Just in case you thought I'd forgotten...

Let's have some Cybermen. Go on, you know you want one.

Coo Coo Ca Choo Mrs Robinson

Doing a picture for Inside Soap today which illustrates the resolution of this particular plotline, so I was seized, nay, inspired with the notion to post the one that illustrates the setup. Is it Hollyoaks? Might be Hollyoaks. They all run together after a while.

Gimme a "U"

This was a commission - I don't usually take on commissions because it always takes me forever to find the time to do them, and so I tend to wait until I've finished the current one before taking on the next. (I'm getting through about one a year at the moment, so please don't ask...) Anyway, I managed to finish this one before continental drift changed my address. The guy wanted a picture involving the letter "U" and some word that began with it. Never one to hold back from thrashing a theme into the ground, and deep within my Fred the Clown period at that point, this is what I came up with.

Cut my hand off... I c-can't stop sketching!!

Last ones. Next post should be something that took me longer than 20 minutes.

And still they come!

Some more Bristol sketches for yez.

Just finished an episode of Smithson which should be appearing in a couple of weeks. Currently working on the Rosetta story I mentioned a few posts ago -- on the second to last page now, and I think I've got a better ending so I'm rewriting the last one. Then it's The Goon.

Also currently making notes for some new Doctor Sputnik stories. Watch this space...

More Bristol Scribbles

Here are a few more of the sketches I did at the Bristol Expo...

I got my computer back!

Nice to be home. Not that I've gone anywhere, but my studio has been off-limits while we had a Little Man In to fix up some stuff that needed fixing up. So I've been using Sylvie's creaky old iMac and my only slightly less creaky laptop to do whatever I had to do computer-wise, while all my files 'n' that sat in the studio, cut off from general access. But now I can finally post a picture, so by golly that's-a what I'm-a gonna do.

Here are some sketches I drew at the recent Bristol Comics Expo. Not seen here are a lot of Batgirl sketches I was asked to do this year for some reason. I also got asked to draw the Tenth Doctor Who, somewhat predictably (except to me - it never occurred to me until I got there). I couldn't do him without photo refs (too pretty), so they had to settle for a nice Doctor Eccles ("Plug from the Bash Street Kids") instead.

I'm still not dead

Haven't updated this in a while and it's getting to the point where people are e-mailing me and phoning me to ask if I'm all right. I am, I'm fine and dandy, thanks for asking. I haven't been posting (or working much) because my wife has been in bed with pneumonia and I've been doing extra child-minding duties. She's on the mend, I'm back at the drawing board, and the sun has got his hat on (hip hip hip hooray).

This weekend: The Bristol Comics Festival! I'll be there doing my usual buy-my-artwork-to-feed-my-children schtick, and I may even have a new(ish) minicomic or two if I can get my new laser printer working in time. If not, it'll be the same old shit I bring every year, I'm afraid.

On the boards right now: A story for the anthology ROSETTA (which may or may not be accepted when they see what a pig's ear I'm making of it), a new episode of Shaenon Garrity's web comic SMITHSON (which I'm rather pleased with), and a five-page GOON story featuring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (that was the pitch Eric Powell liked!). Talking to Marvel Comics and Doctor Who Magazine about more stuff at the moment, none of which is cast in stone yet so I should probably keep schtum for now.

Now you know.

I don't have access to my regular computer right now because we've got builders in, so there's no pretty picture to accompany this post. You'll have to imagine one. All right... think of lavender. There's a field of the stuff. The sky is glowing, orange and pink, as the sun gradually sets in the distance. A gnarled old tree is off to one side of the picture, its trunk battered by decades of exposure to the elements. Ivy wraps itself around its dead trunk, hinting at the possibility of new life. In the middle of the field is a cow, an old cow which chews its cud thoughtfully, as if imagining an idyll from bygone days. Standing next to the cow is Doctor Who. There you go!

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.