Merry Christmas Chums!

I wanted to produce something in the spirit of Roy Wilson, Reg Parlett and the general celebratory nature of British comics. So here it is.
May I wish you all a Christmas of quiet contemplation and sobriety and not drunken debauchery like mine is going to be.
Your pal, the Editor.

Why This Cartoon Is Devastatingly Hilarious, But Not To 99.9% Recurring Of The Planet's Population.

Well, I think it's funny. It's not particularly well drawn as we've just acquired an English Springer Spaniel puppy and she's VERY demanding of time and attention, as any person who has trodden barefoot, in the dark, in puppy poo whilst searching for the said substance in order to clear it up will testify.
Ennywhey, on to this week's lecture which concerns cultural touchstones and their generational disintegration due to the increasingly disparate nature of mass media.
Oh do wake up! I haven't even started yet!
In order to appreciate the finer humorous points of my cartoon you would need to know why I named the patient, Mr. Talbot. I have often been accused, with good reason, of being too obscure, but I would have thought an overly hirsute individual with the monicker 'Talbot' would have awakened some cultural echoes. Now then, some of you may be entertaining the notion that I am about to launch into my theory about diminishing cultural touchstones purely because I didn't get any points whatsoever in this week's caption competition. Well, let's get this absolutely crystal clear; you'd be quite right.
 Larry Talbot is the doomed character in the 1941 film The Wolf Man (from guess which studio? - Yup! Universal) . Now, I fully understand that not a lot of people would know that, but I bet Stephen King and Harlan Elllison would. It would, therefore, follow that a sizeable number of their readership would also know that fact and would find my cartoon thigh-slappingly, erm, slightly amusing. Perhaps.
Harlan Ellison wrote a short story titled Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: (the rest of the title is a map reference which I can't replicate because I do not have the know-how). The story is based on Larry Talbot undergoing the latest scientific technological techniques in order to cure him of his lycanthropic condition (Don't you wish more parts of the body had brilliant names like the Islets of Langerhans? Tulp's Isthmus,  perhaps? Incidentally, a Merry Isthmus to all our readers - in case I forget). During the course of the story Ellison makes a reference to Carlos Castaneda who used to be another cultural touchstone. But who, nowadays, reads The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge? Cultural touchstones only hold significance for small numbers of people in different generations. I shall illlustrate this further, but before I do it is important to know that Larry Talbot was played (very well) by Lon Chaney Jr.
In the 1980's Robin Williams released a VHS recording of a stand-up stint at the New York Metroplitan (I believe some clips of it are available on Youtube). During an almost non-stop barrage of verbal imagery, Williams, through gesture and allusion had me on the floor in tears of laughter just by saying, "Tell me about the rabbits." The instant imagery in my mind was of the Abominable Snowman in the Bugs Bunny film The Abominable Snow Rabbit. The speech patterns of the Abominable Snowman are directly lifted from the character of Lennie in the 1939 film version of Steinbeck's story of porcelain male figurines from Saxony (Of Meissen Men - Come on, keep up!). The very loose use of the characters of George and Lenny were quite widely employed in Warner Brothers cartoons (see also Tex Avery's  various George and Jr. cartoons) because they would have been recognizable cultural touchstones to a wide audience. But, no longer. I would argue that if Robin Williams were to release that particular performance on DVD, the Of Mice and Men/ Warner Brothers cartoon reference would be completely lost. I have asked younger generations about things that I take for granted, Steinbeck in particular, and the response was "yeah, I think we had to read that once at school." No one had heard of the 1939 film version that was once so iconic. They hadn't even heard of the more recent, excellent, film version with Gary Sinise and John Malkovitch.
In 1939 the part of Lennie was played (iconically) by Lon Chaney Jr. which is pretty much where I came in.
P.S. I thought hard pad sounded funnier than distemper.

Look Ma! No - Well, No Nothing!

This is another departure for thine veritably. The rather amazing bit of cartoonery business you are presently perusing on the sinister side of this very column was an entry to the CCGB caption competition. It earned me five points. In other words, two people enjoyed it enough to list it as one of their top three and the pleasure that that knowledge brings is almost indescribable. I love points and we all know what points make, don't we?*
The reason why this particular cartoon is something of a departure is because it is entirely digital. I know the  earlier Leonardo Da Vinci cartoon (see older posts) was also entirely digital, but that was more of an experiment than a finished cartoon. This 'Skincare' cartoon had all the preliminaries done on the graphics tablet. No doodles on pieces of paper. No rough pencils scanned in, nuffink. Everything, from beginning to end, was entirely digital, To my jaundiced eye it isn't half bad. Not perfect, but not bad.

* Me happy.