Incise Incise

All cartoonists are to a certain extent a collection of influences from those who come before them, as a rule we tend to be self taught and we learn from the masters. This is a tribute to two of them.

First of all we have the freewheeling madness and slapstick of the Looney Tunes cartoons. This could really only be improved by having an extra frame showing Smith hovering above the ice hole, carrying a sign with: 'Oh no!' written on it.

Second, Bristow, by Frank Dickens. Dickens had a habit of using wonderfully literate sound effects in his strip, something I like to do occasionally as well. Why use 'scratch scratch' when 'incise incise' communicates what is happening even better?

See below for an example of the original. © Frank Dickens 1969.

Other treasured examples: Bristow shaving - Gillette, Gillette. Bristow shaking his fist - Brandish, Brandish. Snow falling in three panels while carollers sing - Deep, deep; crisp, crisp; even, even.

Mike Pike Essipode 2

...and it's all starting to get terribly TinTin-like.

Frame 1: The Miners. The first three essipodes were drawn in 1984, when the miners strike was at its height. Essentially a battle between the right-wing ideologue Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister, and the even more extreme left-wing ideologue Arthur Scargill, the leader of the National Union of Miners, this year long strike split the country in two. In Yorkshire and Durham miners were fighting for their livelihoods, but the good conservative people of the home counties just wanted all the nasty shouting to stop. Thatcher eventually won, the union was emasculated and within ten years the mines were privatised and then closed down.
Frame 1: The Argies. The Falklands Conflict (it never quite got promoted to war) had only taken place two years earlier.
Frame 2: The Daily Express. Possibly the nuttiest tabloid in the world. I'm not talking trashy, I'm not talking downmarket. I'm talking frothing at the mouth raving bonkers. The Express is the paper that is still convinced that Princess Diana was assassinated by the Duke of Edinburgh - a couple of years ago you could guarantee a new Diana conspiracy theory every Monday. Imagine Fox News reincarnated as a newspaper, only madder and even less balanced.
Frame 7: Trench Wood. A post-war housing estate in North Tonbridge.

Next essipode - it gets even more TinTinny...

Millie No. 2

Daily Mirror, Saturday 7th April 1990

This was actually written to be the fourth strip, but the strip two was cut by the cartoon editor at the Mirror, and three and four were reordered for narrative clarity. There was a bit of conflict at the beginning about the level of realism in Millie, with the Mirror wanting it to be a realistic strip, and me wanting to go off on flights of fantasy now and again - it's a cartoon after all. It took a while for us to work out what the other wanted and where the boundaries lay.

EastEnders is a long running soap set in the East End of London. It's been going for 25 years but it feels much longer. It is famed for its melodramatic storylines and general air of misery - you can always guarantee that someone will die/get mortally injured/commit suicide/burn their house to the ground during the merry Christmas day episode.

Here's the script of the missing strip:

WEEK TWO

1. Richard is saying his goodbyes to the old home. He stands beside an old oak tree, looking up at an overhanging bough.
RICHARD: GOODBYE, GREAT OAK TREE FROM WHICH I USED TO HANG MY SWING...

2. Richard on the gravel path outside the front of his chocolate box thatched cottage. He is starting to get a tad emotional.
RICHARD: GOODBYE OLD AND FRIENDLY COTTAGE. NO LONGER WILL I LEAVE FOREHEAD PRINTS ON THY ANCIENT BEAMS...

3. Richard on a hillock overseeing is beloved countryside. He addresses the elements in declamatory tones, arms outstretched.
RICHARD: GOODBYE TREES! GOODBYE HILLS! GOODBYE HEDGEROWS!

4. Working up to a climax, his arms are now raised above his head, as a dirty black cloud forms above him.
RICHARD: GOODBY BIRDS OF THE SKY AND ANIMALS OF THE FIELD! GOODBYE O ELEMENTAL FORCES OF NATURE!

5. Reversed out silhouette panel. Richard is struck by a bolt of lightning from the cloud.
SFX: ZAP!

6. Richard sits on the hillock, eyes wide open, his hair on end, his clothes in tatters, gently emitting small clouds of smoke. Millie wanders up behind him, hands in pockets, v. matter-of-fact.
MILLIE: I DON'T THINK THEY'RE GOING TO MISS YOU.

Inevitable

Some jokes are sort of inevitable, and all you can do is acknowledge it.

Snow!

This was written in June and drawn in November, expecting the snow which actually fell in December to fall in January like it normally does.

Britain can't cope with snow. A centimetre of snow will stop the trains running*. An inch of snow is enough to shut the country down. Two inches of snow is snowmageddon. Last month we had nine inches - civilization survived barely intact, but sales of those lawn ornaments of fake Christmas snowmen holding signs saying 'Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow' plummeted.

The photo shows a deadly smattering of snow falling on The Pantiles in Tunbridge Wells. As you can see, conditions are already so bad that it's regressed to the Eighteenth Century.

* To be fair to SouthEastern Trains, a single leaf on the line is normally enough to stop their trains running.

Scratch post

Sometimes all I have to do is watch what my cats do and the strip writes itself.

Mike Pike Essipode 1

It's 1984. This was drawn for a fortnightly listings magazine in West Kent that lasted about three issues. Despite the magazine collapsing before I ever got anything published, I returned to it a year later and ended up with two finished stories divided between 25 'essipodes'.

Frame one actually does show Tonbridge. You can see the Castle pub in the foreground and, over the bridge with the ornamental lamps you can see what used to be the Nat West bank (now a Pizza Express).

Being set in the mid eighties, this portrays Tonbridge as a boarded up town centre - Britain is slowly dragging itself out of the recession of the early eighties, which Margaret Thatcher imposed on us 'for our own good'. I was unemployed and oh so grateful at the time. The city was booming but the recovery hadn't quite arrived in the provinces yet.

Tonbridge is like Catford, one of those not quite places. It has a town centre consisting of a single street, a rail junction, an old ruined Norman castle and no entertainment to speak of. The cinema had closed, there were no night clubs and the theatre was a converted Oast House capable of holding an audience of about eighty. At the time it was a town that ran on football and alcohol. For anything else you had to travel to the surrounding towns of Tunbridge Wells, Sevenoaks or Maidstone.

It's my home town, I lived there for the first five years of my life and still have lots of family there. Personally, I love it, despite all its deficiencies.

The Angel Centre was a council-run multi-purpose building built to address the lack of facilities in the town. It boasted a not-quite-good-enough theatre (very seldom used), some just-about-adequate conference facilities and meetings rooms, an indoor sparts hall, and a bar. To pay for it they gave two thirds of the space to a department store and a supermarket.

Note Trish's none-more 1984 T-shirt.