Short break

Well it's that time of year again, when I take a few days leave from the blogging and the drawing and everything, and head off to the blue, blue Agean sea (see below) where it's 30 degrees and sunny. But I'll be back before you know it, never fear!

License to print menus

Last week the Licensing Awards were held at the Grosvenor House Hotel (v. posh gaff in London) and all went off very nicely, thanks, in no small part, to this menu card, (here's the front) drawn (by me) only a few days earlier, but designed to look a bit 1980-ish!
Well. I say it all went off nicely, but guess who won the category The Beano were nominated in, namely best British licensed character(s)?

MICKEY MOUSE!

Yes, THAT Mickey Mouse, the American one!?!
Oh well, at least it wasn't the American Dennis the Menace. that would have been TOO hard to take!

My Favourite Editors Part Five

This is Ian Gray- the man of many nicknames, some of which I couldn't possibly share- and the man who really got me started in comics in a big way.
In the 1960s he'd been the mainstay of The Beano as a scriptwriter, and by the early 1980s he had come up with the idea of the Pocket Library- his intention was to fill them with reprints but he was surprised to be given the go-ahead to comission all-new material, and that was significant for me because all the regular cartoonists were busy and he needed to find some new young aspiring guys pronto. As luck would have it, I'd just been told by Bob Paynter at IPC that D C Thomson were always on the look out for good 'ghost artists' so I had sent a package of samples to The Beano which Harold Crammond told me he was passing on to Ian. So began a very happy eight years of being one of Ian's protegees! We had some hilarious boozy lunches and I was treated to hair-raising tales of Thomsons' Past, one of which revolved around the exploits 'on and off the field' of a very famous cartoonist who he told me "is a brilliant man but I wouldnae give him houseroom!" He was very helpful in steering me in the right direction, noting my strengths and weaknesses. He was transferred to The Dandy in 1989 and took me with him, but of course they had a lot of established talent there. I struggled to fit in and I felt Ian was a bit exasperated that I had the ball at my feet but "wouldnae kick it in the net!". By the time I finally cracked the weeklies after a spell away from Thomsons, in 1997, Ian had retired so sadly I never worked with him again.
The phrase 'larger than life' is often overused but it's the only way to describe Ian Gray, he was a real character, and spent his spare time with his many animals and performing bawdy comedy songs around Scotland.
Ian died five years ago this week and sadly I'd never got to thank him for all the encouragement he gave me 30 years ago. A while before he died I spoke to another D C T editor and said that I must tell Ian how grateful I was for his help, and he said "Oh, Ian knows you're grateful, it shows in how you draw- like a maniac!"

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.)