Guess who’s got new pencils then?
My #ComicArtMasterclass just got merch. Which I don’t sell. Or even give away.
And I have to point it out to the kids cos it’s a bit subtle.
*****
Nov 8: Olivia Colman gets a Blue Peter badge after 50 years waiting. For my part, it wasn’t until I went into the studio promoting my Comic Festivals that I got mine.
In 1997 Mark Buckingham and I launched the National Comics Awards. I got us onto Blue Peter. Mark appeared on screen, along with actors in Desperate Dan and Dennis costumes courtesy of DC Thomson. I asked the producer if we could get Blue Peter badges. I was told that Biddy Baxter (senior producer and showrunner) restricted them to people who’d been on screen, so I couldn’t get one.
Two years later I returned, with the Worlds Biggest Comic (9 foot tall thing) which appeared on screen, but again I didn’t. By this time Biddy Baxter had retired.
I asked if I could get a Blue Peter badge this time.
The producer said “sure, they’re over there in that box.” Hev and I got one each.
Biddy Baxter ran a tight ship.
Nov 2: The saddest news to read about Janey Godley leaving us today. She has always been the loveliest and most supportive person to me and so many of us.
If you haven’t read her memoir Handstands In The Dark you must. She didn’t have the best of starts, and she made so so good.
Oh yeah and she was really really funny. One of Scotland’s legendary comedians. I’m honoured to have known Janey.
***
Nov 3: Currently watching two TV series about TV franchises at the mo. Rivals and The Franchise. One is unexpectedly brilliantly and one is disappointingly not so good.
My big question is: how will Marina Hyde avoid answering questions on the podcast about how badly The Franchise has got it wrong, given that she’s one of the writers?
It’s the sort of show that she perfectly eviscerates on a regular basis. Who else can do justice to ripping it to shreds?
***
Nov 5: Friends looking askance at the American election, remember, we're the country where Labour really didn't get that many more votes than the Tory party who have just elected Bad Enoch as their leader. I think that makes us "people in glass houses".
Nov 5: A good first show from Bob (Harris on Radio 2 Sounds Of The 70s), but I'm worried he might be falling into a trap Johnnie (Walker) fell into when he started in 2009 - just playing songs that he liked at the time.
I remember moaning about it back then, that Johnnie's playlist was all "cool" album-oriented bands from the 70s, and predominantly American. Cos that's what Johnnie liked, and he wasn't a pop fan. It took producers to get involved and start introducing records that better reflected the diversity of listeners' tastes, and the fact that most were kids in the 70s, not wizened old 20-something DJs.
Look at the playlist of Bob's first show and you find all the same pitfalls Johnnie fell into to begin with. Of 21 tracks we find:
Tracks by US artists = 14 out of 21
Album-oriented rock/soul = 17 out of 21
Pop singles = 4 (Bowie, T Rex, Abba, and Charlie Daniels)
Not a sniff of disco in there, and a preponderence of stuff that would have been on Old Grey Whistle Test rather than on Top Of The Pops.
I know the mix of music will change and develop, I just hope it happens soon.
Yours, someone who was a kid in the 70s, and has no problem with the Rollers and the Wombles!
***
Here's exciting. I'm researching Shakespeare graphic novels, as I do, and I find my books for sale on Manga Deal. A new one on me (and they cost more than I charge for them). But if you'd like to check out a new shop, here's one with a random three of my books in it.
****
Nov 6: Good morning America. (Meanwhile in the UK, a quick reminder that there are Cheers reruns on Channel 4 right now, which are way nicer than the news).
So, looking forward, I’m consoling myself by looking backwards. I’m remembering how Not The 9 O’Clock News predicted the end of the world when Reagan was elected, and the worst he did was preside over the end of the Cold War. I’m remembering how Obama didn’t close Guantanamo Bay and how Kennedy and Johnson started the Vietnam War. And how the much-feared and much-ridiculed Nixon presided over the end of Vietnam.
I’m also remembering how few wars started the last time Trump was in office.
I may be playing Pollyanna here. But all I can be certain sure of is: whatever you’re predicting now, it’s something else that’ll happen.
Ooh look, it’s a Sam and Diane episode with Coach still in it. What order are they showing these things in?
***
It’s like Deja vu all over again. I’m remembering how I woke up in a hotel to find that Donald Trump was president, one day in November 2016.
I’ve looked back and found these, the comic covers drawn by me from suggestions by kids in my classes, in 2015 and 2016, featuring Donald Trump. He was an obsession then, and he’s not so big with the kids now. Though, of course, any ten year old kid who was obsessed with Trump in 2016 would be old enough to vote now. I’m sure that explains nothing.
****
My Facebook feed is full of we limeys consoling our American friends. Is there no-one here who's got any Republican friends? I mean, statistically, even I can work out that there's more of them.
Don't forget your Republicans. They're not just for Christmas*, they're for life**
* NB: Their job is reminding you you're not allowed to even say Christmas any more
***
(On reading Owen Jones article): I usually avoid Owen Jones, who too often bangs on about his pet subjects, but this is pretty insightful. I can understand why Trump appealed to so many while Harris left them non plussed.
Voter turnout (which he doesn’t mention) is another thing that occurs to me as a likely decisive thing. Trump is the very definition of a motivational speaker - talks bollocks and gets you excited by doing it. I can see how he’d stir people up to get out and vote, while Kamala mostly just spoke to people who were already going to vote.
That’s why those of us who are politically engaged, the chattering classes, all thought Kamala would win. But the majority of people, who don’t think about politics all the time and just want things kept simple, voted Trump and didn’t keep telling everyone.
Old man climbs scaffolding, shock! Here’s me on the top of our three story house, fifty feet up in the air.
The good news: our chimney’s in perfect nick. The less good news: we had to pay for scaffolding to get all the way up there to find there was nothing wrong in the first place.
Nov 7 (on reading article about AI): An interesting look at the state of the art in AI. It is inescapable as a part of creative businesses now, the question is how we creators engage with it.
Like happened with music sampling thirty-plus years ago, I hope we’ll get crediting and reimbursement for people whose work has been used to train LLMs ( though that’ll be a matter of who’s richest when it comes to court. I can’t see Disney suing themselves. And given how much compensation you get when a Marvel comic you wrote or drew gets made into a movie, I predict you’ll get a tiny fraction of that when you find your entire life’s work was used to design a tiny bit of one. )
There are labour saving programmes I’d like to see right now. For example I’m currently colouring my cartoony strips. I could literally tell a machine how to do it, and I don’t enjoy doing it myself. So as soon as there’s an AI that can get its head around “colouring like a cross between Captain Underpants and an old copy of The Beano” I would use it.
It is bad that AI is giving our clients the feeling they can do our jobs without us. I feel we are going to prove they can’t. I don’t know how this is going to happen, but it’ll be fun to find out.
****
Lolz! You'll find my silly nonsense rubbing shoulders with some top quality work in Lolz 2, a fab kids humour comic which is up and running on Kickstarter now. It's a project that's very much the stuff I love to see - comics for kids - and it's put together brilliant by Ben and the 77 team, with some stonking talents on board, from Laura Howell to NIgel Parkinson, Sonia Leong to Mike Collins, and many many more. And me.
Thanks and, er, Lolz. Now click and collect:
***
Nov 9: Watership Down is rereleased
Ever since I first saw it 44 years ago I’ve used Watership Down as a byword for Major Errors in Animation. The major errors? Voice casting and character design.
The cast is drawn from the major stage actors of the day. Big RADA and RSC names, with one thing in common: they’re middle aged blokes who all sound the same. Well done if you can tell your Ian Holm from your Ralph Richardson from your John Mills from your Denholm Elliott in the dark, but it’s a casting decision no American cartoon would make.
The next problem is the character design. They’re rabbits. Realistic looking rabbits. Who, with the exception of the old one-eyed one, all look identical.
Add a story that’s miserable as sin and that bloody song by Art Garfunkel and you have two hours of your life that you won’t get back.
Watched this film, Woman of the Hour, last night and it is an excellent directorial debut by Anna Kendrick. I’m surprised to find this review of it is a year old, cos I thought it was a new release. Recommended.
Next question is will Kendrick go on to be the next Clint Eastwood or the next Charles Laughton? Fifty more years of good films or just the one?
***
Nov 10: Jeepers. Exactly how many comic cons are on next weekend? There’s LFCC/YALC in London, Thought Bubble: in Harrogate, this in Leicester. And I’m missing all three because of work.
What else am I missing? And how are there enough comics to go around?
***
How bad is my memory for history? Watched Wolf Hall 2 last night and, despite numerous podcasts (You’re Dead To Me, Willy Willy Harry Ste et al) and reading David Mitchell’s Unruly this year, I found I was still getting Mary Tudor (aka Mary the 1st) and Mary Queen of Scots (also aka Mary the 1st) mixed up.
Still, nice work walking up and down the corridors of National Trust properties, pointing your costumes at each other. Even if I didn’t know what was happening.
Sadly I don’t have a VHS machine connected up these days, so you’ll just have to imagine this gem from 42 years ago this month.
The college cabaret from Exeter College of Art, November 1982 captured on video, presented by me, and possibly including some material the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre still use.
Yes that’s me in the photo.
***
An interesting survey, shared on our Society of Authors group. A self selecting group of 1500 writers contributed, so it only be so representative, but still quite informative. A similar poll was done amongst comic creators with, I think, similar overall results.
I remain mid table it would seem. I hope this survey (full details in link) is of some use to someone out there.
***
Nov 13 (article about working class kids not getting into creative industries): While some of these stats are quite surprising*, mostly it’s what you’d expect. To get into creative industries you often have to work for free, which only rich kids can afford. Also this article finds it odd that kids from public schools and Oxbridge do better in the world when, unless I’ve missed the point of public school and Oxbridge, that is literally what you pay for!
Unless we’re going to restructure the economy and turn it into the one I grew up in 50 years ago, where taxes were high so every kid could be offered a student grant, and comprehensive schools were still acceptable to most middle class parents so the independent school sector was a fraction of the size it is now, and was dying out, I don’t see what will change.
And, by the way, in that golden age in which I went to school, almost everyone in the creative industries had gone to public school and Oxbridge, with the exception of a swathe who’d been to Grammar School (and Oxbridge) but that’s a whole ‘nother conversation.
* eg this: “The Royal Academy of Music (60%), Royal College of Music (56%), Durham (48%), King’s College London (46%) and Bath (42%) all have high proportions of privately educated students studying creative subjects. All of these institutions have higher proportions of privately educated creative students than Oxbridge (32%)”
Nope, this new Disney series Ironheart is causing no unpleasant flashbacks for Doctor Who and Torchwood fans.
None whatsoever.
****
Nov 13: Monty Python Travel Sketch
My tribute to the late great Timothy White, you gets a mention in this sketch (sort of).
The eagle-eared may also spot an edit followed by a big and inexplicable laugh in this, the original TV version. It wasn't until the live album a few years later that it became clear what the missing joke was.
"What a silly - "
Neither today nor yesterday, photos just unearthed from The Sitcom Trials circa 1999
Left to right I see Nick Ewans, Miranda Hart, Victoria Jeffrey, Edward Grassby, then three people I can’t identify, Carrie Quinlan, and one more unknown. Anyone know?
These are from The Comedy Pub on Oxendon St, our regular venue back in the day.
***
Nov 14: Happiness is: emailing a heap of schools offering them your classes then getting emailed back instantly by a school wanting you for three days in a row.
That happened so quickly I’m now worried it must be a trap.
***
Nov 15: Aah, Pete Sinfield, who wrote I Believe In Father Christmas and Land Of Make Believe, as well as lots of prog rock nonsense and Celine Dion’s second biggest hit, has died. Turns out I liked more of his songs than I knew.
Just stumbled across in a copy of SFX I was about to chuck out, the first public mention of Comics 99, the comic festival I ran for five years in Bristol.
November 1998 there I was about to launch what would be the only comic con in the country at the time. Who could have predicted that, just 26 years later, there’d be four this comic weekend alone, in Harrogate, Olympia, Leicester, and Plymouth, and I’m missing all of them!
****
Nov 17: Watched Deadpool and Wolverine. Oh.
Not actually very good is it? I chuckled at bits. I was going to say “at the in jokes”, but to be honest if you take out the in jokes, there’s not a lot left.
It’s Wayne’s World meets Blazing Saddles, with the characters out of the X Men films. Which, leave us not forget, were mostly not very good.
And there’s a level at which swearing is big and clever, beyond which it’s just wasted. This had passed that level after the first few minutes.
Aha. Now I see why friends and family have been asking if we’re okay in the floods!
Here in Chepstow we’ve avoided the worst, it seems. I drove to Torquay and back yesterday and saw a lot of flooded fields but luckily my roads were all okay. Thanks though everyone, and best of luck to anyone who has been affected.
***
Nov 26: Anyone else watched IF? Saw it at the weekend. I have so many questions.
It showed how Disney get these things right and how it’s obviously harder than it looks.
The big thing I didn’t get, from early on, were the rules by which Imaginary Friends operate. Can the kids see them all the time? How does our central character help them? Why are they all in her Gran’s attic? Where does Coney Island fit in this?
A shame, cos this high concept would make a good movie. Sadly IF isn’t it.
***
Nov 28: For anyone who’s interested in that sort of thing, my best 2024 comic and book events, in order of takings
1st: Cardiff film & comicon Sat
2nd: Swansea stars of time
3rd: Gloucester comicon
5: Cardiff film & comicon sun
6: Coventry comicon
7: UKCGF Bristol
8: Macc Pow
9: Chiswick book fest
10: Lakes comic fest Sat
11: UKCGF Exeter Sat
12: UKCGF Torquay
13: LFCC July Sat
14: Barry Collector Con Sat
15: Tetbury comicon
16: UKCGF Cardiff
17: UKCGF Exeter Sun
I did more shows, where I took less. This list will help you only if you plan selling books like mine at these same events this same year. Glad to be of service.
My Books and where to get them:
Richard The Third - Amazon - Etsy - Barnes & Noble - Waterstones
Findlay Macbeth - Amazon - Etsy
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy - Kindle
Midsummer Nights Dream Team - Amazon - Etsy
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy - Kindle
Midsummer Nights Dream Team - Amazon - Etsy
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Paperback
Space Elain - Amazon - Lulu - iBooks - Barnes & Noble
Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories - Amazon
Captain Clevedon - Amazon
Tales Of Nambygate - Amazon
