Young Boris!

As promised, here's my "Young Boris" strip wot I did for Time Out. For non-UK readers, I think all you need to know to get up to speed is that Boris Johnson is the mayor of London, famous for howlingly politically-incorrect clunkers and coming across like a public school buffoon (the British call private schools "public schools" for some obscure reason I've forgotten). "The evil Doctor Livingstone" is the previous mayor, and was Boris' opponent in the mayoral elections. Ta-dah.

Four Feet From a Twit

Looks like the "Young Boris" strip I did recently will appear in this week's issue of Time Out. For those non-Londoners who are interested, I'll probably post the full thing here in a week or two; for now, here's a teaser, the cover as it appeared in the ad in last week's issue.


Apparently, the fact that the Fin Fang Four stories Scott Gray and I have been working on over the last year will be appearing on the web before seeing print has caused a bit of a kerfuffle. (A good kind of kerfuffle, I should add.) It seems to me to be kind of a non-story, following as it does the publishing model I've been using since 1999. Still, it's all good if it gets the damn things read more widely. I think the online versions are supposed to start quite soon, but I'm not sure of the exact date as yet.

Keeping it short this week -- I've got to do my tax returns! That's what keeps me living this cartooning life -- the sheer glamour of it all.

Monster Johnson Pig in Space

On Saturday I got together with Scott Gray to throw some ideas around for more Fin Fang Four stories. We didn't have any shortage of them, as it turns out, although whether Marvel will be interested in them is another question; if they'd prefer me to draw them, they might have to wait a while. But we definitely came away from our brainstorming session with the feeling that we still had a ton of stories to tell.

Currently working on a comic project for Time Out's Four Feet From a Rat comic supplement (second issue sampler available here), a one-off bit of satirical fluff featuring London's Wodehousean cartoon Mayor, Boris Johnson, as a 30s-style pulp adventure hero, beating the crap out of communists and other undesirables. (I say Wodehousean -- there is a sense in which you think Boris has stolen Hugh Grant's stammering act -- but at the same time you can't help thinking he'd have no hesitation in having every one of us lined up and shot.) Not my own script, but funny stuff nonetheless, and full colour as well. And it's Time Out. Worth having that name on the old resume.



Just finished writing a Pigs In Space two-pager for the new Muppet comic this morning. I'm really happy with it, especially for a first draft. It's the first day since I started writing the Muppets again where I felt everything click. Hopefully there'll be more of those days to come.