Persona Non Grata: th'end

(originally posted on myspace here)

 

Something else to mull over as we all come to our senses: one year later, oddly, Kevin Smith also ended "Dogma" with Alanis Morissette coming down from Heaven...

But so yes, that was that... From January 1997, a brand new term. Happy New Year!

Persona Non Grata weeks 8 & 9

 First they closed Woolworths. And I said nothing, for I was not a Woolworths...

 Then they closed Zavvi. And I said nothing, for I was not a Zavvi...

 And now here are the last two strips of 1996. The first I had originally intended to be a huge Dave McKean-type production number, but couldn't get any of the objects to stay on the paper.

Persona Non Grata weeks 6 & 7

(originally posted on myspace here)

Look, I mean you're alright with me just leaving you with these, aren't you...

("Planet Arkle" was a strip in The Big Issue, I think by Peter Arkle. As far as I can see there's no record of it on the internet, but I liked it.)

Persona Non Grata weeks 4 & 5 (Handwriting is unprofessional)

(originally posted on myspace here)

(I am indebted to Miss Natalie Haynes for a number of Medea's lines here, and for yesterday's "She was sexy, she was sticky, she was sex on a stick", and also for the re-naming of the Corn Exchange in tomorrow's post, while the thing at the bar is obviously a nod to David Cronenberg. My dad's just given me a hat like that... I used to get these strips in about an hour before the paper was put to bed. Editorial interference was therefore pretty minimal.)

Persona Non Grata weeks 2 & 3

(originally posted on myspace here)

Ah! Oops! (Persona Non Grata week 1: "I have been singed?")

... That last strip spent some time in Limbo. I was having problems with my mum's computer. Anyway I'm still in France but have this to hand, so here's where the story really starts. It appeared in the University paper back in 1996: I only had the one character, and he was always going to be called Jaundis - I'd decided that back when I was thirteen, imagining him as some kind of futuristic bounty-hunter - but I never got round to that strip ("Urban Vulture"). Then at eighteen I did get round to "My Quiff", but none of the independent titles rife at the time were willing to print anything so irredeemably wet. And then, then, I was finally approached to create a strip for Varsity at the age of twenty-one and had one more crack, which is this, and which, as I head home tomorrow, should hopefully take us up to the new year:

Persona Non Grata -1 (whimsical and inconsequential)

From 1993. That is tiny. Or maybe just far away. It's only up here because the narrator appeared three years later a little mellowed, in the strip I was hoping to upload before coming out to France for Christmas and haven't. Sorry. It was going to be great; the whole thing would be serialized and silly and festive and take us up to the new year but I met up with some people for drinks instead. Anyway how's your Christmas been, dear bunch? Get anything nice? I got a Harold Pinter! Worked fine for the first couple of hours but then...