The seed pods from Sycamore trees have a fascinating aerodynamic profile which causes them to spin in a leisurely fashion down to the ground. I was sitting in on a park bench during my lunch break jotting down a couple of weeks with of strip ideas into my notebook when I noticed that I was sitting directly underneath one and was being bombarded by the things.
So how would Jones cope with one of these in her garden?
Riverfields was the cartoon strip I originally drew for Comics Sherpa. It tells the story of a motley crew of people working in a newly opened out-of-town shopping centre, somewhere in England.
It’s a bit unusual for me as it’s about people rather than animals, and people invariably irritate me – even the ones that spring out of my own head. It eventually petered to a halt when an officious health and safety character annoyed me so much that I couldn’t bring myself to draw him any more. And then the economy collapsed and the imaginary mall went with it.
I’ll be posting Riverfields strips in this blog in the days between Smith strips, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Please excuse their smallness – these date from 2006.
Here’s how introduced the strip on a defunct Riverfields blog I created to accompany the strip in the days before I realised you could combine words and pictures in a blog.
In the States, they’re called Malls – in the UK they’re called Shopping Centres. Whatever they are called, they’re ubiquitous and they’re taking over the world.
Riverfields is the largest Mall in Europe. It’s so large it straddles two time zones! It has 14 themed shopping experiences, including three so specialised not even the centre’s management understands what they are, but they looked really good in the PowerPoint presentation. It’s still being built, but there are 1,257 stores in phase one, including 50 anchor stores. It has air conditioning throughout, five climate zones and an atrium so large it creates its own rain. Just on the outskirts of both London and Manchester, it’s a mall so large that they had to build a second mall next door just for the people that work there.
Of course, it doesn’t exist in real life. It’s an amalgam of all the malls I’ve visited in the UK and the States. But if there are malls that can be considered to be Riverfields parents they are these:
Bluewater, Dartford, Kent. When it was built it was the largest mall in Europe, with a catchment area of most of Southern England. Architecturally, it’s stunning, with sculptures and carved inscriptions placed on any flat surface the architects could find. It occupies an abandoned chalk pit and is surrounded on three sides by floodlit chalk cliffs. It would be a great place to shop if it wasn’t so crowded all the time.
Royal Victoria Place, Tunbridge Wells. When I created the strip this was my local mall. In typical Tunbridge Wells fashion, it’s simultaneously very posh, and cheap looking at the same time. It doesn’t have a food court, it has a palm court. A palm court with a MacDonald’s. It was opened by the Patron Saint of Shopping, Princess Diana, in 1992.
Coronado Mall, Albuquerque. I always check this mall out when I’m visiting my wife’s folks. It’s a mature mall where every shop unit has changed hands a few times, so nothing fits the space it was built for any more. It’s a good example of a mall that’s having to be creative to attract a clientele that would otherwise go to the sexy new mall out on the Westside. I especially like the indoor blacklight minigolf course. And it has a mean Fudruckers.
In Britain a Daddy Longlegs is a Crane Fly, and not an arachnid. It’s got a small body and long spindly legs, which Wikipedia describe as ‘deciduous’ as they have a habit of falling off. Every autumn they fly into our house and, being flies, flop around ineffectually trying to find their way out again. Billy and Bella go mad chasing after them. Oh, and that story about Daddy Longlegs having the strongest venom known to man but no fangs is not true – if it was my cats would have overdosed on them long ago.
I don’t often use fonts in my cartoon, but I made an exception in this case, as I wanted to create The Daddy Longlegs of The Apocalypse, so you can imagine the speech ‘I may not be a spider but I am in league with the spiders…’ being delivered in a Russell Crowey Liam Neesony sort of voice.
As for the idea of spiders and insects being in league? A tip of the hat to Bill Bailey for that.
Remember, there is no global warming. Those hundred-year flood events that happen every five years? – they are perfectly normal. Those ‘Britain to be battered by hurricane’ headlines that appear every week on the front page of the Daily Express? Nothing to worry about. Those daffodils appearing in December? La la la la not listening.
This did not happen.
There are some people who just seem to suck all the joy out of environment and replace it with a feeling of despair. Scrumpy is one of those, which is a bit strange as he’s one of the best loved characters in the strip. He has that Eeyore quality of being miserable and loveable at the same time.
One of the odd things about drawing is that the simpler a character appears to be, the more difficult is it to Draw it. Rene’s Lopez’s Bunny from Alison Ward (the only character in that comic to be naked ALL the time) is a case in point. I’ve followed the rules – I’ve even done the animation-derived thing of building the character up from ovals and circles, but it still doesn’t come out quite right.
Our other guest stars are Winky from Snow Sez… by Theresa Shephard, Girth from GIRTH by Steve Powell, and, of course, Rat from Pearls before Swine by Bill Watterson Stephen Pastis.
Smudge and Cholmondeley used to wear flea collars, and their fur never recovered properly from it. There’s always that phantom line around the neck where the collar used to be. Luckily, Smith is a cartoon cat so all he has to do is shake himself vigorously and his fur will return to normal, in the same way Tom from Tom and Jerry could do when smashed in the face with a saucepan/twisted into a pretzel/grated by a tennis racket/blown up by a bomb, etc.
Here’s a poser for you – how would you draw pride? We know the cartoon shorthand for things like speed and fear, but pride is a bit more difficult. I’ve gone for the DC Thompson solution – a few radiating lines and the word ‘Pride’ over Smith’s head.
Today’s strip is brought to you by Concerned Citizens of America or whatever nutty right-wing organisation is cluttering up my inbox with its ravings at the moment. The sad thing is, occasionally they have a point.
Note Smith’s phone number, which starts with a Hastings code and then goes unreadable because people actually ring numbers they find in comic strips.
The problem with the blog site disappearing for days on end seems to have been solved. A bit of advice – if your hosts give you a bit of web caching software for free and tell you it will make your website faster to load, don’t believe them. There is a reason why it is free. Avoid the W3-Cache plug-in for WordPress, folks.
A shout out to the original Patrick MacGoohan series The Prisoner here. And a slight problem with the positioning of the speech balloons in these Panavision frames – Smudge appears to be talking out of her bum. You’ll notice I switch to traditionally shaped square panels in Wednesday’s strip.
Oh, and I get to use the word ‘Hegemony’ here, which is a strange thing to be proud of, I know, but I am anyway.