#OpenComics The College

I drew this for the #OpenComics Untold Stories Eyewitness thingymabob over at The Guardian.

John W Henry: The Cartoon Strip - Episode 3

I’ve been drawing a cartoon strip for the LFC fanzine, Red All Over The Land and this (below the usual Tuesday ramble) is part 3. I don’t know how many of these I’ll draw. I have another finished bar the lettering and the colouring but I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll make it through the entire season.

I suppose part of my problem is the lack of feedback. I send the strip off and about a week later my complimentary copy arrives. I don’t know if any matchday supporters bother to read it or laugh or simply used it to wipe the mustard off their chin after Suarez’s sublime goal on Saturday. I also suppose it’s a strange thing to draw a comic strip about but John W Henry is a bit of a cult figure in my mind. I like the guy’s humour, his non-corporate way of doing business. I love that he owns Liverpool. My new allegiance to the Boston Red Sox also means that I was up late into the night watching a strange Russian website showing the World Series.

The Red Sox won or I believe they did. The commentary was in Russian but that’s preferable to watching the American feeds. I think I’d go mad if I were American. The breaks for ads are interminable. Russians, on the other hand, don’t seem to have any and they just stayed on the coverage, watching the crowd, players, and management waiting to get the green light once the brash American advertisers have finished shouting in people’s faces.

As I watched the baseball, I was also trying to do a firmware update on my Samsung Note 10.1 which I’m beginning to regret buying. Not that I don’t love it. It’s simply the best tablet I’ve ever bought and my favourite bit of technology. However, for the amount of cartooning I do on it, the screen simply isn’t good enough. I’m pretty sure it’s why my eyes were so bad over the weekend. I compared it with a Retina display on friend’s newish iPad and the two displays are worlds apart. I was dumb. I should have waited but then I couldn’t afford the newer more expensive Samsung Note so I don’t know who I’m kidding. Perhaps I should put a price of £66 an hour on everything I do, as somebody recently suggested in the comments was the least a freelancer should ever ask. But if I did, would anything I do ever get published? I guess I’m one of those amateurs who the great Harlan Ellison says make it tough for the professionals. But the truth is that we make it tough for ourselves too.

Since I’m rambling about vague things that struck me this morning, Neil Gaiman is at it again. I’ve written before about how ubiquitous Neil Gaiman has become. He always seems to go the places I want to go and to do everything bigger and better than I could ever do. It’s like he’s a walking window into a different world where somebody with my exact tastes actually has a following. I wrote yesterday that I was a big Lou Reed fan and naturally, today, Gaiman is writing in The Guardian about how he was a big Lou Reed fan, saw Reed perform live, interviewed Reed, dressed like Reed, even named his child after a character in Walk on the Wild Side. It means, of course, that Gainman has excellent taste but it also means that he’s become even more ubiquitous in my life. He’s beginning to feel like the lodger in the corner of my psyche and what’s worse: he’s not even paying any rent.

John W Henry: The Cartoon Strip

The second cartoon strip about Liverpool owner, John W Henry I've drawn for the Liverpool FC fanzine, Red All Over The Land.

Baconface The Comedian Goes Missing

Here’s a doodled strip about Baconface Smith I’ve been working on in my spare time while waiting for inspiration to strike. Yes, it makes very little sense but what the hell… I like it and I had fun drawing it.

It's A Sparks Show: Episode 8

Here’s a very hastily doodled adventure of Ron and Russell Mael, or at least, my imaginary versions of them. And yes, you might say that I’m still peeved that they’re coming to the UK but not playing a venue within 200 miles of where I live. I’m having very little luck at the moment. The job hunt is soul destroying, I’ve now run out of Bristol Board, and like the Ralph Steadman exhibition and Baconface’s stand-up before them, Sparks have chosen to ignore the north west of England. It’s also quite surprising. After their last Manchester gig, I thought they’d definitely return, especially given that their live Two Hands One Mouth album ends with the rousing Manchester finale. That they’re playing three nights in London was also a surprise and adds to the sense of grim futility that pervades everything at the moment. Needless to say, I won't get to see the perform this year.

But enough glum talk… This cartoon strip is thanks to Virginia, who told me that Sparks fans have been enjoying these highly unauthorised shows. I hope they have. I’m currently spending my days with the album The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman looping as I work, so no doubt there’ll be another Sparks strip at some point, perhaps in Swedish just for you, but then again, perhaps not.

Friday's Manchester United Cartoon

The First Manchester United Cartoon of the Season

Big Dog: The Vladamir Putin Comic Strip

It’s a surprisingly quiet Sunday morning in the real world but not quite so quiet online. There's a little something I wrote for The Pangolin over there and I’ve also managed to finish my latest comic strip, which I’m posting here. I think it’s an improvement over my last attempt but not good enough to submit to any competition. Comedy never wins anything and I don’t think this would even make any shortlist. Looking over it, I can see that I strayed into my preferred territory of slightly strange humour which won’t be shared by many people. I need to write something more heartfelt, lacking humour, and with some strong emotional message. Perhaps I’ll try to get the gothic tale written and drawn that I mentioned last week. I tried but go nowhere and drew this instead… Perhaps I just don’t have it in me to be sincere and serious (see my Elephant in the Room strip for an explanation why). All I know is that this feels like a lot of work just to throw away on a Sunday morning blog post.

Naturally, click the images to make them readable...

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The Elephant in the Room

Traffic is so slow in these summer months that there’s didn't seem any point in my posting anything particularly good today. Yet at the same time, it means that I can post anything I like and nobody will bother reading it.

I didn’t intend to post this at all but I thought I’d put it out there for a limited time only. Perhaps I’ll get feedback which will help me on my next attempt at one of these longer strips. It was an experiment in doing something different and I had originally intended to enter it into a competition. As you’ll see, it doesn’t work. It's a glorious failure. The Ron & Russell Mael comic within the comic doesn’t have a strong enough reason to be there. I couldn’t find the right words to explain why I fall into fiction, or, if I had the right words, I didn’t have enough space to fit them. I suppose the strip began as my figuring out why I’m so cynical towards art and why I choose to write comedy. That explanation was the thing I eventually couldn’t fit in the finished strip. However, it’s another lesson learned and will help my next strip, which will probably be some kind of dark gothic tale which is currently rattling around in a shapeless form inside my brain.

Of course, click to enlarge both images...

It's A Sparks Show: Episode 6

Here's the latest Sparks comic strip. I'm hard at work on Episode 7 so look out for that in the next few days, plus I'm also planning a special three pager in which I intend to improve my drawing of Russell Mael!

It's A Sparks Show: Episode 5

My latest Sparks strip featuring Ron and Russell Mael.

It's A Sparks Show: The Slave To Fashion

I know I said I probably wouldn't draw any more of these Sparks strips (Part 1, Part 2) but after Ayumi's kind comment and Leg-Iron’s encouragement, I found myself drawing two long oblongs on a piece of paper late last night, not knowing what I was going to do with them. I needed very little encouragement to draw Russell Mael in his plus fours. Something about Sparks always brings me back to cheerfulness so I continued late into the night with this strip being the result.

This afternoon I need to just sit here and write some one panel gags. My list of ideas is beginning to look a little short and I need those ideas for the days when my brain isn’t firing but when I want to draw.

It's A Sparks Show Part 2

When this mad lizard of an idea came to me, I planned to draw a couple of comic strips about my favourite band. I imagined that both would be completed inside a couple of days. This second, alone, took three days or nursing a sore elbow late into the night. As you can now see, it ended up twice as long as I’d originally planned. The problem is partly that they are addictive and fun to write and draw. I’m delighted that the first one was viewed so much and made Spark's official Facebook page. It should also be appearing (in translation) in the French music magazine, ‘New Noise’, in the next month or so, alongside an interview with the real Sparks. Great on the CV, I guess, even if it does nothing for the stomach...

This strip I don't expect to be such a success. I just cast it to the ether to be enjoyed or not. I had yet another batch of rejections from Private Eye this morning so I now need to work on some cartoons that might actually put food on the table. After that, I might draw another strip. At the moment, I just don’t know... The rejections from the Eye are beginning to take a toll. This is turning into a grueling business for men with spines as thick as a dinosaur's backbone.

So, if you’ve enjoyed these strips, please feel free to boost my confidence with a comment or email me. I don’t hear laughter or giggles of delight. I'll now post this and all I'll hear is the whirring of my computer’s fan and the wind in the trees. Hope you enjoy!







[Technically, I think this one’s a better strip but perhaps lacks the tightness of the first which had a better single joke. I was originally finishing this second strip after page 1, but I thought the songs puns weren’t a good end. I added the second page but trying to make the chimp the punchline but that didn't turn out well either. Last night, I drew the entirety of the last page. I liked the idea of breaking through the fourth wall by using myself as an even bigger chimp in the last frame. Other cartoonists do it occasionally and Crumb does it all the time.

What I learned: more frames gave me more room to breathe and to write. I really enjoyed writing the last page. I’ll have to try working at length again, perhaps going even longer but giving myself a full week to work on a strip, perhaps three or four pages long, which would be double this or 8 pages of A4. I was also much more liberal with Tippex in this strip. I've always tried to minimize mistakes but working with Tippex helped me change lots of things around if they didn't work. If only one good thing came of this it was learning to use Tippex properly!]

Private Eye and More Sparks

As you can see, I've posted a brand new cartoon. Yes, that means Ian Hislop must have come back off his holidays. After a long two weeks, the cartoons I sent to Private Eye came back with the familiar ‘Editor says sorry not to use’. This is turning ugly.

In fact, it’s becoming an almost morbid pleasure, this cycle of hope and rejection: a period of intense cartooning, firm belief that I have better cartoons than last time, a shred of hope, all to be dashed in one ugly moment of inbox hell. I’m beginning to think they’ll never accept any of my cartoons. This batch really contained some of my best and it seems that my best isn’t good enough. Between you and me: I think I’ve now given up.

Today I should be drawing cartoons or at least doing some proper writing but the Sparks comic strip keeps growing. It’s now two pages long, which is four A4 sheets or 27 individual frames. That's as long as it's going to get and now I need only finish some crosshatching, some polishing, and then a final check. I have no idea why I decided to finish it except I’ve actually had a blast drawing Sparks. I think I've also learned new things in the process of creating a longer piece of sustained cartooning, even if I haven't quite figured out how to draw a convincing Russell Mael. And now it's almost done, I’m not sure I even want to post the cartoon now. It's taken such time that I'd hate it just to go ignored, like everything I post here. Yet I'm sure that will happen. It’s a little different to the last, more ambitious but slightly odder. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, except I do know I won’t be sending it to Private Eye.

The Michael Gove Cartoon Strip

It's A Sparks Show

Coming soon... It's A Sparks Show: Part 2...

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This was a comic strip idea that had been rattling around in my head for a long time so I’m glad to have finally sat down and drawn it out. I think drawing this was some kind of penance for once writing to Ron Mael as Stan Madeley (movie frogman) offering to teach him how to scuba dive. He never replied but I can hardly blame him.

I’ve been a big fan of Sparks, possibly from early childhood but, on a conscious level, since I discovered the 'Gratuitous Sax' album yet I consider myself to be far too sane to be one of those 'super fans'. I stood next to a few of them outside Manchester’s Ritz last October when I saw Sparks play live. It was a birthday present otherwise I would have probably missed the tour and missed standing in line with one scary woman who was ready to throw body parts onto the stage if Russell Mael had only looked in her direction. Rather than stand at the front, I crept up to the balcony and, as fate would have it, got one of the few seats in the house (video here). I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Sparks will come back to Manchester around October when they do another live tour later in the year. The evening was sublime.

Next to seeing the Ralph Steadman exhibition or going to the Fringe to see Stuart Lee and Baconface, a Sparks concert could be another highlight of that fantasy year when I actually earn money for my cartoons/books and can actually afford to see all the things I want to see.

Looking back at this strip, there are things I could have done much better. I mainly read underground comics so I love roughly framing, though, doing this again, I perhaps  wouldn’t make it quite as rough. Some of the crosshatching was also rushed. Yet there are parts of this I really like. Learning to draw cartoons is all about constant practice. I didn’t want to spend too long on this, though I’ve not drawn two A4 sheets for quite a while. Anyway, success or failure, this is one of those things I draw for myself. The monkey at the end amuses me enormously and I've not stopped smiling all day.

More Baconface

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When I wrote my slightly tongue-in-cheek review of Baconface's show, I had an alternative comic strip pencilled out. I chose to finish the other three panel strip simply because it would take less time. Now I’ve sat down and inked this in, I realise it has no home. So, here it is: a comic strip without a reason.

I could, of course, make up a reason. I could, for example, recommend that if you’re one of those lucky rich bastards going to Edinburgh for this year's Fringe, then you go check out the genius of Baconface for yourself. Perhaps video his entire act and stick it on Youtube so I can see what I'm missing. He’s performing at The Stand all through August and the tickets are available to buy for the ridiculously cheap price of £5. You can’t even buy real quality bacon for that price.

While you about it, you might want to also book tickets to see Stewart Lee who is also appearing at The Stand during August but for the slightly less reasonable price of £10. However, his tickets are going quickly and a few shows are already sold out. I wouldn't recommend videoing his performance and uploading it to Youtube. He's a big man and looks like he knows how to do violence.

Of course, you’re already too late if you wanted to see Sarah Millican (also at The Stand). Although tickets to her show were priced totally unreasonably at £12, all her shows are now sold out. However, if you did want to see her, then I suggest you buy a ticket for your head doctor. Just tell him that you’ve lost your fucking mind.

You see: here is an example of what’s wrong with this country. Baconface for £5 or Sarah Millican for £12? There are some days I don't despair but they're very few.

As for me, I won’t be going to The Fringe. I’ll have to make do drawing comic strips of what I imagine The Fringe will be like.

Ned

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(Click the picture for the larger readable version)

First of all, let me set the record straight: I don’t hate everybody. I’m nearly 7% less misanthropic than you’d think I am after reading the above cartoon. In fact, I'm nothing like Ned. Except I have been getting a lot of emails from Facebook recently and, try as I might, I still can't learn to enjoy social networking.

Twitter can sometimes be fun in that I can vent my nonsense somewhere with no consequences. It’s a one-sided conversation and I don’t need to lose a valuable hour of my day chatting with somebody on the other side. Facebook, on the other hand, is a long term commitment to relationships. You’re meant to be interested in what other people are doing. And the thing is: beyond the circle of my friends, I’m really not interested in learning what other people are doing. I’m really am just too busy.

I wouldn’t mind it so much, though, if it was limited to just knowing what other people are doing. Facebook continually tells me what a great time other people are having and I don’t want to know how hot it is in the Seychelles. Here in the North West, it’s raining. It’s June in a couple of days yet here I am trying to stimulate my brain with my SAD lamp.

Then there are the constant pointless messages. Join this. Vote for that. I’m a vampire, bite me! Well, I’m a socially awkward nerd, so why don’t you bite me instead? I sometimes wonder if it’s impossible to find the right audience on the web. I disappear from the blog for a few days and come back to find that my most regular visitors are people searching for ‘nipples’ and ‘royalty sex’.

Those visitors won’t read this. Which means, if you’ve got this far, you can be certain you’re not a 'Barry' and possibly not even a 'Ned'. You’re probably one of the people who might enjoy a website like ‘The Laughing Squid’. I go over there and begin to think that the world is not all bad.

And would you look at that: it’s finally stopped raining.