the big dig

Last month, the guys at Water Aid asked if I would draw an image to form the backdrop to their tent at Bestival - a four day festival that's held on the Isle of Wight each year. They were there to promote 'The Big Dig' - a campaign to help 'bring clean water and sanitation to communities across Malawi, transforming their lives forever'.

The drawing I turned in is a bit more sober than my usual stuff, as the last thing we wanted to do was 'cartoon' such an important issue. I was (and still am, if I'm honest) a bit unsure about it - but Water Aid liked it and the tent was a great success for them. So who's arguing.

Here are a few pics.

The banner (held up by the printers. I'd like to think that the hand on the far left belongs to the guy on the right, but no).

My drawing.

Some festival goers, posing in front of the banner at the Bestival tent.

tube etiquette

Ashleigh Young is a New Zealander living in London. 

On her blog, she wrote a lovely little piece about travelling on the tube, and she included a bit about my 'public transport' drawings. It's great to see that the drawings strike a note with people like Ashleigh. And what she's written about 'tube etiquette' is, I feel, exactly right.

you can serge that again

A big thank you to Jonathan Edwards for putting my second attempt at Serge Gainsbourg on his wonderful 'Draw Serge' blog.

angoulême

A short piece I wrote about the Angoulême Bande Dessinnee festival for Vingt Paris.

Mike McMahon

In the early nineties, Jim Boswell and me walked into a Macclesfield pub with photocopied, stapled issues of 'Weird City', our first self-produced comic, and amazingly - they sold.

If I ever get around to it, I'll scan a few copies and put them up here.

My contributions dwindled to nothing almost immediately - leaving Jim as editor for the rest of the five (or was it six?) issue run. And as I buggered off to University, he started attending 'graphic narrative' courses (or whatever they were called) in Manchester. Soon, a whole bunch of brilliant new people were contributing.

Weird City ended up being called 'a potential jewel in the small press crown' in some review or other, and, by the time the thing folded, Jim had even managed to convince Glenn Fabry to draw a cover, gratis, after interviewing him about his work.

I'll transcribe that interview another time, but for now, here's an interview that was printed with the fantastic Mike McMahon - a huge influence on many of the cartoonists I've spoken to who, like me, had religiously bought 2000AD as a kid.

(The interview was by Peter Walker, by the way. Some time in '93).

Weird City: How did you first get into comics?

Mike McMahon: I sent some samples to the War Picture library editor, and he thought they were alright, but he didn't want to use them. So he sent me round to an agent, who was a nice middle class guy who assumed my name was Mike. Everyone really calls me Mick. I didn't want to upset him so I said 'yeah, that's right. My name's Mike.' I've been stuck with that ever since! But he did get me into 2000AD.

WC: What was your favourite 2000AD character to work on?

Mike: Slaine. It was the first one I did where I thought I knew what I was doing. Looking back I don't think I did, but I thought I did so I enjoyed it a lot more than the other things. Usually when I draw things I worry all the time. For every line I make, I've rubbed out a dozen.

WC: the artwork you did on Slaine seemed to be more 'your style'. Did you have to adopt a cleaner style for Judge Dredd? Did they make you do that?

Mike: No. No-one's ever made me do anything. That's why I like working for Fleetway or IPC. I can really do what I like. Whereas when I've been working for America, the people who are managing the companies have all got their own opinion. They get a lot of 'house-styles' in America.

Well, they used to. I don't really look at any comics now, but I imagine they do with a lot of these 'X Comics' they bring out. These 'Image Comics' or whatever.

WC: With Slaine, your technique seemed to go more and more towards an almost 'pencil' style. Was that planned, or did it just happen?

Mike: No. I was drawing that and I totally lost confidence - and I could only draw on tracing paper! I'd do a drawing and trace it onto tracing paper and then mount it down. And I noticed all these little white gaps, so I thought I'd better carry on doing it like that.

Eventually I got to the point where so much of my stuff was being reprinted in colour that I thought 'I know, I can play this up' and make it impossible for it to be reprinted in colour. Which it was!

WC: How do you feel when characters like Slaine change with other artists. For example, your Slaine and Simon Bisley's look like two different people!

Mike: Yeah, well, Bisley's a much better artist than me, so it's bound to be different! He's a painter isn't he? An illustrator. I quite like seeing things done differently by other artists. It usually gives me new ideas as well - not that I copy them.

WC: What are you working on at the moment?

Mike: Well, I was doing a thing called 'Tattered Banners' for Vertigo, written by Keith Giffen, but the script apparently fell down the back of a bureau! And after a lot of excuses for three or four weeks, nothing arrived, so I've started doing Judge Dredd again. I've had the script since October. When I've done that, I'll go back to Tattered Banners.

WC: Who wrote the Dredd story?

Mike: John Wagner. It's very good; very funny. I think that's what's missing a lot of the time with new material these days. The trouble with many new people is that the do a script and they think that makes them a writer.
I mean, I never try to write because I could never reach the standards that should be achieved. But that doesn't seem to bother a lot of people.

WC: So what, to you, is a good standard of writing?

Mike: Well, it's hard to put your finger on it. But to me, it's someone who would never think of drawing a comic. Someone like John Wagner, who isn't really interested in the 'comics scene'. The standards he achieves are very personal - obviously they don't come across like that - but they reflect his weird sense of humour.

WC: Don't you think the bad guys in Judge Dredd are often more interesting than Dredd himself?

Mike: That's always been the case. When John created the thing, Dredd quickly became a dull, boring character - just shooting and killing people. John was interested in the people that lived in the city: not just the villains, but the general population - the fat people, and things like that.

They're all just eccentrics, because of where they live and the time they live in. I think the style of the script was that Dredd was a clone, a machine, or whatever you want to call him. And the emphasis was really on his victims.
That was quite a good formula, but now they've muddied the waters by trying to make Dredd an interesting character. But you can't have an interesting character if you can't see his face!

WC: Is it true that you drew the potential layouts for the Judge Dredd film?

Mike: No! I don't even know if there is a film. Is there? I suppose that whoever is going to be Dredd isn't going to want to wear a helmet all through the film are they? I mean, it could be anybody under there. He even wears it in bed!

WC: you've recently done a 'Legends of the Dark Knight' story, haven't you? Who wrote that?

Mike: Chuck Dixon.I thought I'd get on the bandwagon! For the first time in my life I'd do this just to get some money! Apparently the storyline clashed with another Batman story by Mark Badger. I've never seen it, but it's a very similar plot, which has never happened before in American comics! So mine had to be shelved.

WC: What do you think about artists who have imitated your style, or stolen some of your images?

Mike: I don't mind that. I don't like it when they trace things, though. You know, it took me a day to draw and it takes them ten minutes. They turn up in a lot of places. They fool me, I'll tell you! I can't see the point of copying things - you might as well go and work on the Stock Exchange. All they want is money, don't they? There's no fun in it.

WC: Is there anything personally that you'd like to work on?

Mike: No. My attitude tends to be that there are things I don't want to work on. I know what I can't do, like love stories. Or sports comics!

Whatever I'm doing, I want to find something that I can get out of it. I usually spend about a month wrestling with how I want to present a new story. Which means I'm not making much money a lot of the time!

But I create for myself a world I can believe in - that I can explore, more than the actual subject matter. The subject matter is important, but I need to have some sort of a 'hande' to hold on to. That I can twist as I draw it.

WC: Do you find working from home distracting?

Mike: Well, it all depends if there's cricket on. I'm very easily distracted. Any excuse not to do it! You know - the ice cream van. If it's the world cup, then that's it.

WC: Do you work in short, concentrated bursts, or does it occasionally come together well?

Mike: The deadline has a lot to do with it! When I drew the Alien Legion book, my wife helped me colour it, and I did 45 pages in seven weeks, which is something I've never done in my life! I'll never do it again, I expect.

Sometimes I spend a month doing a first episode of something, which is five or six pages. I wish I knew how to work. I don't think I ever will!

Gainsbourg

Un grande merci à Jonathan Edwards for including my ropey submission on his wonderful Draw Serge blog.

influence map

(I'm a bit late to this, but) I've seen a fair few of these 'influence maps' on other cartoon blogs and fancied a go myself.

Of course, it's not exhaustive (how can it be) but it's fair to say that everyone on there has made want to pick up a pencil and have a go myself.

Goodbye, Cleveland

Sad to hear that Harvey Pekar has died. I first remember coming across him in the 'Harvey Sez' column in some reprints of Weirdo, when I was about fifteen or sixteen. Since then, I've read tons of his stuff (and taken in the excellent film of 'American Splendor' of course).

There's a real sea of autobiographical comics around, and the majority of them are introspective twaddle. Yet another illustration student talking about yet another unrequited crush? Boring.

Pekar could certainly be self-obsessed, but he was obsessed with the other characters in his life, too. It made you care, and it's what made his writing so interesting.

RIP, indeed.

this place is like a tomb

Apologies, apologies, apologies. I have been drawing, I just haven't been updating. Lots of things in the pipeline, though.... watch this space.

*tumbleweed*

Crikey, it's quiet on here.

I've a few bits and bobs on the go at the moment, and will post bits in due course (mainly, I'm working on a new book for Rough Guides).

In the meantime - remember the Damo Suzuki poster in the last post?

Well, it's got the Leeds Music Scene forum a-harumphin' and a-squabblin' over whether you can read the bloody writing on it or not (and let's be honest - you can't. Not really).

Tony Hart...

...R.I.P.

(Image courtesy of here).

Hergé, Goscinny et Uderzo

Sometimes I actually love youtube.

Here's a reason why: A 1969 interview from French television, where (in a group with other bande dessinée authors) Hergé, Goscinny and Uderzo compare their most famous creations*. Click the bottom right of the screen, then the red 'cc' icon, if you want to turn the English subtitles on (...and then do what I did, and trawl through the rest of quiestce88's youtube channel).

*For anyone about to ask that question - I prefer Tintin. And also for the record, I'm a Chip-ite.

Ray Lowry, RIP

Bugger. Ray Lowry's died.

My favourite cartoon* of his goes like so: A group of klansmen march on from stage left, only to be met by a group of Nazis - who scoff at them; saying 'oh look - pointy headed liberals'.


*I shall find it, and scan it.

boo...

... hiss.

earth wind and fire

This shop hilariously shares the same name as 70's soul sensations Earth Wind and Fire. In what seemed like a good idea at the time, my friend Darren and I decided to compile such occurrences on this flickr site.

Now, be warned - only those willing to accept the most tenuous of connections (as well as those with a working knowledge of vaguely obscure rap acts) may wish to take a look.

sam

Oh, I know. It's not a scribbling at all, this. I just like it. Sam was visiting and when I found him having a kip* in our front room (especially with that ear)? Well; it demanded a photo.

*I know what it looks like. He was simply asleep, bless him.

all smiles

Here's a thing. Outside the block I live in are four disused, crumbling garages. On Saturday I joined forces with some people from another flat and decided to take a look inside a few of them. Some of the doors opened fine. Others needed us to - ahem - knock the padlocks off.

I found an old London Evening Standard in one, dated September 15th, 1971. Here's a story from its 'Overseas News' page that I thought I'd share - about the now-ubiquitous 'smiley face' image: