Death Again!

Yes, it's that Grim Reaper chappy again, but this time he brings good news. The click-onable effort to your left came joint first in this week's caption competition. I would have been the outright winner had a certain individual got home from work earlier and not missed the voting deadline by twelve minutes. Still, rules is rules and we all ought to abide by them. My fellow winner had more second place votes than I did so choosing next week's caption goes to him, which is only right and proper. And I am still beaming like a lighthouse.
Everything just seemed to hang together for me this week. The caption immediately suggested Death to me. A bit morbid perhaps, but still, never mind. My very first thought was to have him appear to some Second World War soldiers in action, but it struck me that this would be more poignant and not at all funny - especially in light of the fact that British soldiers are still being brought home to grieving families to this day.
So, rather than referring directly to fatal consequences, what about referring to potential fatal consequences? At this point the image of those Manhattan workers eating their lunch on a girder high above the city popped into my head. A little bit of pictorial research later and voila! the resulting cartoon that got me joint first place.
I have noticed that my most successful cartoons depict a frozen moment in time when something unexpected takes place (viz. my Bride of Frankenstein cartoon somewhere in the archives). The chap sitting on Death's immediate right is still eating his sandwich just as the Grim One appears. It is always a delight when the left and right hemispheres of the cranial grey jelly work in tandem. I just wish they would get it together more often. Your author and artist is one heppy heppy ket.

Death Makes An Apology

Hello, O best beloveds. Do you like the title for this entry? I thought it had a nice thirties or forties pulp feel to it. They often had titles like 'Death Wore High Heels' or 'Lady Don't Run', never titles like 'The Dame Was An Astrophysicist' or 'Mayhem In Comfy Slippers'
Nevertheless, I reaped a lovely seven points this week, despite forgetting to shade part of the armchair: therefore, my thanks and blessings to those lovely people who enjoyed my scribble enough to vote for it. The theme this week was British Summer Time and you may gaze upon all the entries and very worthy winners HERE. A change of cartooning routine enabled me to actually produce something. Lots of room for improvement, but then that's always the case isn't it? If it wasn't, it would be a very complacent world wouldn't it?

The Devil Made Me Do It

Alas and alack, gentle reader, it is with a heavy heart that have to relate my dolorous tale as I take up my crow-quill electronic keyboard. I am afraid your author got naught but nought points in this week's caption competition. And you can see why from the sequential car-crash pictures at the top of this page. It was a weak idea weakly executed and it got worse with each rendition. The theme was evil and I thought well, you can't get much more evil than the devil, now can you? And what could be his most evil act? The thigh-slapping  idea that came to me was that he wouldn't just tell little children that Father Christmas was dead, he would show them. Then I thought, hang on, that's a bit out of season for that. As it's nearly Easter how about showing them the Easter Bunny? Yeah, that'll do it! That'll garner me a bumper crop of points!
How did I finish up with such a grotty drawing? A combination of things, really. I have found that shift-work and Springer Spaniel puppy ownership have really eaten into the available time left for cartooning. That and my own bloody bone-idleness. I only gave myself three quarters of an hour to "ink" the drawing. Halfway through I changed the brush size and towards the end I saw that rather than ink it in black I had used a dark grey! Yes, yes. I am my own worst enemy, I know. Drastic re-think and change of action required. Watch this space.

Hello, Remember Me?

Goodness me! It's been ages, hasn't it? Where on Earth have I been? What time do I call this? I just treat this place like an hotel. I seem to spend all day just picking up things I drop on the floor! Well it's just not good enough. Things are going to change around here... etc. etc.
Well, I can proffer no excuses, merely my indolence for part of the reason. Trying to keep up with a Springer Spaniel puppy is the larger part of the reason.
Nevertheless, what is the pikchar on the left all about? It is my entry for last week's Caption Competition. Or is it? The version I entered is not the version you see here. To see the original you need to click HERE. If you want to read this blog, you're going to have to do a little work. You can't expect to be spoon-fed all your life. For those of you who are too gosh-durned lazy to look HERE the caption was "OK! I'll talk!"
My thoughts turned to parrots and ventriloquist dummies. Others also thought the same way which is why this competition is so intriguing. The same idea may spring up now and again, but the individual treatment and outcome of that idea is what I find so fascinating.
I even contemplated re-using my own ventriloquist cartoon ("Call the golice!"),but changing the caption. It would have worked. Eventually the idea of a stool pigeon entered my fevered mind, so I went with that. My intention was to give the cartoon a film noir feel, so I researched period New York Police uniforms. I think these little details add a certain je ne sais quoi. Or maybe not. I dunno. In the event, I ran out of time and had to submit a very hurried facsimile of my intent. Even so, two people gave me their top marks and two more deemed it worthy of a vote too. All of which pleased me no end.
After the event I gave the cartoon a few tweaks; some subtle, some not so, and the result is what you see above. I also felt that, in keeping with the film noir feel, it could accommodate a new caption. The new caption would go as follows: " Okay, so Louis Pignatarro is at the bottom of the Hudson takin' swimmin' lessons from the fishes. An' he ain't gonna be finishin' them any time soon. Lenny Martello thinks I had a hand in it. What I'm sayin' is things is gettin' hot fer me. Too hot. What I'm sayin' is the ante has just gone up. Ya hear me? Living in a dovecote ain't enough no more. From now on, if you want me to spill, it's gonna have to be a pigeonniere."

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.