Caption competition No. 42. My Cartoon.

Here is this week's macabre effort. Nine points! And two people gave me their top marks, putting me into fifth place. This is really buoying up my self confidence and the people concerned have earned themselves permanent golden places in my heart.

Shall I let you into a little secret? It's only mildly shocking really, I suppose, but I didn't really enjoy drawing this cartoon. I worried about this one for ages before commiting it to ink. The pencils had a female victim being just that, a victim and I found that personally disturbing. Is it right to make light of events that still shock today? So, I decided that this particular lass was going to fight back with the option of flipping Jack over on to his back, hence the foot in Jack's gut - his forward momentum should have him sailing far over her head.

I also tried to direct the viewer's eye to the cigarette and away from the potential murder, hence the position of the knife and finger. It was my attempt to dissipate the inherrent horror. I worry far too much, don't I?

So, why did I draw it then? When I saw the caption my initial thoughts ran to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, naturally. Surely everybody has the Romantic poets as a default thought mechanism, don't they? No? Ah.

Here is the pencil rough to sort of nail the idea. Okay, it wasn't really going anywhere, but the germ of an idea was there. Then I made the fatal error of discussing my intended cartoon with a work-mate. He pointed out that, to date, most of my cartoons were quite dark in tone. And like down from a dandelion, I went fluttering down that dark place and drew Jack the Ripper.

Sometimes I frighten myself.