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...

... aaaaaaaaand Satan!

(originally posted on myspace here)

It's Monday the 22nd of December and the weather outside is thirty-seven minutes late, so whatever you're doing this morning be sure to leave plenty of time.

Apparently the Dungeons received a memo from "top office" to "tone down" SATAN'S GROTTO this year, and replace the line "I've killed Santa" with "I've kidnapped Santa", which we've done. And the displays team have set him just to the left of Satan's throne. Only he's a bit rotty. And nailed to a cross.

Still could be worse... I honestly don't think the sight of Santa's gnawed, eyeless, crucified carcass is going to be as traumatic as any actual Santa. I really do. "What's he doing in Bentalls?" I seem to remember asking myself as a six-year-old. Surely part of the mythos is you never actually get to see him, like 'Er Indoors or Doctor Claw or Humphrey Lyttelton.

That's a medley of money shots from Benjamin Christensen's enlightening 1922 expose "Haxan", re-released in the sixties as "Witchcraft Through the Ages" with narration by William Burroughs (the Haxan blooper reel's also up on youtube, featuring at 1 minute and 40 seconds in four takes of a nun "trying out a variety of ungodly titters"). And that's the director himself playing the devil, top off and tongue out, which must have made for an interesting set. (Warning: contains bumbums.) Anyway coming up next, as requested by Mr. James McQuillan, a short yuletide run of an old cartoon strip of mine "Persona Non Grata" as soon as I work out how to scan A3. Meantime here's more Santa.

But Emily scared me...

(originally posted on myspace here)

 

 

... and looking over this opening again I think I can see why. It was the smile. I thought it was evil. And she looked like a ghost. Also I was a terrible racist until I was about five - all Asians looked to me like evil wizards - and I thought Emily looked Asian. Regional accents disturbed me as well so "Ivor the Engine" never really got a look in either, particularly those dragons (and nor did "Why Don't You?"). And they didn't show The Clangers when I was a toddler, which I think I would have loved (even though it wouldn't have made me laugh, like "Chorlton and the Wheelies") let alone Noggin the Nog - I must have missed those both by a few years - so what I'm saying is that Oliver Postgate's influence only really began to work on me when I became a teenager.

And I'm saying this because of course Oliver Postgate is now dead.

And that I should only love Smallfilms' output now - REALLY love them - makes perfect sense to me. Look at Bagpuss or Ivor, there's an inbuilt nostalgia. And I trust nostalgia. Perhaps that is the wrong word. I trust stuff that is old, and handmade. Such stuff has earned my trust, and the worlds built by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin in their magically non-magic shed are timeless, and chiefly responsible. So I should mark his passing somehow, definitely, and I'll do it by posting this link to Chris Goode's own excellent tribute here. It includes a recording of perhaps the last story Postgate ever told, the introduction to "Hippo World Guestbook", and praise for Postgate's own blog which is also well worth a look if you're interested (it's political, in a good way... ie it has a moral). Enjoy, all interested parties.

I just hope Brian Trueman doesn't die now.