Around the World in a Daze

This was originally a seven-pager with much crappier artwork. It was done in 1988 as an excuse to do a whole lot of dreadful puns. They didn't really merit more than a page. So I've redrawn it here as a one-pager for the d'Ecco collection, and am well pleased with it.

I'm still alive

Exhausted, but ever mindful of the fickle public's attitude to cartoonists they haven't heard from lately, I'm cobbling a hasty post together in order to remind everybody I'm not dead. This one's another Inside Soap illo, with a heavy slapstick element. I suppose the modrn version of slapstick is "Funny" Home Videos, and I guess there's an element of this here (ooh! what's going to happen next?!) but, being an illustration, without the moral quandary of filming your four year old setting himself on fire with the intention of sending the tape off to Carlton Television.

I get strangely lucid sometimes when I'm a certain type of tired.

The Return of Horrible

I haven't posted any Horrible Histories stuff in a while. Here are some illustrations I did for... was it the 'Orrible Ottomans or something? ... I'm drawing a blank, I'm afraid. Anyway, here you go.

Trying to knock the Art d'Ecco book into shape. The new story is finished; now I'm trying to get the old stuff up to scratch -- fixing corrupted Letratone on the computer, getting the dimensions right, all that. And redrawing a page or two if I have time. And figuring out what order to put it all in. And culling a bit of stuff to bring the page count down to 160 pages. I thought I'd be pushing it to get 160 pages together, but there are a couple of dozen I'll have to leave out in the end. (Just as well, they're shite...)

Metaphors in the Closet

Here's an Inside Soap illo (from Emmerdale, I think?) featuring a couple of characters who apparently have lots of secrets. Figure One is still trying to keep his in the closet, but Figure Two has so many she doesn't even try to hide them any more. At least, that was what was described in the brief, and who am I to argue with a brief for a show I've never watched. The woman who looks like death is a frequent figure in these illustrations, partly because she keeps doing interesting things like murdering people or escaping from lunatic asylums, and partly (I suspect) because my editor Gary likes the way I draw her.

Voodoo Who Do

Here's another Doctor Who picture. You know you want one. This may well be the first time the Doctor has met a character from a Carl Barks comic (Bombie the Zombie, from the classic Donald Duck story Voodoo Hoodoo), but I do hope it won't be the last.

I originally had Rose looking more like Ooola from Alley Oop as well, but I was asked to change it...

Sketch me till I squirt

More Thing sketches, more old favourites.

Karloff Boots

I tend to trot out the "Karloff Boots" gag every convention because someone always wants a copy. I have a couple of others like that as well, perennial favourites that get produced each and every show. I figured this out after going to Angoulême a few years ago and seeing these French cartoonists produce these incredible sketches in lightning-fast time, then noticing that they produced the same sketch every time. The reason they're so quick to do them is because they can do them in their sleep and know them back to front. A brilliant idea. So I stole it.

Thing Sketches Part Two

As promised... probably make you suffer for a couple more days, I've got a ton of these things.

Catch Up and Thing

I've been crap at updating this monster this week, haven't I? Apologies - here's a whole lot of piccies to make up for it. I went to the UK Web and Mini-Comix Thing yesterday and had a splendid time, as always -- here are some of the sketches I did while I was waiting for some curious soul to give me all their money. I'll post some more tomorrow.

Can You Play a Pianny?

Here's another page from the Knuckles-waiting-to-be-published pile. Cornelius' views on whether the Goon Show was anti-Semitic or not differ from my own; I always thought the dodgy "Yid" gags were mitigated somewhat by Peter Sellers being Jewish. (And the fact that they all spent quite a bit of time fighting Hitler when they were younger.) But I think it made a pretty good strip.


Four more pages to go on the new Art d'Ecco story! Then I've just got to wallop the book into some sort of coherent order and do a few splash pages...

And they did comic strips, too

Here's a three-page strip I did for Horrible Histories (sans text - I encourage you to invent your own, with hilarious results no doubt). They had strips in every issue, but I only ever got to do this one.




Some actual strip work, with words and everything, is up at the Smithson site this week if you feel like checking it out. Words, plot and characters by the fabulous Shaenon Garrity. Nice to have something out there while I'm working on the d'Ecco book so people don't think I'm dead.

Speaking of funny women, I was really shocked and surprised to find out yesterday that Britain's funniest woman, Linda Smith, had died. I'm a fan of Radio 4's News Quiz, where she did a lot of her best work (at least in broadcast media). You could do a lot worse than tune in to Radio 4 at 6.30pm GMT on Friday (live streaming here) to hear a tribute special.