip. But unlike those Danish cartoonists, most of whom acted like callow youths eager only to provoke and cause offence, I actually was a callow youth eager to provoke and cause offence. Well, that’s my excuse anyway.

It was the late 1980s when Viz was all the rage and there were many imitators, – including me and a group of friends. We ran a self-published fanzine-style comic called DoodleBug. We were talking one day about the cartoons we saw as kids that always featured a central character who had some kind of magic skill or gadget and would go around trying to help people, though it would usually backfire on him – think “Danny’s Tranny” in Topper, or “Pete’s Pockets” in Whizzer and Chips.

This kind of character had already been parodied to death by Viz and others, but we decided there was one person who fitted the blueprint perfectly: Jesus. At this point those who do have deeply held faith should maybe stop reading!

So we came up with a script, drawn by me, in which Jesus is the ultimate cartoon character. He encounters people with problems – no wine for a wedding, a man with no food for him and his 4,999 pals, leprosy ... you get the idea. “Jesus soon discovered that with his miracle-performing skills, almighty amusement and miraculous mirth is never far away,” we wrote. As a seasoned reader of the strips it was based on will know, they often end in punishment for the main character. In our strip it was not the slipper from Dad but – forgive me dear reader, I was only 21 at the time – crucifixion.

The strip ran in DoodleBug, which we distributed ourselves and had a circulation of about 1,000, with not a whisper of complaint. But when I started at university later in the year, and the strip was reprinted in the rag mag, it was a different story. The college chaplain wrote a letter to the students’ newspaper in which he said that the strip “could only have been devised by those who are contemptuous of the Christian religion”. I remember gulping when I read “the authors must stand accused of an attack which is on par with ‘racial’ attacks. I am reminded of the mocking cartoons with which the Nazis represented the Hebrew religion”.

The president of the university’s Christian Union also wrote a letter. She quoted from the Bible and implied that we were all going to hell.

I’ll be honest, at the time I thought the notoriety was great. The cartoon had succeeded in provoking. As a lapsed Catholic (and former altar boy!) I had wanted to mock, to take the mickey out of something that seemed to me like a lot of nonsense.

Seventeen years on, I look at it with a slightly more mature eye. I must admit, the strip still makes me chuckle, in the same way Monty Python’s Life of Brian does. I’m still a non-believer (or “heathen”, as my mum used to put it) but I’m not sure I’d do the strip again. Reading the letters of complaint now, I see now that the authors were genuinely upset. And I regret that. It was only supposed to be a laugh!

Anyway, luckily it was only Christianity that we picked on. They may have been strongly worded letters, and we may have been compared to Nazis, but at no point did anyone say, “We will accept nothing less than beheading for the perpetrators”.

Dodgy puns: iCan so iDo

A few cartoonists, myself included, seem to have managed to get iPod-based gags in Private Eye. It’s funny how these themes get picked up and flogged to death. Other examples of recent years
include “I’m on the train”, “men behaving badly” and, of course, “does my bum look big in this”, all of which seemed to run and run. I suppose the appeal is that they usually just require a dodgy pun. Anyway, they also have a limited lifespan and I feel the bubble must surely be about to burst on the iPod joke.


Hey look! Here's a picture of Rupert the Bear ...

No, really. He’s looking pretty sprightly for 85 don’t you think? You may have seen this picture already in your daily paper. Traditionalists are, as they say, up in arms. Of course, traditionalists are always up in arms, but this time they certainly have a point.

This is how Rupert will appear on our TV screens next year, as remade by Entertainment Rights, who have bought the rights from Express Newspapers. He has had two fingers removed from his hands and all character liposuctioned from his face. Nice trainers though.

Apparently, favourite Rupert characters including Bill Badger will be kept, but – and this is the scary bit – some new characters will arrive in Nutwood. Be afraid, particularly if you remember when they brought back the Wombles with a few new “streetwise” characters or if, like me, you have young children and will probably be forced to watch it.

There's no escape

Top Dr Who cartoon is from Private Eye, the other unpublished.

A splash of colour

Painter Classic and a Wacom pad have certainly transformed the art of idle doodling for me.

Pretty fly

This cartoon is not by me. It is by B.Kliban and is one of my favourite cartoons ever ever type thing.

All change

This weblog has been neglected for some time, but I've got a major life event as an excuse: I've given up the day job. I took voluntary redundancy and am now having a crack at being a full-time cartoonist. Eeek.

It does mean that non-paying nonsense such as this blog are no longer a priority. I will add to it ocassionally though. Here's some cute animals and stuff, drawn in a bid to get a children's book illustration job.

Are these the most incomprehensible song lyrics ever?

While listening to the song Outdoor Miner by Wire, I found myself thinking, "What in the name of heck is he talking about?". I was moved to look up the words on the net and I present them for you here in all their bizarre glory. They're surely nonsense but are strangely fascinating:


No blind spots in the leopard's eyes
Can only help to jeopardize
The lives of lambs, the shepherd cries
An afterlife for a silverfish
Eternal dust less ticklish
Than the clean room, a houseguest's wish
He lies on his side, is he trying to hide?
In fact it's the earth, which he's known since birth
Face worker, a serpentine miner
A roof falls, an underliner
Of leaf structure, the egg timer

Feeling listless

In an age when we are bombarded by pointless lists at every turn, compiling a list of the first ten songs that come up using an iPod's random play function is as valid as any. Here's mine, I didn't cheat:

1. Dont Cry No Tears - Teenage Fanclub
2. I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself - Dusty Springfield
3. 86 TVs - I Am Kloot
4. Main Offender - The Hives
5. Til the End of the Day - The Kinks
6. Straight Face Down - Smudge
7. Common People (Live at Glastonbury) - Pulp
8. It's Not the End of the World - Super Furry Animals
9. Sister, Do You Know My name? - The White Stripes
10. No Fun/Push It - The Stooges/Salt 'n' Pepa (Soulwax mix)

It's a list that I like and, best of all, it's meaningless.

But is it art?

Shameless plug time: I'm currently doing a series of cartoons for the Artyfacts section of the Children's BBC website. They are used to illustrate the lives of artists. So far I've done the Spanish painter Joan Miro and Martin Creed, who got the media in a froth when he won the Turner Prize by turning the lights on and off a lot.

Me so lazy

Feel like I've been a bit neglectful of this blog, particularly after reading the article about blogging in the Observer this week. (Have you noticed that all bloggers seem to link to the Guardian, Observer or Independent? Nobody ever says "Fascinating piece in the Daily Mail today ..." Interesting that.) Anyway, I am in the process of moving house so it probably won't get much better for a while.