freaky doodles

Cute Puppies and Kittens

2011-12-13T02:07:00.000-08:00

In an effort to attract more mainstream interest to the blog, I'm posting a few drawings from my sketchbook featuring loose but - I hope - frankly adorable observational (apart from the one with the rabbit) drawings scanned from my sketchbook. (To prove how good my scanner is, look for the ghost of images showing through from the reverse of some of the pages!)
In case some of you are wondering if being in love has made me go soft, most of these were drawn in the months prior to meeting Jane, proving that I've always been a soft bastard!

Serendipity in Brighton

2011-12-04T00:53:00.000-08:00

As some of you may know, about seven years ago I was a contributor to the Glasgow-based underground comic Freak. You are probably also aware that my partner and I are regular visitors to Brighton, down on the south coast of England. I haven't been in touch with Freak's creator, the indefatigable Doctor Simpo, since about 2004, nor seen his work around. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when my partner and I wandered into a joke shop on Bond Street, Brighton, only to find a pile of copies of Doctor Simpo's Things and Stuff solo comic just inside the door. I was delighted that he was still working and finding people to stock his comic. I thought that he must have a good relationship with these people, too, as they have a few original Doctor Simpo drawings on the wall too... and some more of his comics... and some more original art hanging on the walls. What was this place?
It was at this point that a guy in a fez wandered over and introduced himself as "The Doctor." It was the first time I had met Doctor Simpo in person, having only corresponded by letter, email and telephone, during the old freak days, and he took the opportunity to show us around his latest project - Frighton or Bust. He even gave me a copy of the final Freak (issue 5, see above), which contains a two pager of mine, but which I never received for one reason or another at the time.
Frighton or Bust is in town for an initial run of two months, as a fully functioning gallery/comic shop/joke shop/magic shop, so that means that you have until the end of January 2012 to get down there and check it out. It's well worth a visit if you're in town.

Lancaster city of surprises

2011-10-23T08:41:00.000-07:00

I helped organize a stag weekend for one of my closest friends earlier this year. We went to Lancaster. Why Lancaster? You may well wonder. Everybody else did. While it was an honour to serve as best man, the fact that there were two of us sharing this duty meant that there was always a danger of being led down the path of compromise. And so we went to Lancaster. It was far enough away from where everybody lived, so the potential for mischief was greater. Unfortunately, the potential for mischief in Lancaster was negligible. Don't be drawn into thinking that because its a university town there's a lot of naughtiness. That's why everybody goes to Blackpool!

What it does have going for it, apart from mini cab drivers with a seemingly endless stream of homophobic jokes, is some exceedingly beautiful streets and lanes and old buildings made from the kind of pleasing stone that you only find the further north you go. Lancaster Castle is almost next door to the station, sitting on a hill which overlooks the town. Tours may be a problem as these days it functions as a prison.

A little reported fact about Lancaster is the fact that it is also a hotbed for environmental activism. Downstairs from the Single Step Wholefood Shop on Penny Street, you will find the Lancaster Resource Centre, which is home to a wide array of radical green groups. Since 2000 Lancaster has been home to Seeds for Change, a non profit training and support network which helps people organize for action and social change.

That's not something they put on the tourist information brochure.

Questionable Analysis

2011-10-16T08:36:00.000-07:00

Since I seem to be using this blog as much for my own socio-political analysis as I am for showcasing my cartoons and eco journalism, I thought I'd share this with you.

In the course of a rant against Labour Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls in his Spectator column back in June 2011, that same magazine’s editor described the Labour Party as “a hippyish, peace-loving party.”
This is a very bizarre statement to make, especially when we stop to consider the string of wars started by Labour when they were last in power (Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Iraq, Afghanistan…).
Under Blair the Labour party became a political machine which clearly saw military action as a first resort for solving international disputes. By what rational standards can anybody describe Labour as a "peace-loving party"?

Admittedly, this is an editorial for the conservative Spectator we're talking about, and not a daily broadsheet, so the editor in question could perhaps be forgiven for singing to the choir somewhat, but to make statements that blatantly falsify reality just seems silly. If this is the present standard of analysis offered by the Tory intelligentsia their approach to managing the country comes as little surprise!

What Has Boris Ever Done for Us?

2011-10-14T00:22:00.000-07:00

Boris Johnson is a conservative journalist and politician whose appearances on the satirical TV news show Have I Got News For You and comments in the press can sometimes be very witty and amusing, while at other times being outright insensitive and even a bit racist (such as the time when, on the campaign trail, he cringingly described a young black child as a “picaninnie”). But, putting aside the casual racism, let’s take a look at what he has done for London since being elected Mayor?

His Staff at City Hall
His administration did not get off to the best of starts, being dogged by scandal from the beginning. First, there is the case of his first Deputy Mayor for Young People, Ray Lewis, who was appointed by Johnson on May 6 2008, two days after assuming control of City Hall.
Lewis had been embraced by senior Tories for his work with disadvantaged youngsters at the Eastside Young Leaders Academy in east London. Understandably if you consider that his approach to London’s problem teenagers was one of tough love and strict discipline. However, before he could damage these youngsters further, Lewis was forced into the position of having to resign only two months after being appointed to his role, following allegations of financial misconduct during his previous career as a Church of England priest [1]. Johnson claimed he was “misled” by Lewis [2], whose resignation came within days of the resignation of one of Johnson’s senior advisors, James McGrath, over racist comments he was alleged to have made about African-Caribbean migrants.

Early Initiatives
One of Johnson’s first moves as mayor of London was to ban the consumption of alcohol on public transport, which TfL’s director of transport policing and enforcement described as “reasonable”, and to halt the westward expansion of the Congestion Charging zone introduced by previous Mayor Ken Livingstone (primarily, it seems, to satisfy the residents of Kensington & Chelsea), which annoyed motorists no end but resulted in a noticeable improvement in air quality in central London.
He also set up the Forensic Audit Panel, tasked with monitoring and investigating financial management at the London Development Agency and the Greater London Authority, which had previously investigated allegations of financial mismanagement itself. However, questions were raised about the “politicization” of this nominally independent panel. It is headed by Patience Wheatcroft, a former editor of the Sunday Telegraph and wife of a Conservative councilor, and three of the four other panel members also enjoy close links with the Conservative Party.

Wasting Money
In 2009, at the height of the MP’s expenses scandal, it was revealed that Mayoral expenditure on taxi fares had risen significantly under Johnson’s administration, and that “out of a total of £8,169 in personal expenses incurred since he took office, taxi costs were by far the biggest item as he ran up a bill for £4,698 to be ferried across the capital” [3].

Green Credentials?
A keen cyclist, in July 2010 Johnson launched a new bike hire scheme in London, popularly known as the “Boris bike”. The scheme, which was sponsored by Barclays Bank with the stated aim of turning London into a “city of cyclists”, was subsequently undermined by his decision to cut £10m off the budget for new cycle lanes in London [4]. An unintended bonus of the scheme, though perhaps one not appreciated by Johnson or his sponsor, was that the bikes provided anti-arms trade activists with a wonderful means of drawing attention to the fact that the scheme’s sponsor, Barclays, also invests heavily in the international arms trade. This was done by pasting info stickers across the large Barclays logo which the bikes were originally emblazoned with.

Charitable Projects
To his credit, Boris Johnson supports a number of charitable causes, including The Iris Project, an educational charity which promotes the teaching of classics, ancient languages and culture in inner city schools.

Courting the Gay Vote
He has also made a serious attempt to distance himself from his support for the homophobic Section 28 which he supported back in 1988. This nasty piece of legislation, which prevented teachers from “promoting homosexuality” by talking about it in the course of regular sex education classes, and hampering their ability to tackle homophobic bullying in schools, was only repealed in 2004. Like most Tories, Johnson voted in favour of the legislation at the time, although he now thinks, like the rest of his party, that it was a “bad idea.” Quite when his views altered is not clear, as he was still making comments like this one, in his book Friends, Voters, Countrymen, as recently as 2001:
“If gay marriage was OK – and I was uncertain on the issue – then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men; or indeed three men and a dog.”
I hope this was intended as a joke, and that the “libertarian” stance he has adopted towards LGBT rights subsequently, especially in interviews given to the gay media [5], is sincere. He has, it must be acknowledged, voted in favour of civil partnerships in recent years.

Law and Order
One of the things which undoubtedly played a part in Johnson winning the 2008 mayoral election was his decision to halt the planned westward expansion of the congestion charge, especially into the wealthy boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea. This certainly mobilized the owners of expensive 4x4’s against previous mayor Ken Livingstone, and his power mad crusade to improve the air quality for people who live or work in central London.
Given his previous track record of abolishing funding for bike lanes and protecting the freedom of rich people to drive high polluting vehicles, it is easy to see that Johnson is a mayor who takes no serious interest in environmental issues. But his electoral base tend to care more about law and order and the economy than “wooly” issues like environmental health, so as long as he’s tough on crime it should be all plain sailing, right? Could anything really work against him at the next election?
In February 2011 Mayor Johnson announced that he would be slashing 300 police sergeants from London’s 630 teams (in June the Met Police figures revealed that the number of officers in London would be cut by 1,800 over the next two to three years). This would seem to be an inevitable consequence of the cuts to public services demanded by the government, except that somehow the number of City Hall staff on 6 figure salaries has increased from 16 to 28 [6].
Will Londoners be taken in a second time, or will Johnson return to what he does best, peddling his unique brand of wittiness and bigotry on satirical quiz shows?

Notes:
1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/jul/05/boris.london
2 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7491084.stm
3 http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23711920-boris-johnson-dents-cycling-image-with-4698-taxi-bill.do
4 http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/21/london-cycling-boris-johnson
5 http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-5535.html
6 ‘Police cuts in spotlight as 2012 ballot draws nearer’ Morning Star, Thursday July 14 2011

Community Gardens of Melbourne

2011-09-05T06:07:00.000-07:00

Check out this short article I penned recently about the beautiful community gardens they have in Melbourne, Australia, which my equally beautiful and eco-minded Australian fiance Jane introduced me to during our recent trip there - http://www.peacenewslog.info/2011/08/ceres-and-the-community-gardens-of-melbourne/

We visited the massive Ceres Environment Park as well as the much smaller Veg Out community garden in the suburb of St Kilda. The latter is where the photos were taken, although this was uncredited.

I must say how pleased I am to have my piece in the 'cultural resistance' section!

Capitalising on anti-capitalism

2011-09-01T13:12:00.000-07:00

It seems dreadfully amiss that I haven't posted any toons on here lately. So here's one I did a while ago, inspired by some of the sights and sounds of Camden Market...

...And Continuing The Downbeat Theme

2011-07-04T09:40:00.000-07:00

Bad Press Ltd, the independent comics publisher run by comics giant Alan Grant, which until recently had been putting out the quarterly adult humour mag Wasted, has sadly gone into liquidation.

It was fun to be a part of Wasted, and an immense honour to be featured alongside so many artists and writers who I admire greatly, and who have always been incredibly supportive of new and aspiring talent (like yours truly).

Anthology titles are vehicles for a wide array of talent, and underground mags are often intermittent, short-lived enterprises. I've no doubt that many of the characters which appeared in its pages will rise, phoenix-like, in new and unexpected places.

I hope to return soon with tales of new beginnings.

RIP Brian Haw 1949 - 2011

2011-06-29T07:28:00.000-07:00

Sadly, Britain’s most renowned and persistent anti-war campaigner of recent years, Brian Haw, succumbed to cancer on 18 June 2011.
Haw had maintained his Parliament Square peace camp for ten years, becoming such a thorn in the side of the Britain's warmongering establishment that MPs even went so far as to introduce a law banning protests within one mile of parliament (without prior permission). The funny thing is that this turned out to be a pointless waste of time and money for them, as they had failed to anticipate that their restriction could not be applied retrospectively to Brian.
In the last couple of years Brian’s actions inspired other, younger activists to set up peace camps in Parliament Square, such as those who established the Democracy Village peace camp (which resulted in the fencing in of Parliament Square) and a regular 24 hour Westminster Peace Presence, which takes place on Sundays.
Maybe one day, when British politics is once more ruled by those committed to serving the interests of people, rather than the private profits of the oil lobby and arms industry, we will see a statue of Brian erected in Parliament Square?

Hollywood and The Abuse of Literature

2011-06-24T06:18:00.001-07:00

Alfonso Cuaron's 2006 film Children of Men, loosely based on a 1992 novel by P.D. James, stands in a long tradition of British dystopias which includes such classics as George Orwell's seminal Nineteen Eighty-Four. The film itself also carries on a long tradition among film-makers of contorting works of literature into forms that are practically unrecognizable to anyone who may happen to have read the original, reflecting the somewhat contemptuous attitude apparently held by some producers/directors that those who watch films will never bother to read the original, and that the opinion of those who read books is of no value.

When Danny Boyle brought Alex Garland’s novel The Beach to the cinema the character Jed was written out completely, and the latent sexual dynamic between the central character and two of the principal female characters in the book became explicit once transferred to celluloid, altering the dynamic and mood entirely.

Comics writer Alan Moore became so disillusioned with the unfaithfulness of Hollywood producers that he insisted on having his name removed from all future adaptations of his work (ownership of which belongs to the publisher DC Comics). This is a persistent trend, satirized by MAD magazine in the 1950s when they contrasted the explicit sex and violence of a book with the sanitized Hollywood rendition. This is a trend which has seen an ironic reversal since the 1970s.

I find the fact that film-makers re-write books not nearly so damaging as the fact that the end result is frequently an artistic disaster, rife with inconsistencies and plot-holes you could drive an articulated lorry through.

On a seperate note, I am often struck by the way in which some film critics take verbal diarrhea to whole new levels. To use an example, one review for Children of Men by Michael Joshua Rowin talked about the “stunning verisimilitude within its mise-en-scène.” Clearly, Rowin could not have simply referred to the film’s “stunning visual honesty,” without having to explain what he means.

A Brief History of British Underground Comix

2011-06-23T01:54:00.000-07:00

Underground (or alternative) comix are often thought of as an exclusively American 1960s west coast phenomenon, growing out of the underground press of that time, and best represented by the likes of Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton and Art Spiegelman. This is fair enough, as the explosion of American underground comix (around 1967-68) pre-dated the UK scene, which at that time was still centred around one newspaper (International Times) and one mag (OZ).

One of the first British underground comix was Nasty Tales, an International Times spin-off edited by Mick Farren, who wasn’t just a magazine publisher but a real renaissance man, playing blues-based psychedelic rock with his band The Social Deviants, before moving to Los Angeles in the 1970s to write science fiction novels. While Britain had a thriving psychedelic music scene, it took longer for strong artistic talent to emerge, so a fair bit of the content of Nasty Tales was reprinted from American underground comix.

The most well-known early UK underground comic was Brainstorm Comix (Alchemy Press, 1975), which was published by Lee Harris, the proprietor of the Alchemy head shop on Portobello Road (which is still there, but now sells mainly clothes), to showcase the work of Bryan Talbot, who had contributed comic strips to Harris’ dope mag Home Grown.

Brainstorm effectively launched Talbot’s career in comics, running for 6 issues and featuring his character Chester P. Hackenbush, the Psychedelic Alchemist, and sold quite well, by counter-cultural standards.

Other stuff had been going on at that time in Birmingham, centred around the Birmingham Arts Lab. One of the Arts Lab’s leading lights was Hunt Emerson, who produced one of the earliest home-grown underground comix in the form of Large Cow Comix (Ar:Zak, 1974), which set the tone for his later surrealistic excursions for Knockabout Comics, Fiesta, Fortean Times and the Beano.

Funded at one point by an Arts Council grant, the Birmingham Arts Lab would launch a number of different comics, including the anthology title Street Comix (1977-78) and Heroine, the first all-girl UK underground comic. It also launched careers, with future Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell contributing to Street Comix.

Another underground cartoonist who would go on to become a popular illustrator for the Guardian was Clifford Harper. While the work of Talbot and Emerson drew inspiration from science fiction and the surrealism of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat comic strip, giving it a modern 70s twist by adding sex and drugs to the mix, Harper brought radical left politics to the world of comics with his self-published Class War Comix (originally published in 1974, before getting picked up by the US underground comics publisher and distributor Kitchen Sink Press in 1978). He still describes himself as a “militant anarchist” and in 1987 created an illustrated book on the subject for Camden Press. When not creating his beautiful faux woodcut illustrations for mainstream journals like the Guardian or Radio Times he has helped to organize the London Anarchist Book Fair.

During the 1980s the main publisher of alternative comics (and underground reprints) was Tony and Carol Bennett’s Knockabout Comics, which is still based on Acklam Road, just up the road from where I grew up in Notting Hill. Publishing libertarian literature by Crumb, Shelton and Emerson at the height of Thatcherite repression, Knockabout had the misfortune of being busted for obscenity on a number of occasions, notably for distributing American cartoonist Melinda Gebbie’s semi-autobiographical comic Frezca Zizis. The book was found to be obscene by the UK authorities, and all copies seized and burned, an experience Ms Gebbie made wry and poetic reference to in a 4 page comic strip published in Anarchy Comics #4 (Last Gasp 1987).

By the end of the decade, with the startling popularity of VIZ (the comic that spawned a thousand imitators, all trying to cash in on the trend for toilet humour), the Scots weighed in with their own bawdy offering when Dave Alexander, Frank Quitely and a few others got together to publish the first issue of Electric Soup in 1989. The comic ran for about three years, even securing distribution from VIZ’s own publisher John Brown at one point, before the bubble burst. Quitely has subsequently gone on to become a successful comics illustrator, producing work for 2000ad and DC/Vertigo. Alexander has stayed in the underground, continuing to draw the MacBam Brothers for the stoner comic Northern Lightz (1999-2005) and new adult humour mag’ Wasted.

Which is more or less where I entered the story. Well, better late than never!

Grayling Goes With the Flow

2011-06-22T01:26:00.000-07:00

In an article defending his New College of the Humanities, Professor A.C. Grayling argues that he is not in the “vanguard of the marketisation of higher education” being pursued by the current Tory/LibDem government because:

“The part-privatisation of the publicly funded universities has been going on for years, though it is now doing so at an accelerated rate.”

Thank you, Professor Grayling, for cleverly sidestepping the main point held by nearly everybody who is concerned about or actively opposed to public sector cuts: that just because something is already happening doesn’t make it right or sensible, especially when that something happens to be the erosion of the public sector. As one of the article’s respondent’s eloquently put it “Education is not a commodity to be financially valued and traded.” The assumption that it is has been a major contributor to the widening gap between the richest and poorest we have seen over the last three decades.

Grayling adds: “Many universities seek overseas students at full fee, and most of these are now requiring staff to recruit as many more overseas students as they can in a bid to supplement revenue.”

This courting of wealthy foreign students is happening mainly because universities are already strapped for cash. But you do not solve this kind of problem by going with it. If anything, acquiescance to such a policy has the potential to lay the groundwork for a future of xenophobic resentment, from foreign students forced to pay much higher fees and, in effect, to subsidise UK nationals, and from British students denied places because their university of choice was more interested in chasing money from abroad. This is not a good direction to take, yet it has been relentlessly pursued by successive UK governments.

To quote Grayling again:
“Since 1970, general public sector pay has risen in real terms by more than 40%. University pay in the same period has risen in real terms about 4%, if that.”

A big contributor to this backwards slide may have been the attack on teaching unions that began in the 1980s, making it harder for them to protect the livelihoods of teaching staff, and by extension, the quality of public education. Again, you do not solve this problem by going with it.

Taken as a whole Grayling’s article suggests that, despite his stated sympathy with the situation faced by publicly-funded universities in the UK (such as his former employers Birkbeck), his main motivation in starting the independent NCH is merely to exploit the current situation, rather than pose a genuinely inclusive alternative.

Bear in mind that no where in the article does he even attempt to defend the £18,000 a year fees the NCH will charge, choosing instead to focus his attention on the New College’s charitable trust, which will apparently offer free or discounted access to around 30% of new intake.

A nice gesture, certainly, and one he can clearly afford to make!

Addendum: Curiously, Grayling made some interesting statements about free higher education in the Guardian back in 2009, which you can find quoted here.

Paddy "Pudsy" Morris R.I.P.

2010-10-29T04:29:00.000-07:00

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Paddy Morris, a Scottish underground cartoonist who signed his work "Pudsy", who died suddenly (and far too soon) of a heart attack. He had contributed his uniquely funny brand of stoner humour to counter cultural comics and magazines ever since the early 1970s when his work appeared in OZ and Nasty Tales. He was also a contributor to Dope Funnies, and in more recent years to Bad Press’s Northern Lightz and Jim Stewart’s Ganjaman. He will be sadly missed.

Paddy “Pudsy” Morris
1949-2010

Reflections on "Missing"

2010-10-07T08:22:00.000-07:00

In 1973 Charles Horman was an American journalist working in Chile, where he wrote for the periodical FIN and made a home with his wife. He was a Harvard graduate, the only child of successful New York businessman Edmund Horman. In the days following the fascist coup of September 11 1973, he became one of many people “disappeared” by the CIA-backed military dictatorship.

Both his father and his wife spent a month trying desperately to uncover his whereabouts. This painful and heart-wrenching experience would later become the subject of the award winning film Missing, starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek, who played Horman’s father and wife respectively (both of whom worked closely with the director Costa-Gavras on the film). It remains to this day a powerful, brave and very moving film.

For its unflinching depiction of the casual brutality of life within a fascist dictatorship, where the army is allowed to operate with impunity, Missing remains an important piece of history, but it is equally important for its timeliness. Filmed under conditions of secrecy in Mexico, and released in 1982 while Chile was still under the control of the junta, it was banned there until after Pinochet eventually relinquished power eight years later. It was also subject to a (failed) lawsuit, brought against Universal Studios and the film’s director by the former US Ambassador Nathaniel Davis, who was depicted but not named in the film, and two others.

It is worth remembering the nature of totalitarian governments, as they are effectively engaged in a one-sided war with their own (captive) populations. This is not something which those of us who have grown up in rich, democratic countries can ever really understand, but the complicity of our own governments in events such as those depicted in a film such as this makes it a part of our shared history whether we like it or not.

One of the most telling things we get from a film like this is some of the subtle ways in which the prevailing attitudes of governments can become internalized by the individuals who grow up under their shadow. Time and again we find, in the early stages of the coup, the American expatriate characters saying to each other “they can’t touch us, we’re Americans”, a delirious self confidence which captures in microcosm an attitude manifested in far more deadly ways by the United States government in its foreign policy, its willingness to intervene in the affairs of weaker nations if they perceive it to be in their “national interest”.

Sadly, this foreign policy shows little sign of changing any time soon, but as an optimist I still look forward to a day when the United States can shed its super-power image and stand as a democracy among democracies. Missing stands as an example of the dangers that can befall ordinary people when power runs away with itself and starts to think of itself as being so unquestionable as to be "super".

Autonomous Art

2010-09-29T05:02:00.000-07:00

This vibrant mural adorns one of the side walls of the Art Studio at the Hounslow Community Land Project, an autonomous eco village in the suburbs of west London.

I was most impressed by the spirit and initiative of the villagers, so much that I wrote a piece about it which will be appearing in the forthcoming issue of New Internationalist magazine.

The article can be read here.

Wasted #5

2010-06-08T04:31:00.001-07:00

The fifth issue of Wasted, the shiny new adult humour magazine from Bad Press Ltd, will by all reports be published in the UK sometime in July. The current issue 4 is as sordid and funny as ever, despite the move to grayscale interiors. Personally, I don't think it matters, as long as the gags and jokes are good! My own character Amber appears alongside the likes of Tales of the Buddha, Lusi Sulfura and Johnny K*nt. Also appearing in issue 4 is a strip of mine featuring the degenerate duo Rathead & Phlegm, which was nice. Feel free to make full use of the subscription form above to save traipsing to your nearest comic or head shop.

A Visit To Highgate Cemetary

2010-04-18T10:20:00.000-07:00

In brilliant summer sunshine we walked south from Highgate station, along streets flanked by grand old Victorian mansions, most of which are now broken up into flats. True to its name, Highgate lies on high ground, and every now and then we would catch a glimpse between buildings of one of the most beautiful, panoramic views of London to be had without having to walk all the way up Parliament Hill. Every time a road turned or a new side street joined the solid rivers of tarmac which flow across the low hills of this north London suburb we would gasp and stop, before pressing onwards towards our somewhat macabre destination: Highgate Cemetery.

Unusually for a cemetery Highgate’s east section carried a charge of three pounds a head. In order to get our monies’ worth we therefore chose to spend a full day exploring the tomb clustered wilderness which provides the final resting place of so many of our heroes.

Principle among them being Douglas Adams and Karl Marx, and what an interesting comparison they make! Adams’ gravestone is so modest and simple compared with Marx’s looming bust, as imposing in its way as the vast Soviet bureaucracies created in his name.

The amount of people buried here who have fought in their own ways for peace and social justice is quite remarkable. How much this has to do with the presence of Marx himself is an interesting question. It must be said that quite a number of notable left wing activists have secured plots which directly face his resplendent bust with its resounding proclamation to the “workers of all lands to unite”. One of them is Paul Foot, a keen agitator for social justice, orator, and contributor to Private Eye and Socialist Worker. His modest gravestone states in terms almost as simple as Adams’ that he was a “writer and revolutionary”. There is also a quote which I recognised as being by the Romantic poet Shelley, but couldn’t recall the poem in which it occurs. It is the final lines from ‘The Mask of Anarchy’:

Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many – they are few

It is a testament to the enduring appeal of Karl Marx and his philosophy of social equality and revolutionary change that he appears to be the most popular of all the east wing’s inhabitants. A number of factors prove this to be true. There is the fact that a sign advertising the presence of his mortal remains, complete with a small picture of the tomb, is pinned to the main gate. There is also the fact that nearly every foreign tourist who stopped us that day did so to ask where to find the final resting place of the Father of modern Socialism – Marx.

But Highgate cemetery bursts with notable individuals. The Pop artist Patrick Caulfield’s stylish gravestone states with stark finality: “DEAD”. I was delighted to discover the grave of the actor Sir Ralph Richardson, who performed many great roles, but who I know for his endearing portrayal of the Supreme Being in the classic Terry Gilliam movie Time Bandits. My girlfriend, being a native Australian, was equally delighted when we discovered that the Australian-born artist Sidney Nolan was included on the list of notable inhabitants in the map we picked up at the main entrance. We spent a good hour or more searching for Nolan, sadly to no avail.

It is perhaps a small irony of history that one of the tombs overlooking the bust of Marx should belong to a political philosopher whose defence of individualism and laissez faire capitalism stand in diametric opposition to the state-controlled bureaucracies and centralized monopolies Marx’s own ideas inspired. Herbert Spencer’s works include Social Statics and The Man Versus The State, and he was one of the foremost proponents of social Darwinism. It was Spencer who attempted to turn Darwin’s theory of natural selection into a scientific vindication of industrial capitalism. And perhaps most significantly, it is Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin, who is responsible for coining the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’.

I feel it important to record our pleasure at finding Marx and Spencer in such close proximity.

Amber Nectar on Facebook

2010-01-26T05:39:00.000-08:00

Have I mentioned the Amber Nectar Appreciation Society group on Facebook? Well, I have now. Its open to anyone who has enjoyed the misunderstood heroine's forays through the pages of Wasted, Northern Lightz, and even (in a somewhat less clearly defined form) Freak. Why not join up and say "hi", make suggestions for future stories, exchange good natured abuse, or whatever takes your fancy!

In Progress

2010-01-06T09:13:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd share some low resolution images, so you can see how the art for my (work-in-progress) graphic novel The Battle Within is shaping up.

New Strip

2009-12-08T03:05:00.001-08:00

H.R.H Margot is a brand new strip created in collaboration with my amazingly talented (and beautiful) other half. The strip is about a Human Resources troll with all the sensitivity of a slug, and it goes without saying that any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental!

From My Experimental File

2009-10-08T08:46:00.000-07:00

How To Draw Cartoons the Russ Mcpherson Way

2009-09-19T14:32:00.000-07:00

First, write or sketch any ideas as you have them and put them away in a box or a drawer. Ideas are like buses, or romantic opportunities. If you miss one, chances are you'll end up sitting around for ages waiting for another that never comes.

Every now and then peer into the box or drawer and see if anything catches your eye.

If one of the ideas you've accumulated does spark something off, work out the details, how many pages it will run to. Then you can start to lay the thing out in pencil. Don't waste too much time on pencils unless you want somebody else to ink them for you, in which case the more detail the better.

The flowing nature of my drawing stems at least partly from the fact that I only use pencils to provide a rough guideline to follow when it comes to the fun part of bringing inky definition to a drawing.

Incidentally, I use pure black india ink with a regular drawing pen.

After the inks have completely dried you can erase any outstanding pencil lines. And you're done!

Here endeth the lesson.

Down By The Seaside

2009-09-10T01:15:00.000-07:00

What can I say about Brighton, having recently returned from that coastal resort town? The thing which stands out most in my mind is how it is truly a place of contrasts, encompassing the eccentric splendour of the Pavilion (above) and the unapologetic tackiness of the Pier. That’s the pier with the amusement arcades and funfair, not the burnt out skeletal husk further along the coast, although I and my girlfriend were both inclined to the opinion that the latter had far more to recommend it than the former.

We stayed in the Artists Residence (an eclectic mix of hotel and art gallery) in Regency Square, overlooking the beautiful desolation of the aforementioned husk. Grand old Victorian buildings look down upon a well maintained lawn in the middle of the square, itself serving to conceal a somewhat less than grand old underground car park.

Yes, Brighton is a place of contrasts. It is a liberal town, home to artists and a large gay community, as well as a massive arms company, which has been for several years the focus of a sustained campaign by the anti-war movement. Brighton’s equally vibrant left-liberal anarchist community, of which pacifists often find themselves a part, have a kind of spiritual home in the form of The Cowley Club.

The club, a libertarian social centre/vegetarian café/radical bookshop/members bar/library is staffed entirely by volunteers and can be found on London Road. It is named after Harry Cowley. Cowley was a local grassroots activist who helped organize the unemployed and homeless, confronting fascism in 1930s Brighton and fighting on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged until his death in the 1970s. My girlfriend Jane and I were both impressed by the remarkably good quality Zapatista coffee sold in the cafe, which is a very pleasant energizer after a morning spent wandering the labyrinthine Lanes of old Brighton town.

WASTED #2 out now!

2009-07-01T13:44:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged in a little while, but I have to say that I was thrilled to receive a copy of Wasted #2 in the mail in June. Its available now from selected stores throughout the land, or on the web from www.wastedcomic.com. It can be found in Forbidden Planet, where it seems to be stocked in the vicinity of the sci fi anthology 2000ad, presumably because of Wasted editor Alan Grant's associations with both mags.

Issue two is in full colour, and features some fantastically funny strips filled with plenty of bawdy humour, such as Alan Kerr's Lusi Sulfura, Curt Sibling's Total Fear, Jamie Grant's Spaced Cabby, and the top notch Tales of the Buddha (written by editor Alan and drawn by Classical Comics illustrator Jon Haward). There's a load of other stuff too, including a couple of short strips featuring my own character Amber Nectar, who even gets a brief mention in this review:

http://downthetubescomics.blogspot.com/2009/06/in-review-wasted-2-back-with-bite.html

So, if you're over 18, rush out now and get your dose of bawdy adult humour! You won't regret it!

EXCLUSIVE ART PREVIEW

2009-05-26T08:52:00.000-07:00

A couple of panels from The Battle Within, a work in progress.

Ramble: The Battle Within

2009-05-11T14:13:00.000-07:00

The Battle Within is the first part of a projected trilogy I have been developing with my friend Richard Harris. I am planning to share more samples with you as the series takes shape.

Its an unconventional war comic, placing its emphasis not so much on a physical conflict as a more inward, psychological, and even mystical one. It centers around a soldier, his struggles with a profoundly intense form of post-traumatic stress, and the unique way in which he overcomes his problems in order to find true love, acheive self respect, honour and justice and all that good stuff that deep down everybody wants.

RIP J.G. BALLARD

2009-04-20T12:10:00.000-07:00

I was saddened to read of the death of the writer J.G. Ballard, one of the most visionary authors of the 20th and early 21st century.
For those not familiar with his work, Ballard began his career writing science fiction short stories for anthologies like New Worlds. However, to call him a science fiction author would be misleading. He usually described himself as a writer of "speculative fiction", or as an author of books which pictured "the psychology of the future".
What so inflamed my imagination reading him in my teens and early twenties is that, unlike the galactic adventures of many conventional sci-fi authors, Ballard's stories are often concerned with inner space and the often surrealistic experiences of characters with often very uniquely disturbed psyches.
In works like The Atrocity Exhibition Ballard drew even further away from conventional science fiction themes into the literary avant garde.
A number of his novels were adapted into very successful and often controversial Hollywood films. Empire of the Sun, a semi-autobiographical account of his experiences as a child in Shanghai during World War 2, was filmed by Steven Spielberg, and his novel Crash, about the lives of characters who all share the same bizarre automotive fetish, was made into a controversial 1996 movie by David Cronenberg.
If you haven't read Ballard his short stories are definately the place to begin, partly for the simple, lucid and often beautiful descriptive quality he brought to the most intensely subjective material, and partly for their genuinely mind expanding quality.
Better than drugs.

J.G. Ballard 1930 - 2009

Scott McCloud on TED.com

2009-03-31T11:43:00.000-07:00

No pictures to share with you just yet, so instead I'm posting a link to this fascinating talk given by Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics.

Automatisms

2009-03-25T07:15:00.000-07:00

Here's an automatic drawing from my sketchbook archive. I think this style of drawing is sometimes known as "taking the pen for a walk", because you're not making any conscious decisions about what you're trying to say with a given piece. You kinda give your unconscious free reign. For this reason it was quite a popular past-time with the Surrealists back in the 1920s, as well as the English artist and magician Austin Osman Spare, who likened it to a kind of trance.

My favourite subject

2009-03-19T09:34:00.000-07:00

A new approach I've been playing with. Note the position of the signature, which probably signifies something or other...

Amber Nectar

2009-03-18T03:47:00.000-07:00

I created Amber as a one off when Ben "Doctor Simpo" Simpson asked me for some pages for the fourth issue of his surrealistically satirical underground comic Freak. Turns out she was far more appealing than the degenerate stoner characters I'd been drawing up till then, and so his associates at Glasgow's Hope Street Studios asked me to revive the character for their dope humour mag Northern Lightz.
She's been revived more recently for Lightz' successor title Wasted. I went along to the launch signing in London in autumn of 2008, which was a tremendous buzz because most of the people involved, folks like editor Alan Grant, cover artist Frank Quitely, Jamie Grant and Jon Haward, are far more established in the field than me.
You can find out more at www.wastedcomic.com

World's End Comics

2009-03-17T08:23:00.000-07:00

"World's End" was a comic strip I created for a Leeds-based independent magazine called The End is Nigh, published by writer/journalist Michael Molcher. As you can probably guess from the title, the whole mag has an apocalyptic theme. It also has interviews with the likes of Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie, and quite a few high profile contributors as well, including Boo Cook, Leah Moore and John Reppion, and many, many more besides. You can still buy copies from http://www.endisnigh.co.uk/