Alexander's Cartoon Blog

Scott of the Antarctic

2012-01-12T04:23:00.000-08:00

100 years ago today Captain Scott taught his band to play in the Antarctic. Their fingers were too cold to play the instruments. It was tragic. Just some shivery singing and gloved fingers thumping on guitars. Incredibly the album went to number one and stayed there for 13 weeks. Only to be knocked off the top by Adele's album '45 minutes of crying while eating cake'.

I think that paragraph is respectful enough to the incredible bravery of Scott, Oates and the rest, isn't it? Almost as respectful as this episode of Nuke Noodle from last year:

Nuke on the cover

2012-01-11T09:40:00.003-08:00

Yep, so buy the Dandy which is out today! This cover is by Wayne Thompson who draws the new-look Bananaman. Or you can read old Bananaman strips by the late John Geering in The Beano.

2012-01-11T09:40:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year!

2012-01-04T09:23:00.000-08:00

For 2012, Nuke Noodle (it's in The Dandy, you must buy it! Despite what certain people are saying it's actually great, and that's not because I'm biased) is going through a re-vamp with the drawing. Now I am back in England and working full-time as a cartoonist I have more time to work on the pictures. I hope you like it. Here's a preview of the forthcoming Winston Churchill episode that will appear in about 4 weeks time. Until then, the artwork remains not so good...

And the last bit of business from 2011, my Private Eye Christmas cartoon.

Noodly Christmas!

2011-12-15T08:20:00.001-08:00

Merry BOOF! everybody, from Nuke Noodle!

Interview with me!

2011-12-07T06:43:00.000-08:00

Deathly exciting interview with me here.

Nuke again

2011-11-17T10:31:00.000-08:00

I've been silent again for a while, so here's a Nuke from a recent issue of The Dandy to pass the time. This is one of my favourite episodes. Its from a suggestion by my brother. The problem with Nuke is that once he's done a particular time, I can't really go back there (at least for a while). I also struggle a little with thinking of famous characters from history or fiction to get Nuke to beat up. Any suggestions of who you want Nuke to fight are welcome! I'll give you a credit!

And as a bonus here is an amazing drawing of Nuke by the talented young Rory Williams. Absolutely loved seeing this in The Dandy!

Reverie

2011-10-07T14:30:00.000-07:00

I am having a ball writing and drawing Nuke Noodle in The Dandy. A lot has been written on various blogs about supporting this comic, which is having a desperate time in terms of sales. How is that a nation with such a rich cartoon heritage as Britain, can't properly support the only comic out there which has genuinely interesting kids strips? When I was young I was very spoiled: Whizzer and Chips, Buster, Whoopie and Wow!, Oink! (I became a cartoonist because of this comic and have a complete collection in my Mum's cupboard which annoys her intensely), The Beano, The Dandy, Nutty, Hoot!, The Beezer. I could go on..Topper, Shiver and Shake. Ok, I'll stop now. Well, the point is-what the hell happened? It's a criminal shame that kids these days with an artistic bent can't pick up decent comics cheaply like I did.

Reverie is setting in...I started a comic at school with my friends Daniel Cole and Andrew Nowell called Meep! (Dan's idea-never happy with the name). It was a brilliant thing to have done and I am proud of the effort we put in. We photocopied it and handed it out to our friends. Then big school came along and comics were no longer a thing to do-nerdy. Dan and Andy no longer drew them, but I did. I have no idea why I had such a passion compared to my peers, but here I am, 24 or so years later doing it for real.

Here's an uncoloured panel from a Nuke I am currently drawing. He meets Houdini, although this panel is a bit of a red herring.

Please buy The Dandy! It's only £1.50 and it's well worth it. For Nuke, for the brilliant strips by Jamie Smart and Wilbur Dawbarn, Andy Fanton and all the others. It's like watching an old episode of Thundercats. You wonder why you ever stopped.

I still continue!

2011-09-21T09:15:00.000-07:00

Check out evil twin at eviltwincomic.com if you haven't done already. Nuke Noodle continues too, in The Dandy. Here is a sneaky recent episode that you may have missed. I think I am allowed to post it on here. Why wouldn't I be? Click to make go big.

And as a super additional treat, you might also be interested in this, which is in the latest issue of the amazingly indefatigable Readers Digest. I sold it in March, but they've just published it. Better late than never! It's in colour in the magazine. The treats just keep on coming!

Evil Twin and Nuke upsell

2011-08-17T04:35:00.000-07:00

The new issue of The Dandy is out today, where you can see Nuke Noodle do battle with a real T-Rex, or at least a drawing of one. Time-travel, wrestling and dinosaurs, together at last!

Also, Evil Twin continues on it's own site, as a little treatette, here's today's episode. Stay tuned for more off-kilter mayhem, slightly crappy drawings, and non sequitur punchlines.

Message ends.

Nuke Noodle returns!

2011-08-10T04:33:00.000-07:00

My new strip starts today in the Dandy. Excitement! It's called Nuke Noodle, Wrestler in Time! and it's based on a character I devised a while ago. The 'pilot' strip is somewhere in the bowels of this blog, if you want to trawl through it. Or you can see it as the background of my twitter page (link on the left).

So where did this idea spring from? Well I am about to tell you, so calm down. Time travel is a noble thing-or it's often portrayed as such-travel back through time and witness great historical events such as Jesus talking about something or other boring, or watch Eric Cantona's kung-fu kick. You know, noble stuff, that will improve you as a person. Now what if the person who had time-travel technology just wanted to beat people up from the past? And what if he only wore stupid wrestling pants and had a mullet? From such idle thoughts Nuke Noodle was born!

Extra tidbit: He was originally going to be called Dick Noodle and the strip was going to be for a maturer audience, but when I realised I could go in a more kids comic direction the name changed. I went with Nuke because I wanted something that sounded like Hulk (as in Hulk Hogan), and contrasted with the silliness of the word Noodle.

Now go and buy a copy of the Dandy. Watchawaitinfoh?

Do you get this?

2011-07-27T13:30:00.000-07:00

I've asked a lot of people, many people don't, or at least they think they do, but are missing a major part of it. Anyway, the people at Private Eye obviously got it because they published it, even though the drawing isn't much cop. If you're not sure you get it, then click here and all will become clear. But you probably won't need to do that, will you, because you're all brains, aren't you?

Preview central

2011-07-22T09:55:00.000-07:00

Here's three previews from some kids comics I have been working on, one of which is for The Dandy. No more details shall I proffer than that. Return later for more news, wanderer.

Dingus lives!

2011-07-21T06:48:00.000-07:00

My character Dingus is being used as the mascot of a site all about dinguses (dingi?). Check it out at department of dingus.

Evil Twin begins again!

2011-07-17T14:56:00.000-07:00

I've just about created a new website for my strip Evil Twin that was a finalist (final 10!) in Amazon's ComicStrip Superstar competition last year. Was it last year or the year before? I forget. Anyway-you can see the submission strips starting now on it's own website: eviltwincomic.com. After those old strips have finished in a coupla weeks, brand new shiny ones will start. The disappointing website will soon look sexy too, with bells and whistles and shells and gristle. Oooh, excitement.

broken

2011-06-22T09:05:00.000-07:00

Since I last updated my blog, I was attacked and put in hospital with a broken jaw. The guy stole my computer so I also lost over 500 cartoons that I had drawn digitally, most of which have never seen the light of day. All pretty terrible. Still, life goes on, or my seemingly endless series of morbid cartoons in Private Eye does. Here's one that's in the new issue.

Based on an untrue story

2011-04-23T01:42:00.000-07:00

A work in progress-I am intending to do 100 of these. Inspired by my desperately unsuccessful love-life.

A tribute to 'The Monkeys You Ordered'

2011-03-14T03:35:00.000-07:00

Seen The Monkeys You Ordered? A great site, where caption competition New Yorker cartoons are given literal captions-which I find are often much funnier than the eventual winners of the competition. I especially like a recent one 'This is Gary'. Here's a tribute with one of my recent(ish) cartoons:

Updated

2011-02-06T03:33:00.000-08:00

Things have been mysteriously added to my website, on the homepage and in the published work and animal cartoons section. Check it out. (Link on the left). Here's a taste from Private Eye. Mmm, feels good don't it? No? Suit yourself. I'm going to have a sandwich.

Been a while

2011-01-24T04:35:00.000-08:00

Here's one from before Christbo, published in Private Eye. It works on MANY LEVELS. Well maybe two at a push.

Votey the Vote Vole says Vote Vote Vote!

2010-12-02T05:18:00.000-08:00

You can vote for my Dandy cartoon strip now on the Dandy website. Here's a direct link.I am not doing so well after an initial spurt, so go there immediately and vote your thighs off. If the readers don't like my strip, then no more Robot Running shall there be! That would be very nearly as criminal as the FIFA executive committee, which is very very criminal indeed, as you well know.

Bad joke time

2010-11-21T14:16:00.000-08:00

This fella is currently strutting it's stuff around the corridors of Readers Digest magazine. The cool mag for people on the move and on HRT.

Soupy twist

2010-11-14T23:23:00.001-08:00

One of my odder efforts.

The Dandy

2010-10-27T00:10:00.000-07:00

It's got my strip in it and it's £1.50. Buy two copies. One for you and one for you pet chaffinch or heron. You can use it after you've read it to fix the wobbly leg on your cauldron. 101 uses!

Buy it.

old strip with swearing in

2010-10-14T05:40:00.001-07:00

Looking through my old strips I found this one, which I think is rather good. Not for kids.

Private Eye annual

2010-10-10T12:53:00.000-07:00

Forgot to say in the last post-I'm on the cover of the new Private Eye annual and I have a few cartoons inside too. Here it is on Amazon.

two more cartoons and an apology

2010-10-10T12:27:00.001-07:00

One in Private Eye, and one in The Spectator. The apology is for the nonsense I spouted in my announcement in the last post. Reading it back is an uncomfortable experience.I think I will erase it. Latest news on my strip in The Dandy is that it will be in the issue out at the end of October. According to the estimable Mr Lew Stringer it will be out on the 27th, priced one of your earth pounds and 50 of your delightful british pencingtons, as Stephen Fry might have said on TV in the early 90's.

A big announcement

2010-09-26T01:40:00.000-07:00

Note to self-must update blog more regularwise.

Anyway, I have a strip in The Dandy! It's called 'Robot on the Run' and will certainly go on to become the most famous strip Britain's longest running comic has ever run, bar all the others. Here's a pic:
Not sure exactly when it when will appear, but definitely soon. Check this space for more info.

waitin' for a superman

2010-08-16T14:48:00.001-07:00

Here's one in this week's Spectator.

Doctor Who is that supposed to be?

2010-08-10T16:30:00.000-07:00

Been a while since I did a caricature. This one of current Doctor Who Matt Smith is for the Cartoonists' Club's brand new caricature competition. Bit of an exercise in Adobe Illustrator this one. Never used it much, so just stretching my legs around it. Pleased with the result. Other entries can be seen here.

the return of God

2010-08-06T04:56:00.001-07:00

Here's a cartoon from the new issue of Private Eye, featuring my latest cartoon character 'God'. He's kind of a superhero, but he doesn't have an origin story like Batman or Superman, he just kind of exists. Powers: Lives forever. Creates things. Burning bush power. Beard. Don't make him angry by being gay or he will burn you forever in his underground God-cave.

win win lose situation

2010-07-26T12:19:00.000-07:00

Over on the Cartoonists' Club website I have finally, finally, finally won their weekly cartoon competition. It was proving a bit hellish to win the thing, but after one year of entries (actually I probably entered less than 20 times-but this was competition number 52) I only done it. The theme was 'hot', set by Mr Wilbur Dawbarn (his site is listed in the links over on the left) and it wasn't supposed to have any words. 'Captionless' in easily penetrable cartoonists' jargon. It's down below. I am also on the cover of their monthly newsletter 'The Jester' which you can't read because it is more full of dangerous information than wikileaks, but I think it's allowed for me to post the cover. They had a theme too-politics/government.

It's not a complete win win situation, however, due to the sad passing of John Callahan. Quite an amazing man and a brilliant cartoonist. Even more remarkably he was a quadriplegic after a motorcycle accident he suffered when he was only 21 and used to draw with a pen clutched in both hands. If you can find one of his cartoon collections, buy it-his dark sense of humour is an absolute joy. But you've probably heard of him-and if you haven't, you should've.

Colourin' in

2010-07-08T05:52:00.000-07:00

Another experiment (as was Dingus, below) in using digital colour here, in this cartoon that was published in the June issue of Prospect. I'm playing with removing lines as you can see. I rather like the result-more than the joke really, which is not that great.

Dingus is here!

2010-06-15T07:01:00.000-07:00

The complete adventure of Dingus is now available on a crisp sheet of A4 paper for only 8 groats.

Introducing Dingus

2010-06-14T08:32:00.000-07:00

Coming soon! Dingus! The world's greatest cartoon character of the world!

Here

2010-05-13T10:16:00.001-07:00

Self Portrait With Plastic Chair. Finger painting on baby skin, 30mx20m, 2010

Easily Fooled

2010-05-07T10:53:00.000-07:00

Eagle eared readers of this blog will know that 'Animal Midnight' is actually a song from Stephen Malkmus' second solo album 'Pig Lib'. What a schoolboy error I made there.

So we've had a general election in Britain and the result is all bullshitty. Seems like we're stuck with Cameron, but hopefully Mr Clegg can put a spanner in the Conservatives plans to privatise everything and put people out of work. I smell austerity measures. Seriously, have you ever heard the word austerity used so much until recently? Electoral reform would be good though. To take your mind off the impending horror, I present a strip I made years ago by cutting pictures out of an old Dukes of Hazard annual. I think it makes some valid points.

Animal Midnight

2010-04-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

I have decided to name posts after songs by Pavement to celebrate the current reunion tour which I'm gonna totally miss. Unless they extend it and come to Moscow. Come on lads! Do the decent thing. This is another non-seller that is tenuously linked to the title of this post.

And this one, also tenuously linked, is in Reader's Digest. I sold it to them sometime last year. Two rabbit based gags in two months in Digest. Coincidence? Or is it because it's Easter? (Or was a while ago). Happy Magic Jesus Come Alive Again Day for back then anyway.

No dice, amigo.

2010-04-15T13:38:00.001-07:00

First in an occasional series of cartoons I couldn't sell. I've got a lot.

Free Expression

2010-03-31T06:18:00.000-07:00

Well, I have finally won a world renowned (Ok-unheard of) cartoon competion: The Council for Secular Humanism Free Expression Cartoon Contest. Top prize was a whopping $2500, which will do very nicely, thank you. I was really proud of this cartoon, as you can see by the previous blog posts on it, but this was an amazing surprise, particularly as I had forgotten about entering the competition in the first place.

Said judge Steve Benson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for the Arizona Republic, "Wickedly humorous, brutally direct, effectively and simply rendered. A stinging indictment of the Catholic Church's pedophilic priest scandal that allows absolutely no room for the predictable apologetic defense. Left me laughing and wincing at the same time!"

I have reproduced the cartoon below for your viewing pleasure.

Student sketches

2010-02-28T05:04:00.000-08:00

I joined in during a sketching session with my students yesterday. Here are three which turned out quite well.
Ksenia
Natasha
Vladimir

And this cartoon is from the latest Reader's Digest. I sold it in the middle of last year, so it's been a bit of a wait.

Classical Sketches

2010-02-14T12:14:00.000-08:00

I went to the Tchaikovsky Music Hall in Moscow this evening to see a concert. They did all the biggies-the William Tell Overture and that one with Land of Hope and Glory in it. The first half featured a classical saxophonist, though, and she did an encore that I found hilarious-she clearly had a thing for unlistenable jazz. It sounded a bit like this: Jazz Club.

While I was there, I only been and went and done some sketches, didn't I? Conductors are ace, by the way.

The New Pantheon

2010-02-05T13:12:00.001-08:00

Skip over to my twitter (link top left) to name some gods for The New Pantheon! The best few I like I'll draw up and post them on here, with a credit. I'll even send you the original drawing if it's uber-awesome. If what I'm saying makes no sense-go down a few posts to see Duvus, God of putting the duvet cover on the duvet.

Here's a couple of new cartoons too, that I've received a fair bit of praise for. They're in Private Eye right this instant.

Better than a kick in the old town-halls

2010-01-22T08:47:00.000-08:00

My recent cartoon in Private Eye (see two posts down) has generated a few comments, both positive and negative on their letters page. A first for me! Amongst us cartoonists it is seen as a bit of an accolade when your work causes such a reaction that people write in. I have posted them below for you to read.

And here's my latest one from that issue.

furthermore...

2010-01-11T12:41:00.001-08:00

And the Irish government has just passed an anti-blasphemy law!

Sickness

2010-01-09T04:27:00.000-08:00

This is my latest cartoon from the current issue of Private Eye. The 3 decade long child abuse scandal in the Irish Catholic Church is a vile, vile tragedy. I personally do not think apologies and payouts are an adequate response to the way the Church covered up this abuse to protect it's reputation.

"It was reported that more than 300 children were sexually abused by priests between 1975 and 2004. However, church leaders did not report the cases to the police in order to avoid tarnishing the church's reputation and assets. " (presstv.ir)

This is on top of the scandal of the institutions run by The Catholic Brothers between 1940 and 1970 where "More than 3,100 people testified before the commission over the years and more than 800 priests, brothers, sisters and laypeople were implicated as abusers." (catholicnews.com) 25,000 children were in the care of these institutions during this period.

My cartoon is a bit of light humour directed at this scandal, but in a way, I hope it reveals something of the seeming nonchalance with which the Church and probably the Irish government accepted these abuses at the time they were occuring. Thanks to Private Eye for publishing it.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T05:01:00.000-08:00

At this time of year my thoughts turn slowly, as do most people's I should imagine, like a sated hippo, inevitably, like a goose with an interesting pamphlet, to time travel. It's natural isn't it? We want to turn the clocks back to those heady years that some people (idiots) call 'The Noughties', when Tony Blairs was PM, house prices rose by 200% a second and, best of all, Crowded House got back together. We all wish we could travel back in time don't we? But can you 'Take The Weather With You'? The answer is of course, no. Are you stupid, Crowded House? Perhaps you should have dedicated your time to inventing a time-suit with massive weather-proof pockets, Crowded House, instead of focussing on being completely awful. Personally, I would like to go back to when I had my last doctors appointment and ask for double the amount of cream.

Have a good one!

2009-12-24T12:54:00.000-08:00

Here is my Christmas card for this year. A lovely sweet evil snowman!

Ideas that make me laugh but I can't sell

2009-12-14T13:09:00.000-08:00

Here's three examples that really made me chuckle when I came up with them, but as the title to this post states as plainly as Spainly, I couldn't sell. Strange as it may seem, the ideas that I KNOW will sell, the sure-fire winners, don't make me laugh. Or more rarely at any rate. It's these kind of quirky ones that I enjoy writing the most. The ones with a silly or surreal idea, but which are not sort of fully rounded gags. I really hoped to sell these ones, but it never happened. I'll shove 'em in a book at some point for nobody to buy.

I'm an atheist, and I'm bored tonight.

2009-11-23T10:37:00.000-08:00

Here's a fairly atheistic cartoon that was published in Prospect recently. I am fascinated with the idea of religion and why people believe, so I quite often come up with these kind of ideas because this stuff is always rattling around my brain.

Onto the bored part. I was talking to some students yesterday about God, and all three of them professed some belief. So I have been dwelling today on why it is exactly that I don't believe in God, or the soul, or the supernatural, or the transcendent, or miracles, or ghosts, and I thought I'd outline it here on my own blog. Here goes:

1. It's irrelevant. Why should I believe what a bunch of semi-literate and confused Iron Age peasants from a dusty and savage speck of the Middle-East decided 2000 or more years ago was the truth? We should have moved on from the Abrahamic religions hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Take the good bits and move on, don't believe in ALL the superstitious nonsense. That's what we do with Hippocrates, isn't it? And he knew a damn sight more than any of those prophets or disciples.

2. It's absurd. Why should I believe in a supernatural being that created everything? Nothing about my knowledge of the universe suggests that such a thing is remotely possible-the laws of physics cannot be suspended. Miracles simply do not happen-they are invented by deluded, devoted or despicable fabricators. Furthermore, a single deity is just as silly an idea as a pantheon of Gods, and also rather less interesting as a story. Not as many characters to work with. Ever heard of Sathya Sai Baba? He is this old Indian Guru chap, with literally millions of followers. He claims to be born of a virgin, and has apparently performed miracles, including raising someone from the dead and making objects appear from nowhere. Is he a liar and are his disciples fooled by him and do they make up more lies to prove to others that they are onto something? Yes, of course. And it's the same with Jesus and Muhammed and any other prophet. Sai Baba just happens to be alive today whereas the distance that 2000 years gives you, somehow, absurdly, seems to give these other two blokes more credence.

3. We are insignificant. We are not the pinnacle of evolution, just a product of it. Our planet is one of millions of millions buzzing around millions of stars in an expanding universe. The universe was here 13 billion or so years before we were and will be here long after we are gone. Long after our sun burns out and our galaxy crashes into Andromeda. Why do we insist on creating a picture of the universe with ourselves at the centre? Because we are at the centre of OUR universe, and we have evolved to be selfish and self-interested (it's pretty good for survival). But we are not the centre of the actual universe, just our picture of it.

4. Worship. Why would any all-powerful deity require his followers to bow down and worship him and build dirty great (often very lovely) buildings in his honour? What does he get out of it? We rightly loathe any King or Emperor who tries to do the same. It's contemptible. And it's even more contemptible for a being of unlimited powers to ask for all that stuff too.

So there you have it. There's other stuff, but those are the central points. I haven't even touched on the idea that religion comforts or gives hope (it's false hope, people!) Looking forward to some spiky comments on this one.

Not a winner

2009-11-09T12:06:00.000-08:00

It was Dana Simpson's 'Girl' who won in the end. Never mind. I've got big plans for this strip, as I think I've stumbled clumsily into a great idea. Watch this space.
Same link again.

Voting closes on Friday!

2009-11-04T02:40:00.000-08:00

If you want to vote for my strip you've only got until friday, so get a wiggle on. Here's a picture from it, to make this blog post more interesting. Now get going. Oh, you want a link? Happy now?

ps. The winner will be announced on monday. The tension is literally bearable.

I'm still doing gags, though

2009-10-30T12:43:00.000-07:00

With all the comic strip excitement I haven't posted a gag in a while. Here's my latest Private Eye cartoon.

In the final of Comic Strip Superstar

2009-10-29T00:04:00.000-07:00

Rather unbelievably, I made it to the last 10 of Amazon's competition. I am now very nervous, yet as excited and frolicsome as a new born dolphin. The good news is you can vote for me, or indeed any of the others on this link: Comic Strip Superstar. All the strips are up, and all you need is an Amazon account to vote. So get on it.

Comic Strip Superchap

2009-10-15T09:49:00.000-07:00

I entered Amazon.com's Comic Strip Superstar competition a few months ago with a new concoction called Evil Twin. It's a tale of twin brothers and their attempts at getting one over on each other, as boys are wont to do. It's inspired my childhood growing up with my younger brother and the silly things that we used to say and do. I can't post any strips here, because that would be against the rules, but the good news is that I am down to the final 50, from about 5000 entries. Pretty good going, I reckon. One more round to go where the last 10 are subjected to a public vote. Fingers crossed I get that far.

Comic Strip Superstar

You guys!

2009-10-09T09:59:00.001-07:00

My lovely, lovely part-time foundation students in Moscow had a cake made for me for my birthday featuring my King Kong cartoon that you can see a couple of posts down. What a lovely gesture. I was all ready to fly off to england that day, and was a bit grumpy to go in to work, but that all melted away when I saw what they had done. Bit of pressure on me now to be a good teacher!

One student has posted pictures of the event here. The face I am making was an hilarious joke. The cake was delicious.

Made up words vs spelling errors

2009-10-07T13:35:00.001-07:00

When I drew this cartoon I wondered that, should it be published, would the magazine think that I had spelt 'Heavenly' wrong? I thought about changing 'Heaveny' to 'Heavenly' to avoid such a misunderstanding, but decided in the end that it took the edge off. Anyway, I forgot about it and when it appeared in this month's Prospect, they had done just that. Should have added a note saying that Heaveny was the desired spelling, but I suppose it looks too much like an error. It's not the first time a cartoon of mine has been altered. There was the great Reader's Digest added movement lines debacle. Private Eye dropped a word from a caption, and my grammar has been corrected a few times. The thing is that I spend a great deal of time trying to get the flow of words right-to mimic speech, or to make a caption more quirky and funny, so it miffs me a little. I wouldn't mind if the mag would contact me and ask about altering the caption-but they never do. It's not the worst thing to happen to my work. Teacher's TV brutalised a cartoon graphic that I had done which appeared on their channel. It was of a classroom with a large blank whiteboard, onto which they would add statistics. Unfortunately they had given me the wrong dimensions and needed it wider. They got some artistically incompetent oaf to draw some walls and details at the sides-with a mouse! It was horrific. I would have done it for them free of charge in about 10 minutes, had they asked, but they didn't and I stopped working for them. Bit hasty maybe-but principles are principles. So, comment if you would: Heaveny or Heavenly. What works better?

Added bonus: Two more from this month's Prospect. A triple whammy.

Another 2nd place in the reverse caption comp.

2009-09-28T11:13:00.000-07:00

I feel like Buzz Aldrin. Or Tony Jarrett.

Master of glove puppets

2009-09-16T05:32:00.000-07:00

I really love the magazine Private Eye. Not for it's design, which is appalling, but for it's content. I can't spend longer than a 0.3th of a nanosecond looking at most magazines without wondering, with bewilderment, who would buy such an insipid pile of old pants? When I go to the hairdresser (barbers-can't trust 'em) they plonk a couple of magazines on the little shelf thing below the mirror-usually Stuff or GQ or Esquire, and I flick through them, sigh a bit and put them down again. They don't have anything interesting to read in them at all. Give me a New Scientist or a Prospect or a Private Eye every time. What's wrong with actually learning something when you read a magazine? I read all the sections in Private Eye, even the ones I don't understand like 'In The City' because they are well written, are based on actual research, and tell you stuff that the papers should be reporting. I'm biased towards Private Eye because they sometimes print my cartoons you might say, but let me assure you nothing could be further from something that is very far away from the truth. It's just that I don't want to read about Brangelina and tiny laptops and look at endless pictures of boobies and sweat patches.

Anyhoo, here is one of the latest ones from PE's hallowed pages.

Soup of the day

2009-09-13T12:55:00.001-07:00

Number 2 with a bullet.

2009-09-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

Here's a cartoon drawing I did for the ol' CCGB compo last week and it came second, despite being a bit crapuloso. Tricky caption (and they're getting trickier by the week-I hope the thing doesn't peter out). I've also just started getting into Twitter, so click on the link on the left to follow me, and I'll follow you back.

Peter Out. That's a good name for a cartoon character. Jay Peg. That's another one.

Return to Skull Island

2009-08-21T15:51:00.001-07:00

I've been getting a few nice comments for this cartoon that's in Private Eye right now. It's one of those ideas where you think, "Surely that's been done." Apparently not, luckily for me. It fits into that category of gag cartoon writing where you take a completely ordinary everyday line and put it into an odd situation, but a situation where the reference is obvious. They're hard to come up with, but when an idea comes along like this, you know instinctively it's a winner. It's also currently on Private Eye's cartoon webpage.

This caption thing is getting out of hand.

2009-08-15T14:25:00.001-07:00

The Cartoonist's Club of Great Britain Unofficial Reverse Caption Competition (or CCGBURCC for short) is getting out of hand! There have been literally a number of entries for the past couple of weeks. The thread is open right now if you want to see this week's entries: CCGBURCC. Here's mine from last week. A rather poor pun and one arm is a bit short.

And here is my entry for this week, which is BRILLIANT, and a dead cert to not win. I don't normally do boob jokes BTW, Mum.

The Jams

2009-07-26T03:45:00.000-07:00

Over on the Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain forum, very occasionally we have a cartoon jam. Usually it takes the form of a comic strip where one artist draws a panel and then passes it along to the next cartoonist to do the next panel in the sequence. It's done 'blind' so that no-one sees the entire thing until it's finished. These panels are from the two I've been involved in. The strips tend to make quite a bit of sense when the whole thing is viewed, contrary to what you might think.

The other day we played another game. A kind of reverse caption competition, where we had to fill in the visual part to the joke using the caption, "I see you managed to get a sponsor in the end then, lads!" It's not really my kind of punchline, so I set out to pervert the competition by not allowing myself to show either sports or a sponsor. (I was the only one who took this obscure approach). I also decided to use some copyright free clip-art because I thought it added to the feel of the joke. It wasn't a wholly successful experiment, but I kind of like it.

And as a special added super-bonus to this post, here's my latest cartoon from Prospect magazine.

Bingo bongo, two in the Eye!

2009-07-22T12:49:00.000-07:00

I didn't even realise I'd sold the second one of these, but I thought they were winners when I thought them up. Gratifying that they are currently seeing print in the new issue of Private Eye.

Lost "Classics"

2009-07-20T08:27:00.000-07:00

Not so very long ago, before my King Monkey strip, I drew another strip about a useless Victorian inventor with a very big hat. I was looking to create a whole world, with a large cast of characters, rather than the smaller double-act framework of King Monkey. Apart from Isambard himself, there was his girlfriend Amelia, who was a would-be romantic novelist and poet, Enoch, his dumb pal, his Scrooge-alike boss Mr Muckworm, Ratbone the detective, Saucy Jack the fiend, Barnacle Grudge the sea-captain and Constable Dunstable. There was also a mad professor type, a pub landlord and a boxer/bouncer too, but I can't remember their names. As you can see from that list, they were all Victorian archetypes, not so original. But I think the strip worked-I just felt that there wasn't ever going to be much of an audience for it.

The following strips are from the second phase of Isambard, after I redesigned the characters and gave it a typographical overhaul, not, for once, using my own font (which is called Jumpytype, if you're interested).

And that's it. You won't find out how they fared on the moon because I never drew it. And I never will. (Unless someone pays top dollar, or top guinea in this case)

Cartoons cartoons cartoons

2009-06-25T06:37:00.000-07:00

Here are my latest published cartoons for your "enjoyment", 2 colour ones from Prospect, 1 from Private Eye. I've sold quite a few this month and I'll post the rest when they appear in the magazines. The build Rome one is not one of my better gags in my opinion, but I am very fond of the drawing. Conversely, I'm really proud of the other two, but the drawings could have been better. I tend to rush through the drawings and draw as many as I can in a few hours. Often the first and last couple of cartoons are not so well drawn, and sometimes I'll even redraw them the following day. Could be something like that happened here, but I can't quite remember.

Reader 1 Cartoonist 0

2009-06-17T10:42:00.000-07:00

I rather forgot about the Readers Digest cartoon caption competition, but it seems I did in fact lose. To this one:

It is better than mine, I reckon. Congrats to William Thomas, who wins £200 and my original artwork. Pretty good, you would have thought. Here's a link to the page that the image is on. You'll notice that the cartoonists are already doing badly. And the latest I'm hearing is that it's 3-1 to the readers now. We'd better pull our socks up.

Beat the cartoonist

Cartoonist of the 30 day period

2009-06-07T06:29:00.000-07:00

Ah, the prestige!

I am Prospect magazine's Cartoonist of the month. They sent me some questions and I did them the very generous service of answering them, and they're also going to put up some more of my cartoons over the course of the week. Thanks must go to Prospect's outgoing cartoon editor, Susha, who has been very nice and encouraging towards me. You can see my latest cartoon for them on the link too, as well as a portrait of me by Evgenia Barinova (link to her website on the left there).

The new style

2009-05-01T15:15:00.000-07:00

I've decided to revamp my style a bit and these two cartoons, which are in this month's Prospect, are the result. I've tried to loosen up quite a bit, simplify and create more dynamic cartoons. I've been a little dissatisfied with the look of some of my work and wanted it to be less stiff so I've moved in this direction, influenced by some classic cartoonists like Steinberg, 50's animation and modern stuff like Serge Bloch. I think the style works well with the outline-less objects I sometimes include (like the tie salesman's counter below). I also think they look great on the page of the well-designed Prospect magazine, but I am biased.

More book

2009-04-28T02:12:00.000-07:00

A couple of pictures of my book, so you know it's, like, actually real.

Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival

2009-04-28T01:48:00.000-07:00

Presenting my 'Humural' cartoon from last weekend's Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival. Here's the official website. Pics from 2009 taken by cartoonist Gerard Whyman should be up soon. And, here's the Professional cartoonists' Association blog about the whole event.

Crystalline Structure Friday- the book!

2009-04-28T01:25:00.000-07:00

I've put a book together of my cartoons, which is available to buy from lulu.com at a very reasonable (ok, unreasonable) price of about 9 quid. I chose a rather lovely format for the book, it's about novel size, but this seems to have made it more expensive than I thought. If you are desperate to see 100 or so of my cartoons, both published and unpublished, then this is the book for you. Or alternatively, you could meet me in person and I will give you a copy. I live in Moscow. See you there!

If you really, desperately want to know why it's called Crystalline Structure Friday, you'll also have to buy the book.

Almost quite interesting

2009-04-07T12:51:00.000-07:00

Stephen Fry is a lot harder than he looks. This phrase could be taken in many ways, but in this case it refers to drawing him. This is my second attempt after the first abortive one a few months ago. I'm still going for very simple shapes (I particularly like the 3 circle face formation that I stumbled across), but this time with a looser feel to the line and colour.

I think I draw too fast

2009-04-03T05:37:00.000-07:00

I've been fiddling with screentoaster.com, and decided to record myself drawing a cartoon, because I promised in a previous post that I would show the various stages I go through. I chose a simple idea, not one I'm even sure I will send out, but one that would show how I go about creating a finished gag. From start to finish it took about 9 minutes! Pretty quick - Maybe too quick. I ought to slow down or people will think it's easy being a cartoonist. It's not. Its INCREDIBLY HARD.

Vote Vote Vote

2009-04-02T01:58:00.000-07:00

You can vote for the caption for my cartoon now. In fact the voting is probably nearly closed already. Using my cartoon has made this thing a shambles if you ask me. Perhaps next months competition with a cartoon by Len Hawkins will be better.

vote now!

In other news, my Rock, Paper, Scissors cartoon has finally appeared in Reader's Digest, and I had this silly one in last month's Prospect. Nothing in the new one, though. Grrrr.

A big problem with trying to sell gag cartoons is that the mags often pick what you would consider to be a 'filler' gag (one that just bulks up the batch-sort of like every song on every Sting album). When I sent out the batch the with this one in it, I thought there were better ones in there, but Prospect had other ideas. I don't mind though, I'm kind of fond of this. It looks a bit like a Johnny Ryan gag with none of the rudeness.

Caption Competition is go.

2009-02-23T01:43:00.000-08:00

Here's the link to the Reader's Digest caption competition featuring my pizza menu minotaur cartoon. Get you're entries in now! The winner gets 200 quid and a piece of my original artwork, which is sitting here next to me. It's a lovely dip-pen and ink version of the cartoon. Highly desirable. Copy and paste this, because adding a link isn't working for some reason:

https://myrd.readersdigest.co.uk/forms/webforms/Cartoon

A word about King Monkey

2009-02-18T10:17:00.000-08:00

I'm resting it for a short time, while I work on other stuff. It's difficult to keep it going when I have a lot of other commitments and I'm not getting paid for it. I'm sending out a sample pack to the syndicates at the moment, so maybe (although probably not) you'll see it elsewhere and I'll rake in some dough.

Those idiots will return!

Multiple sales! Boo-yah!

2009-02-18T09:50:00.000-08:00

Here's the one in this month's Prospect. I enjoyed thinking of this one, because of the simplicity of the caption. It's always good when you come up with an idea based on such a simple and well-known phrase. One kind of similar joke is 'Bad dog!'. There are three great ones that have been in The New Yorker. Danny Shanahan had a female dog telling off a male dog whilst in bed together 'Bad sex! Bad, bad, bad sex!', David Sipress has the other two. The first shows a guy telling off a crudely drawn dog 'Bad drawing!' and best of all the other has a guy waggling his finger at a cat; 'Bad dog!' I would love to come up with my own bad dog cartoon, but how can I better those?

I actually sold this one to The Spectator too, but Prospect had already taken it. Cue an awkward conversation with their cartoon editor telling them they couldn't, in fact, use it. There's another one (which is rather silly) to come in the next issue of Prospect, too.

This one's in the new Private Eye, out today. It started off as 'Love the lack of taste', but a simplification of the words made it work much better. It's a little more absurd now. I hate to draw straight lines with my drawing pad into photoshop. so this was a bit of a pain. I used to use a dip-pen and a bottle of ink, but I'm able to replicate that line digitally now, which saves time, storage and is a hell of a lot cleaner. A lot of people are surprised to hear that I don't work on paper and I don't make roughs either, other than a tiny sketch in my sketchbook when I think up the idea. I work them straight up without roughing out the shapes or anything. Perhaps I will post the stages I got through for a finished cartoon some day...

Sold

2009-01-24T07:03:00.000-08:00

Been a while...I must update this thing more often. This is a simple post: I'm in the new issue of Private Eye with this zinger:

It's one of those ones where you think of some stupid meaningless phrase and apply the logic of it to a situation. When I come up with one of these I always think 'It must have been done!' A cursory google search usually reveals that it hasn't been. There must be a finite amount of these cartoons that can possibly be thought of but, much like the 3 minute pop song, you can always find something new to do.

I've also sold one to Prospect, but I won't stick that up until the magazine is out. Well it might dent their sales and we couldn't have that, could we?

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-26T14:16:00.001-08:00

To all my reader!

A word from our sponsors

2008-12-13T12:11:00.000-08:00

New cartoons

2008-11-14T12:36:00.000-08:00

This is my latest one for Private Eye, in the issue out now. To be honest I never thought this would get taken, as there were much better ones in the batch I sent off, well, probably. You can never really tell what cartoons an editor will like, ask any cartoonist. I think I'm a particularly bad judge.

One of mine is also going to be the first (I think) cartoon for Readers Digest's new caption contest. It's called 'Beat The Cartoonist', and my original caption goes up against the readers' ones. Readers vote for their favourite and see if they have 'beaten the cartoonist' about 8 months later. Bit worrying, but I'm not sure what else is possible for this one. Here it is without the caption. The full captioned one can be seen on my website in the animal cartoon section. Why not have a go yourself as you probably don't read Readers Digest. I know I don't. (Although I believe the next issue with my cartoon in it is an absolute doozy).

Shmeducation-A True Story

2008-11-06T23:25:00.000-08:00

Here it is, my graphic short story. The winners of the Observer competition are being published this sunday. Look forward to seeing them.

Published?

2008-11-04T08:11:00.000-08:00

I sold this cartoon a while back to Readers Digest and I imagined it would be in the next issue, but apparently not. They're probably holding on to it for another issue, but I also wouldn't be surprised if they have changed their mind. I don't think it's my best, but I was happy to sell it (of course). I've been paid, so hopefully it should appear sooner or later. It's been a fairly lean time recently in terms of placing cartoons, but the good news is that Private Eye have finally taken a couple. It's taken months and about 8 submissions, but finally I'm back in the game! I'll post them as soon as they've been printed. In other up and coming blog news, I intend to put up my full education story in the next couple of days that didn't win the Observer Graphic Short Story competition. I'd love some comments, as I am very proud of it.

King Monkey-Back!

2008-10-20T11:18:00.000-07:00

I took a little break from drawing King Monkey to get some other bits done, but as you have already seen in the title to this post, it's back. Hooray! Break out the Aldi's own brand Cava!

Caricature 2

2008-10-12T04:11:00.001-07:00

And here's McCain.

Caricature

2008-10-11T11:05:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a lot of research into contemporary caricature recently in my capacity as an illustration lecturer and I was inspired to have a go myself. I haven't done any for ages, since university really, but I very much enjoyed getting back into it. Here's an illustration of Barack Obama I've just this minute finished. I'm nowhere near the league of artists like Hanoch Piven, Noma Bar or Stephen Kroninger, but I'm pretty pleased with the result.

Observer competition

2008-10-08T13:02:00.000-07:00

Here I present the first page of my entry for the Observer Graphic Short Story competition. It's a devastating exposé of the english education system from a teacher's perspective. It should bring the government down or at the very least the crumbling and bizarre edifice that is british education. I expect no less.

I was walking home from the Metro station and the whole of the idea came into sharp focus. It happens that way sometimes, especially when walking. I find that my mind is much sharper as I walk. The artwork has been much more difficult to produce. I've tried some experimental approaches, but in the end have opted for a regular cartoony approach that I hope works as a counterpoint to some of the serious things in the story. This first page is very introductory in tone, but the other three have a definite plot and resolution. The only problem is that I've got masses to draw and the deadline is looming. Comments are very welcome.

Captain Biceps

2008-09-29T11:04:00.000-07:00

I went to Bordeaux a few years ago and picked up a copy of tcho comic which is the kind of thing we would kill for in England. Packed with great characters and amazing art, it was a joy. The lead character is a little guy called Titeuf who also appeared in The Dandy around 2005 as Tootuff. God knows how the Dandy printed it as it's pretty near the knuckle at times. Titeuf is a prepubescent kid who is confused and obsessed by the great unknown world of girls and sex and is a little scared by it. It has a good line in toilet humour, too. In one episode I saw in the latest album he and another kid are standing next to each other at a urinal. They develop a urinating rivalry which results in them both being drenched. Can you imagine THAT in The Dandy? Or indeed in an American Newspaper?

Along with Titeuf I was totally mesmerised by a character called Captain Biceps. He's a ridiculously muscled Superhero who does battle every week with a marvel superhero, or a character from fiction, or myth, or whatever the creators Tebo and Zep can come with. (Zep is also behind Titeuf). It is simply marvelous, and drawn in a wonderfully unfussy style. The design of the pages and colouring is also brilliant. Here are the first two episodes which I found on the net:

I now have all four of the annual collections, which I ordered through The French Bookshop in South Kensington. I can't read french, but it hardly matters, most of the humour is visual anyway. In one of my favourite episodes, a superman-alike is helping Biceps every time he gets in trouble, rescuing him from being crushed by moving walls etc. At the end of the strip Biceps is caught short without any loo paper. He calls for 'Hyperman' and wipes his bottom on his cape. The last picture of his bedraggled, stinking, poo-covered cape is just great. Of course it's not all poo and wee, there are some great visual jokes and ingenious ideas in there, along with superb characterisation-Biceps little sidekicks who each get killed are a good example. I hope this stuff gets translated, but I have my doubts it ever will. We get plenty of translated french to english albums in comics shops over here, but most of it was drawn more than twenty years ago. It's a shame that the current children's comics scene in france is unaccessible to english people, as we have a lot to learn. Even, amazingly, about toilet humour.

Johnny Ryan

2008-09-21T12:49:00.000-07:00

I'm a huge fan of Johnny Ryan. His work is the most fearless I have ever read, excluding Crumb maybe. Racism, rape, disgusting sex acts, he puts it all in. He just doesn't give a shit. Quite a while ago I drew some fan art and sent it into his website and now I re-present it to you my readers, if you still exist. For those who don't know, the guy doing the stomping is Loady McGee and the stompee is Synus O'Gynus.

Hate that BA

2008-09-05T05:41:00.000-07:00

I went back to england for 6 days last week and BA lost my baggage. My drawing equipment was in it, which was frustrating beyond belief. They have a brilliant baggage tracker on their website which just says 'no information available' so I had to repeatedly phone them and hassle them. I had to take deep breaths as the people on the phone knew nothing either. I finally got it back after 4 days. Four days! it was in the airport for two of those apparently. Anyway, the people on the phone were telling me that it was going to arrive soon, so I kept deferring my King Monkey deadline right up to the last minute. I really should be working weeks in advance, and I was when I first started posting the strip, but currently I am working only one week ahead (laziness!). So anyway, this episode was drawn with a track pad on my laptop moments before the deadline, and I had to cheat rather a lot. Just about got away with it, I think.

I am also working on a KIng Monkey website right now. It's a work in progress, but all the strips are on there. Have a look, tell me what you think: kingmonkeycomic.com

The one they used

2008-08-31T12:27:00.000-07:00

Here is the cartoon they used in Prospect instead of the family one that I stuck on here a couple of posts down. Again, I am going for real simplicity, which gives the cartoon a strong graphic feel. What is weird about this one though, is trying to dress up two trees to make them look like a police officer and a plain clothes detective. I went for a kind of strange semi-jacket body stocking approach. I hope it gives the right visual information without detracting from the joke. The joke, by the way, was inspired by Dexter. Serial killers are kind of in-vogue at the moment, aren't they? Maybe this one can be re-sold to a serial-killer trade magazine. Do they have one? With articles on keeping your bone-saws sharp? Any serial killers out there, let me know.

Cut 'n' paste

2008-08-30T10:09:00.000-07:00

Here's another one I did a few years ago. This is a totally different approach to producing a comic strip - I found an old Dukes of Hazard annual in a charity shop and cut up one of the stories: Hurricane Harry. Then I rearranged it make it complete nonsense. I am particularly proud of the result, I think it worked beautifully. Tried to repeat the trick, but never got it to work as well as this.

Swapsies

2008-08-21T11:35:00.000-07:00

Prospect magazine, in their infinite wisdom, have bought another of my gag cartoons. Unusually though, the editor changed his mind about the one they wanted and took another one instead. Fine by me, he could have changed his mind about using any of them. This is the one they initially wanted. I'll post the other one after it's been published.

It's science

2008-08-20T00:38:00.000-07:00

Here is a scientific diagram that clearly shows how the body of a cartoonist compares to that of the pelican.

Warning: Contains rude words

2008-08-19T10:49:00.000-07:00

While I'm waiting for something interesting to happen to my cartoon career, here is another strip from the archives. It contains naughtiness so watch out!

Mr Beeching

2008-08-13T11:06:00.001-07:00

I used to be a secondary school teacher. So I did a cartoon series about it, 4 or 5 years ago. When I say it was about it, it wasn't really about it. The series was far too surreal to really be about teaching, but it was hellish fun creating it and it actually kept me sane at one of the lowest points of my life, which I won't go into. It was called Mr Beeching's Teachings, and here are a couple of sample strips. Most of them can be seen on the characters page of my website (link on the right).

The best idea I ever had

2008-08-13T03:54:00.000-07:00

Last summer there were floods all over england, the worst being in the town of Tewkesbury, so I started thinking about gag cartoons on the subject of floods. I was thinking about ducks, specifically the phrase "Lovely weather for ducks", but nothing was really working. I went out for a run because, for some reason, movement and fresh air tend to clean out my brain-tubes, and it was while running that the idea hit me. Animals in a flood, hippos, bingo! I was so fantastically pleased with it that I cut my run short, went home and drew it straight away. The cartoon is a 'riff' (need a nicer word-can't think of one) on one of the most famous cartoons of all time - Paul Crum's hippos in the water, one saying "I keep thinking it's tuesday". It's strange, surreal, a beautiful idea, way ahead of it's time for 1937. Rightly regarded as one of the defining cartoons of the 20th century and one that helped to shape gag cartooning. Here it is:

Paul Crum

So my idea, as you can see, was a simple word swap. It's allowed! There is a entire genre of gag cartooning that is basically borrowing someone else's cartoon and playing with it. As long it's made obvious, most often with 'apologies to...' written somewhere on the drawing, it is considered a tribute.

Did it get published? Did it bollocks. I wonder if cartoon editors think the idea is too obscure for non cartoon fanatics, or it just isn't as good as I thought at the time. I'm secretly hoping there will be some more floods in Tewkesbury soon so I can send it out again. Apologies if you live there.

Learning a valuable lesson

2008-08-10T04:28:00.000-07:00

Since I uploaded this King Monkey strip, which I thought was pretty funny, I have lost 12 email subscribers. 12! I can't afford to lose that many.

In Britain, the wearing of women's clothing is a comedy staple, so I can't quite believe that the addition of a bra would make 12 people cancel their subscription. It's useful, of course, to see in which direction I shouldn't take the strip, but I didn't for a moment think that a Mandrill wearing a bra would be considered unsettling. Perhaps it's because he's a soldier? Or maybe I am making a leap, here. Maybe the 12 just got bored with the strip. I did intentionally write one that I thought would be a little controversial a while ago, but nothing happened. In fact, at the time, I was continuing to pick up email subscribers. Here it is:

(You can see the changes I've made to the artwork in the recent strip at the top here, too). Just goes to show, you can't second-guess your readership.