Draw the Line Here

The world really is a terrible, terrible place, and the best that most people can do to stay sane is indulge themselves in hobbies and interests, things that make them happy. Easier for some than others, obviously, and some even choose to block out any kind of news at all, anything that doesn't affect them directly is cast to the wind like so many... Crisp packets? Anyway, this place right here is predominantly a comics blog. Stuff about comics, both good and bad, but never (hardly) anything "heavy". It's not a place to discuss the world at large and isn't trying to solve anything - I'm neither qualified nor clever enough to do anything of the sort. BUT, when something comes along on the "world stage" that the whole world pays attention to, and is also directly related to the "main thing of interest" on this particular blog, well, something has to be said.

Back in January, following the massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, everyone responded in their own way, mostly along the lines of "this is an attack on freedom of speech" - I went along with the option of posting the cartoons that "caused" all the trouble in the first place (because I'm dead cool and all that) whilst pretty much every cartoonist alive went ahead and did exactly what they'd been doing all along, which was to carry on doing what they've always been doing. Cartooning, that is. "We shall not be silenced" and all that, yes! The Professional Cartoonists' Organisation, meanwhile, along with English PEN gathered sixty-five cartoonists and got a book crowdfunded, with profits split between a fund for the families of those that were murdered in France and English PEN's Writers At Risk programme, which defends freedom of expression world wide. And this is that book:

It's for a great cause, obviously, and you can order yourself a copy here if you like. Back in this corner of the universe, let's have a peek at some of the wares on offer within the book's 100+ cartoons...

Duck Soup - The beginning of a large thing.

In the year of 2005, a mister Graham Kibble-White put out a book, called The Ultimate Book of British Comics. It's a good read, detailing the histories and contents of most British comics one could care to think of. There's a few dozen exceptions, obviously - neither the Bog Paper or Zig and Zag's Zogozine are mentioned, along with piles and piles of early story papers. Fair enough, it'd be a massive book if it included EVERYTHING, so by aiming the book at the 30 to 40-something market, it keeps things easier... 

There's one fairly massive area of UK comic history that's left out entirely, that being the towering mounds of "alternative" comics that sprung up in the wake of the success of Viz. Graham passes them off with one paragraph in his book:

"Although they were everywhere for about two minutes in the mid-Nineties, they weren't ever intended for kids, nor did they grow out of the lineage of children's publications. Besides, all bar Johnny Fartpants' rag were bloody awful."

Well, yes - a LOT of them were terrible, but not "all" of them. And seeing as there's no big compendium of these adult titles out there ("Viz-A-Likes" is what I call them sometimes), why shouldn't I have a stab at doing a little bit about as many of them as I can? At a push (on a somewhat pretentious level), it could be argued that they're almost as important to the history of UK comics and the underground "comix" are to US comic history (although probably not). They're definitely an acquired taste, and reading too many of them in one day is a depressing jaunt, but I'm going for it anyway.

And here's the one we're starting with:

Here we go, it's called Duck Soup and it's from 1978 (pre-dating Viz by a year). I'm sure I read somewhere that Chris Donald cited Duck Soup as an influence on Viz, but no amount of Googling can currently bring me that information again. Ah well.

As can be seen from the opening page, it's a bit of a home-made affair, with no computer-aided type of any sort to be seen:

Some recognisable names in that list of credits - get excited!

This is the format that the comic mostly takes throughout - pages full of single panel cartoons following a particular theme. This issue's theme as a whole is "the media", with pages based around television, newspapers and the radio.

There's a few full-page strips as well, such as this one from Bryan Lawrence Reading:

This one from Ed McHenry:

And this one from Steve Bell:

Plus a page of short "strips", the three-panel variety, free to break away from the issue's theme, apparently:

And just to add to the whole "DIY" charm of the thing, the adverts are all hand-drawn as well:

Looking at the addresses in the adverts, this was obviously a London-based publication - and considering I found this issue in a used book shop in London, it hasn't travelled much over the last thirty-five years (until now!). 

That's one of the most interesting things I find about these "alternative" titles - they're all so LOCAL. Cheaply made, which obviously means not much would be spent on distribution, so you'd be finding different titles in different parts of the country. That's Duck Soup anyway, incredibly tame when compared to what's to come - consider that a fair warning!

Shiver and Shake - 1980!

Well gosh, if Shiver and Shake isn't my new favourite old comic, I don't know what is. And him over at Kazoop's going through the whole lot of them in just as meticulous a fashion as he did with Cor!, which is obviously a good thing. Meanwhile, this week I've got hold of the 1980 annual (published in 1979, obviously).

Whilst it's slightly disappointing to not find anything of Brian Walker's Scream Inn in this particular book, it has yielded some other nice surprises...

Some Different Takes on The Beano

A comic that's been around for as long as The Beano, and one that's become so much a part of popular culture that most people should be able to name a few characters just by looking at them, is obviously ripe for parody, pastiche or homage. And it's been done a LOT.

One example being this Steve Bell thing from 1984:

Fun? Yep. A miserable yet affectionate look at what may happen to the Bash Street Kids (and Minnie the Minx) thirty years after however old they're supposed to be in the pages of the Beano.

Below are FOUR more different "versions" of everyone's favourite comic (be aware, there's a few rude words)...

Steve Bell's Cheeky Puzzles

Everyone knows about the satirical penguin-fancier Steve Bell, don't they? Well, before he started drawing John Major as a pathetic version of Superman and David Cameron as a walking, talking condom, he did stuff for the kids. As well as a funny thing about gremlins in Jackpot, he did some puzzle pages for Cheeky. These are the two I've found so far - there may or may not be more of these (I haven't read every single issue of Cheeky ever). Also they're both mazes, but VERY WELL DRAWN mazes. Observe.

I know I haven't mentioned this yet, but if it isn't immediately obvious, ALL the pictures on this blog can be clicked on to be made bigger. And then clicked again to be made even bigger. Magic, eh? As if your own eyes have a "zoom" function!