Monday 15 December 2014

Two Spectacularly Funny Cartoons

Before I receive any nasty comments, I should point out that the title of this blog post is meant to be ironic. This weekend I spent drawing cartoons purely for myself which is a very different process than trying to draw cartoons for other people. Drawing cartoons for other people means that I discard about 90% of my cartoon ideas. For example, there's no way that Private Eye would accept the cartoons I aim to be posting on the blog this week. Not only would they find them spectacularly unfunny but they might pass them on to the men in the white suits. For that reason, I wouldn't normally spend time drawing them.

This weekend I realised that I have far less fun when I'm trying to be a 'proper' gag cartoonist than when I'm simply doing what I started out doing all those moons ago. Back when I started, I drew things that made me laugh and which I found fun to draw. It sometimes feels like I've lost a lot of the fun from my process. This week, I want to have some fun.

So, here are the first two cartoons. Well, actually, they're cartoons two and three because the first I drew with this mindset was my crucifix cartoon of yesterday. If you don't find them funny, so be it. Go read the Modern Toss instead. This is the stuff I draw entirely to cheer myself up and that's entirely what they do.

8 comments:

  1. Looking through your recent work, I thought that 'Sandra in the Post Office' and 'Peg Leg Pete' would not be out of place in the Spectator. I hope you consider that high praise, as their standard is usually pretty good.

    I like 'Sleephopping' which is kind of dark.

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  2. I take that as high praise and I'm really glad you like 'sleephopping' (look, points at self, smiling). I think I've been rejecting too much of the stuff that goes through my head because I assume it's just me who'd like it and it would never 'sell'. Yet, as somebody said to me recently, it's better if I just try to be me rather than being somebody else. You're encouraging me to delve deeper into the weird. ;)

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  3. ...delve deeper into the weird."

    Take a look at Gary Larsson's Dark Side cartoons; fantastically funny, and most definitely weird (I loved the one of a laboratory filled with dead cats in lab coats - the investigating officer announcing, "It was definitely curiosity that killed these cats.").

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  4. Oh, I love Larson. Such a shame he retired. Have pretty much the complete collection, though I still hate 'Forbidden Planet' for cancelling my order for the box set when they were selling them off a couple of years ago. Larson is a bit of a Kliban-lite; weird not so that weird. Doesn't go the full surreal like Kliban.

    If my room wasn't such a pigsty, I'd find my favourite book of Larson's cartoons where he publishes all his 'unpublished' work. They're among his absolute best because they push the boundaries of taste. There's a very dark cartoon about a baby being eaten by some creature which I'm now going to have to find before it drives me crazy trying to remember it...

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  5. Oops. I meant "Far Side"! A Freudian slip, perhaps?

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  6. Don't worry. I didn't even notice and I still haven't found the baby eating cartoon he drew. Really annoyed with myself. I'm so untidy and it's too great a book to have lost... ;(

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  7. And look at the Drunken Bakers in Viz. Dark is great - it's counterintuitive and scary, but so's lager and they sell plenty of that.

    I'd have left the speech bubble off 'Religious Cartoon' and captioned it "Russell Brand's chest or Madonna's Minge? - You decide."

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  8. Ah, that's interesting. Never been a Viz reader but just read five of those in a row (I'll be going back to read more) and they're pretty damn good. Bleak and not what I'd expect from Viz, which I always thought was a bit too 'on the nose' with the humour. Then again, found another strip called 'Little Twatt' and it was everything I expect from Viz.

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