They seem to forget

A kind person showed me this posted on a website yesterday: beanowed:  "I seem to remember one Bea strip from 2002 or so where the family are watching TV, Bea is shown getting more obviously uncomfortable throughout, and in the grand finale, she does a massive poo that covers the whole room, Dennis and all. They showed the poo in graphic detail, it was all squidgy and stuff. I was really surprised they got away with that..." Well, where to begin? I drew Bea from 1998 to 2008 and I never drew this strip 'remembered' above. There was one, cover date March 23rd 2002 which, to an inattentive person may have looked a little as described, but it wasn't in a very particular detail, and in other incidental details. I would suggest that this person has another look at that issue and tries to fathom out what is actually happening and, maybe, apologise for posting what is after all an egregious lie.

Ennis The Menace

Yes, it's ENNIS the MENACE (did you all spot what we did there?!) in this week's BEANO! She was very very hard to draw- not to give away any secrets but I struggled for about an hour trying to get her likeness. All I managed was this! Still, I always say, if you can't imagine who ELSE it could be, it's OK!

Diana - Must Read

In 1967, a DC Thomson grils' comic suddenly became essential reading! They'd scored a real coup by getting the rights to publish a TV tie-in of The Avengers (starring Diana Rigg - a tenuous link but apparently sufficient!) They then gained our eternal gratitude by getting the Spanish artists Emilio Frejo and Juan Gonzalez Alacrejoto to paint it! (Sadly, they obviously only got black and white photos as reference, so they gave Emma Peel brown hair and not Diana Rigg's usual dazzling auburn). 

Here is one mouth-watering example, reproduced from the original art board. In 2003 D C Thomson were looking into the possibility of presenting all these Avengers stories together in an anthology album. At the time it fell through, but TV tie-in anthologies are always a good idea.

Send Off

Today is the big send off to Colin Fawcett, who I, like a lot of people, am going to miss terribly. His favourite comic character says 'goodbye', courtesy of me, aping Kirby, badly.

Listening in

If you'd like to hear some idiot cartoonist called Nigel Parkinson waffling on for five minutes about what he does and doesn't know about the Dandy, click here- it's a two hour show and I'm on at the 50 minute mark. It'll be up till Wednesday 22nd August.

Colin has the Last Word, from 2008

"Thanks everyone. It's been grand!"
  -Colin Fawcett 2008



I still can't believe he's left us.

 Click here to read the round-robin blog Colin and I were part of (amongst others) and see the context of Colin's wrap up.

Dandy?

Just as the US has it's own Dennis The Menace (and so do we now, once again!), at one time it had it's own Dandy! At first glance, it doesn't look too different from the most recent UK Dandy, does it?




(Sorry if you thought this post was going to be about something else.)

Fawcett- Comics

The sweetest guy I ever knew passed away after a very short illness this week, aged only 44. On Sunday, he apologised for not feeling well enough to keep an appointment to see 'Ted' with me. On Thursday, he was dead. His name was Colin Fawcett and everybody who knew him loved him. That's no exaggeration, he was the funniest, kindest person you could ever hope to meet and I was one of the (many) lucky ones who called him My Friend.. He was a very talented cartoonist and very knowledgeable about comic books. I heard something new about Jack Kirby today and I thought "just wait till Col hears about this!" Goodnight, Col, mind how you go. Life just won't be the same without you, pal.

Menace again

Dennis is Menacing yet again, in the pages of The Beano, the comic that makes Wednesday Beano Day!