Weird for the sake of weird

Can't be bothered waiting for your favourite comic strip characters to enter the public domain? No problem! Just draw a comic strip about them anyway! It's all in good fun, and a homage, of course. Here's a round-up of some strips that I thought were great examples of taking a popular comic strip and putting their own spin on the characters. 

First up we have "D.I.L.B.E.R.T. 2147" by Rory Blank. He's taken Scott Adams' Dilbert and taken it to its grotesque future conclusion. 121 years from now, Dilbert, Wally and his fellow cubicle drones are still toiling away in productivity hell, as you always knew they would be. The game never ends and your life means nothing to the corporation.

Here's a weird one — an untitled strip by John Cullen featuring Charlie Brown from Charles Schulz's Peanuts. I was never into Peanuts, I found it annoying, repetitive and not all that funny. Perhaps I didn't really "get" it. But then again, who cares! This tribute to the existential boredom of terminal loser Charles Brown (you have to be wary of cartoonists who give their lead character the same name as themselves) is made more striking by the off-white vintage background colour, the limited palette and the zip-a-tone halftone dots. I'd read a whole compendium of these!

You must have known that Brussels' premier youth reporter would be included in this, and you'd be right. Just as Yves Rodier's completed fanart version of Tintin et l'Alph-Art gave us the closest look as to what Tintin might have looked like in the 1980s, the strip below gives us a 2020s Tintin and Captain Haddock, referencing the Louvre heist in October 2025. That guy in the third panel is 15 year old Pedro Delvaux, a tourist whose presence outside the museum in 1940s detective garb drew widespread attention.

I haven't been able to find out the name of the person who drew this, but they have a Tumblr page called Professor Calculus Stan Account.

This is my favourite: "Looking For A Friend" by Tom McHenry (I'm not sure if the site linked here is his official one). It's a whimsical yet sad look at those exciting early days of The Simpsons, when Bart would crank-call Moe's Tavern, and stuff would happen, and junk. 

 

The character of Moe has been the cause of much heartache and conjecture over the 114 years the show has been on the air. Is he a repulsive gargoyle who gets perverse pleasure from serving watered-down booze to sadsack losers in his crappy dive bar? Or is he an incurable romantic yearning for the soul mate who is never to come his way? Tom McHenry understands this perfectly and articulates it on the page as such.

 

Note: All artwork is copyright of their respective authors. As for the characters they're drawing, I don't wanna get into that! They drew it, not me. I'm not a lawyer, man!

Erica

 
Erica is a character in my graphic novel series, Airbury Academy (2007-2018). She first appeared in 2001 as an extremely minor background character, with only one line of dialogue, in a sci-fi/comedy comic called Metalheads that I drew when I was a uni student. There were eight issues made between 1998 and 2003. The bulk of the Airbury characters all first appeared in Metalheads, as did the character Miss Fox from Juliet Prime.

When Erica next appeared, in the original (online) version of Airbury Academy Volume I in 2007, she had been promoted to main character Psyche's best friend. This was a decision taken by my friend Sue (RIP), who had a hand in writing a couple of stories in it. Sue's justification was that her childhood friend was named Erica and she liked my character design. Well, why not?

Erica appeared throughout the entire series. She had a cameo at the end of Limelight in 2021, and is set to appear (along with about 75% of the Airbury characters) in a new murder-mystery graphic novel later this decade. So look out for it! Until then, enjoy some panels...

Juliet Prime 25th anniversary

I first drew my characters Juliet Prime and Seymour (no last name) 25 years ago today. Usually when you create a character you don't imagine drawing them many years later. At the time, I was a 20 year old uni student who got the idea to start a comic strip about some sort of evil corporation taking over their fictional island homeland, and these guys were the protagonists. 

The first strip was drawn the next day, and I tried to follow a schedule of producing one full-page colour strip, nine panels to a page, on the first day of each month from then on. As you can imagine, this deadline often got ignored due to assignments.

Incidentally I visited my old uni campus two days ago and walked through building 13 where I used to have multimedia classes, and where I used a battered old scanner to scan the early Juliet strips which I would also photocopy, hand out to friends, and pin up on noticeboards around the campus. This was nothing new in the early years of the internet. A few of us had our own web pages on Xoom or Geocities or something, but scanning things in the classroom was tedious and slow (especially if you had to do it on the QT lest anyone notice it was for non-course-related purposes), so it was often more practical to just stick something up in case someone might see it. I remember dubbing off some of my songs I had recorded onto cassettes, putting them in plastic sleeves and taping them to trees in nearby Alexander Park.

 

Over the years, the focus of these characters shifted a little. Before the Juliet Prime graphic novel came along in 2023, there was the original comic strip in 1999–2000, a full-length comic in 2002, another full-length comic in 2006 and the beginnings of a third around 2011, all of which were also called Juliet Prime. The hidden colony scene is taken from the 2002 comic, and the villains being clowns comes from the 2006 one. The 2006 comic ended with Juliet being forced by the clowns to walk a tightrope while juggling bombs, a cliffhanger ending that was never followed up.

 

One good thing about planning the 2023 graphic novel however was cherry-picking the elements from the two previous comics that worked and fit the structure of the intended new story. Thus, Juliet cutting off the arm of the colony gatekeeper that had turned into an eyeless green monster, seemed an obvious bit to keep in! It's the only part of either of those two comics that was included. 

The designs of Juliet and Seymour haven't really changed much over the last 25 years, although some things took time to evolve. Eventually you reach a point when they get suited to their costumes and hairstyles and so on, and just look strange when drawn any other way. At that stage you can call the designs final. Depending on the number of characters, it can often be confusing telling who's who in a comic, so it helps drawing them wearing the same clothes all the time, even though that doesn't really happen in real life.

Still, if you've created a character that's many years old and you still want to draw them, it can be interesting trying out other art styles, colour schemes and ways to keep them interesting for you. Of the artists I follow on Instagram, I might see Tintin hanging out with Indiana Jones one day, and a Simpsons character painted as a realistic human the next. Personally I enjoy re-creating well-known images with my characters. In the above image you can see Juliet and Seymour on a high ledge just like Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters.

To finish, here's one last photo edit featuring Juliet — this is the uni lecture theatre where I did my first drawing of her during a Film & Video 3 lecture on April 30, 1999. And I'm pretty sure that's where I was sitting, too! I always used to sit on the left side, five or so rows from the back, in an aisle seat. Those aren't the original seats. I remember them being red. And they seemed a lot closer together then, too. It's like visiting your old school. You swear it used to be bigger...

One panel from... Calvin and Hobbes

It's been nearly two years since I did one of these — a look at a single standout panel from a comic strip or graphic novel.

Calvin and Hobbes (1985–1995) by Bill Watterson is one of the most successful comic strips of all time. I've read just about every Calvin and Hobbes strip ever drawn, because it was a staple in The West Australian when I was a teenager. It still is, even though the strip ended over 28 years ago. 

How many strips did Bill Watterson draw? Well, the complete three-volume hardcover collection published by Andrews McMeel contains a total of 1,440 pages, so you can work that out in your own time. Let's just say it's a lot, alright?

The dailies were your standard three- or four-panel gags, but where the strip really stood out was in its Sunday strips, with innovative and unconventional layouts and detailed renderings of things you wouldn't normally see in a typical gag strip: it might be two dinosaurs fighting, or a giant bee, or a speeding plane about to crash. 

The protagonist Calvin is a six year old boy who has no friends and so frequently escapes into flights of fantasy, which allowed Watterson to let loose with his cinematic visuals. Nothing was off limits (within publishing guidelines, that is) and it all made sense in-world.

So, you're probably thinking that the panel I've singled out is one of those Sunday strip colour panels. Probably one depicting space or a Martian landscape, or even a stately winter scene. Well, it is from a Sunday strip, but it isn't any of those. It is, in fact, this!

When you see this, you instantly know that Calvin's dad, who is being seen as a slug-like creature with one eye, is talking to Calvin in his regular voice. While his dad sits there reading, Calvin imagines his parents and objects in the room becoming various monsters. Except Hobbes, who is absent from this strip. Would he just stay a tiger? Anyway, this panel sums it up for me — the little kid whose life is usually so dull that he has to literally make something abnormal happen just to stay sane.

The whole thing is great. I particularly like how the mounted monster head (where a picture frame was before) has a different expression in the next panel, and that the creature the lamp and table has turned into is now holding a little umbrella. The dad's facial expression is perfect. Surreal and bizarre moments like these in newspaper comic strips today are pretty much unheard of.

Strangely enough, the book of collected strips that this strip comes from...

...is Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat, published in 1994. Calvin and Hobbes was on hiatus for most of that year, as Bill Watterson was taking an extended break. 

Well, my local library's copy of the book has an unusual label in it:

Hmmm. Well isn't that ominous.

So, what did I draw in 2023?

I'm back! I'm sure you expected more than three measly blog posts from me in 2023. What can I say, drawing, colouring and printing a 128-page colour graphic novel took up a good chunk of my time. Here's what the front cover looks like:

And in this artistic yearly wrap-up, here are some of my other drawings from 2023, in chronological order. 

 

Violet, a character from my 2020 graphic novel The Snarley, riding a bike in a rural setting. Exercise in drawing characters not seen in their usual environments.

A frog craftsman in his workshop.

Mona Lisa, an Indian film actress. She appears in my unreleased graphic novel Limelight from 2021.

Wonka in Picasso style.

A Roman emperor with a metal detector.

Steam locomotive.

Feather, a character who appeared in Airbury Academy and Limelight, among other things.

Fremantle sheds.

Watercolour drawing of a frog. That's a bowl of nachos in his hand, if you can't tell.

Watercolour tanuki, inspired by Studio Ghibli's Heisei Tanuki Gassen Ponpoko. This is, of course, the 'Reiwa' version.

Tintin and Juliet Prime investigate the 'poison of madness'. This year was 40 years since the death of Hergé.

Spike and Violet in a Norman Rockwell parody.

Juliet and friends going carolling. I was going to write some lyrics above Seymour's head, but I couldn't be bothered. Now, get lost!

One panel from... Dork

Welcome back, action wizards and sexy robots, to my latest look at a single panel from a remarkable body of work. This time, I'm looking at the comics of one Evan Dorkin, from New York.

Dorkin's comic Dork ran sporadically throughout the 1990s and lasted 11 issues. It was built around what he called 'inventory material': one-off gag strips as well as lengthier stories, and other work done for various comics anthologies and magazines.

Most of what appeared in the first ten issues of Dork were collected in two volumes, Who's Laughing Now? and Circling The Drain, which I bought from Quality Comics in Perth in 2005, on the strength of the back cover gag of Dork issue #6. They wrapped all their books in plastic, but from what I saw in that one issue, Dorkin's style and sense of humour appealed to me.

Because I liked issue #6, it was disappointing that nothing from that issue appears in either of these two volumes. However, I only had to wait a mere sixteen years before I got the bumper Dork compendium seen below. Oddly enough, nothing from issue #6 appears in here either, except its contents page. There are colour reproductions of all the front covers too, except #6. So what gives? Was it omitted for legal reasons or because the publisher didn't like it or what?

Anyway, there's just about everything else Dork-related in here apart from Milk And Cheese – Dairy Products Gone Bad and The Eltingville Club, which are collected in other volumes. There's the three-panel comic strip Fun! wherein we meet such characters as Phil the Disco Skinhead, Myron the Living Voodoo Doll (seen on the cover of Who's Laughing Now?) and Seiji Nakimushi, World's Worst Kamikaze Pilot.

My favourite bits though are The Invisible College of Secret Knowledge, in which a character known as the Devil Puppet (that's him on the cover of Circling the Drain) nestles itself on someone's hand and begins to tell tall tales of how certain historical things came to be, such as the KISS Navy and Wertham's comics code. In one memorable story, he talks about how in 1928 the department store Macy's started releasing the inflatables at the end of their Thanksgiving Day parade, offering cash rewards for their return, the amount determined by the size of the balloon.

At the parade in 1932, everyone wanted that year's largest balloon, the comic strip character Fritz Katzenjammer. After one man dies falling from the balloon's ropes, scores of balloon-hunters chase the drifting balloon into New Jersey, and then, this happens:

There are a few of Evan Dorkin's trademarks on show here: smarmy New York City dialogue, plenty of detail on the characters (some great facial expressions), and jibes at comics fandom (although rather subtle here — chasing one of the Katzenjammer Kids for big bucks seems like a precursor to the nebbishy practice of buying first-issue comics just to make money off them later, eh?).

So that's that. Oh, and apparently the German word 'katzenjammer' (literally, 'cat's misery'), is their word for 'hangover'. So that's another piece of useless trivia for you.

One panel from... Punk Rock And Trailer Parks

Welcome back to "One panel from..." where I examine single panels from comics I hold dear. This time, it's My Favourite Graphic Novel Which Was Not Written By Hergé Or Larry Gonick. I had never heard of this book, or its author, when I found it in an anarchists' bookstore in Seattle in 2011 (where it had been remaindered from the Seattle Public Library). I hadn't intentionally sought out an anarchists' bookstore. They had lots of second hand graphic novels, that's all. I was a tourist and had to rescue some good gimcrack. Look, just never mind, okay?!?

Punk Rock And Trailer Parks by Derf, released in 2008, is the story of the long-limbed fellow on the cover above: 19 year old Otto Pizcok, a shy trombone-playing dork who is passing his last waning days of high school by going to punk rock shows, watching lame beach party movies and peeping on certain well-endowed female classmates through binoculars. He eventually becomes a hero in the local punk scene, even fronting a band for a while, and meeting such luminaries as Joe Strummer, Wendy O. Williams, and The Ramones.

The story is set in 1979 in a deadbeat Ohio town called Richford, and as it happens, this is the same place the author Derf (real name John Backderf) comes from, and around the time he finished high school, too. But it's not autobiographical – his next, momentous, follow-up graphic novel would see to that. This book deals with the burgeoning Rubber City punk scene and the promise of escape it signified for small-town kids like Otto and his mates Pete and Wes.

This is the only graphic novel I know whose author has supplied a 'soundtrack' to read along to, with a playlist containing 43 songs. Artists in this list include The Clash, Talking Heads, The Pretenders, and of course Ohio's own new wave heroes Devo.

Now let's check out the panel I chose:

I think this sums up a lot of what the book is about, actually. Apart from one tragic incident towards the end, Otto remains upbeat throughout. This despite the fact that he looks to be about two metres tall and still gets insulted and pushed around by various thugs around the school, because he openly hates their football team and is a band geek (though he disavows the term 'nerd'). Speaking of hating the school team, Otto has a line that I quote often: "The worse a beating they receive, the happier I am!"

He also, as you might infer from the dialogue here, has a propensity to quote Tolkien. I like Derf's hand-lettering a lot. He puts a lot of words in bold, and his speech bubbles have wiggly stems that often seem to grow out of characters' faces. 

This panel also shows Otto, who calls himself The Baron – his extroverted, after-hours persona – driving Pete and Wes to a gig in his '68 Cougar and making them sit in the back seat. His reasoning? Because The Baron likes to chauffeur, and only the chauffeur sits in front. I wish I'd known about that when I was at uni.

There's one more thing in this panel that figures prominently in the storyline. Look close. See it yet? Yes, it's the cassette recorder and microphone on the front seat. Otto is documenting his entire final school year in farts. Whenever the urge for flatulence strikes, he hits the record button and lets rip into the microphone. And, spoiler alert, he gives Pete the tape at the end as a keepsake. Well, it's nice to keep a journal, I suppose.

So there you have it. Being in a band, living in a town of inbred hicks, and losing oneself in indie music. That was pretty much my high school experience, too. Except my car didn't have a really small steering wheel. And also, I didn't have a car. And I didn't go to a concert until I was 22. And there were no girls at my high school. And all the— (Continues to ramble incoherently as reader closes browser window)

One panel from... The Cartoon History Of The Universe

Have you ever been drawn to a single panel in a comic or graphic novel? It could be a splash panel or an inconsequential small panel, but for some reason it stands out to you. Perhaps it's because of a particular action pose, character design, rendering of some object or another, the way it's coloured or shaded, or indicative of a particular skill on the artist's part.

What I'll be looking at here are single panels from comics I admire that I keep coming back to. In this case it's for none of the above reasons: it's a single human hair. I know, right? It sounds stupid. But bear with me here. Once you see the context of said hair, you'll know what I mean.

Here's the book I'll be looking at.

It's called The Cartoon History Of The Universe, Book 1 by Larry Gonick. This was a series that he did that was published between 1978 and 2008, comprising some 1,460 pages across five volumes – a mammoth project detailing the history of the world from the Big Bang onwards.

The above volume isn't one of those five volumes. It's a separate edition from 1982 containing the first four comic book installments that were published by Rip Off Press between 1978 and 1980. (Quite a bit of it was altered for the first Cartoon History volume proper.) Anyway, my mum gave me this book sometime in the late '90s. Her school's library was going to chuck it out and she rescued it and gave it to me. 

The 'Date Due' slip inside the cover, where the librarian had to stamp the due dates in the olden days, is completely blank, suggesting that no one ever borrowed it. But the book itself is creased and obviously well-thumbed. So evidently it was read by plenty of people – though perhaps not by any of the kids at the Beehive Montessori School.

Incredibly, given that this is one of my favourite comics of all time, and Larry Gonick one of the cartoonists I most admire, I let the book sit in my cupboard for about two years before I got around to reading it. I probably gave it a cursory flip-through when I was given it, but once I read it, I read it so many times that it was even more dog-eared than an actual dog. The whole book is full of amazing and funny drawings of humans, animals, dinosaurs, single-celled life forms, and even strands of DNA.

Anyway I'd better stop waffling and show you the panel in question.

It comes towards the end of the book, as part of a story about King Solomon (of Old Testament fame). Now it must be said that I don't think this little panel is the best drawing in the book. Far from it. It's just a dude in a chair. But look at the detail there. The whole book was drawn with a brush and Winsor & Newton drawing ink (I know this because I emailed Larry Gonick in 2006 and asked him.)

Gonick's human figures are, while cartoony, expertly rendered with few solid blacks and many fine parallel brushstrokes for shading, something I have always tried to do and failed every single time. Looking at the panel, you see tiny yet important details: notice the eyelid and eyelashes as a simple L-shape, the thicker line on the back of the crown, the fold lines on the sleeve, and the stroke forming the top of the nose terminating instead of joining up with the crown.

And then there's that hair. Just a wiggly line, but look at the uniformity of the curves in it, and how it thins out at both ends. That's the kind of effect you really only get with brush and ink, and he nailed it there.

So that's one panel from one book I like. There will be more in future posts, so look out for those. Tintin included. Although trying to single out just one panel from Tintin would take me longer than it took Larry Gonick to draw five volumes of Cartoon History. I might save him until last.

New graphic novel for 2020

The character you see above is Spike, the first proper character I created for my comics, in or around September 1993, when I was 15. He first appeared in a pencil-drawn comic soon after called Missing, Presumed Stupid which was a whopping 16 pages long (hey, that's a long comic for a teenager). You can see in the above picture there (on the left, obviously) how he looked in it. He appears to have had flamingo feet for hands.

Well, his five-fingered human hands have finally been reinstated and this year he will be starring in my next graphic novel (Untitled 2020), which I will share excerpts with you as n' if n' when time goes by.

Interestingly enough (well, I think so), Spike's age originally was 22, before I increased it to 27. So when he appears in my new book, his age in real time will be 27!

Welcome To The Twenties

Welcome to the Roaring Twenties, folks. Here's a watercolour I just did of Juliet Prime as a flapper and her best pal Dave as a city slicker! These two will finally make their graphic novel debut next year, 21 years after they came into being. And the last 2 digits of next year's date is...? Oh, the symbolism!

I'll be writing the Juliet comic concurrently with another one due to be completed this year. And in April, my blog will be ten years old! Gawd, where does the time go.

Homecooked Comics Mini-Market

Today was the Homecooked Comics Mini-Market for 2017. Whereas last year's event was held at the Town Hall in Northcote, due to issues with that venue, this year's event was scaled down and held instead at the Squishface comics studio (and adjoining studio space) in Victoria Street, Brunswick.

Despite the space constraints, we still had room enough for my books on sale, and those of SCAR, who couldn't attend due to other commitments.

Even though not as many people attended as customers, I still managed to make one sale and one for SCAR as well, which was satisfying.

Thanks to Sarah Howell and Ben Hutchings for hosting us on the day, and Cristian Roux for having a chat. It was great seeing the artwork of all these creators. See you next year! I'll post tomorrow about some sights we saw in Brunswick after the event finished.

Phantastique

I am somewhat privileged to say that I have worked on the page layouts for Steve Carter and Antoinette Rydyr's brand new full colour graphic novel, Phantastique. A mix of sci-fi and horror, from the thrilling to the bizarre, and drawing on 30 years' worth of material, this 104-page book is being launched at Melbourne's Supanova event on April 30, 2017.

Although I did the layup for their previous graphic novel Weird Worlds, this time I also coloured a two-page story titled "Seeds Of Death". You can see the first page of this in the Facebook post screencap below.

 Like the look of this? Head on over to SCAR's website, and bring the kiddies, why don't'cha.

Making Comics Is Hard (So Why Bother?)

Yeah, making comics sucks sometimes.

So why bother? While everyone is out having a good time – boozing it up and smoking pot and sniffing coke – you're sat on your lardy proverbial, drawing dorky characters in a dimly-lit room with naff '80s hair metal playing on a busted ghetto blaster, while garlic prawns simmer in a bain maree out the back.

Of course, it's a waste of time. No one's gonna read this crap. Comics are for kids, man. Who even reads anymore? None of the 'sophisticated adults' I know would be caught dead reading this junk. Why don't you just go get your qualification to be a dentist, like Aunt Lisa wanted.

Comics? Nothin' to it, I tell ya. Money for old friggin' rope. But like I told ya before, anyone can churn out this stuff if they really want to. With the right presets and page templates, plus a good comic lettering typeface you nicked offa 1001 fonts dot com, you can churn out inconsequential fluff at a rate of a thousand pages a year. No one's going to read it though. Because nobody reads comics.

Ah, but they do. Well, one person actually.

That's right. Only one piddling little insignificant person out there wants to read your comics. That person is but a speck of dust upon a germ upon a pinhead. But to you that person is the be-all and end-all, to use an old biddy's term. That person is your audience. You must get back to your drawing table. Get your flabby arse-cheeks upon that seat. For them!

Because you see –

Even if only one person is reading your comic you still have to do it. Keep on drawing it. If anyone tells you not to bother and give up and get a job putting tools into bags, you can tell that person to 'naff orf'. Just finish that comic. ASAP.

And when you do, send me a copy. I could do with a good laugh.

Homecooked Comics Festival

I had a table at the 2016 Homecooked Comics Festival today. It was held in the Town Hall in the suburb of Northcote. Want to see some photos from the day? No? Tough.

Here's my table with the four volumes of Airbury Academy, Rob's zines, and a hand-painted Airbury bag.

Comics artist Bruce Mutard was there, and did a series of drawings for the kids.

Meanwhile, a drawing demo was in progress. Here's Steve from SCAR with his motorbike monster...

...and Matt from Pikitia Press working on a similar effort. The drawings were timed.

Finally, here's Michelle and Antoinette from SCAR looking at my zine, Xtra Cheez!

Now, push off!