More greys
Greys
Moving to Tapas as my main outlet has exposed me to a lot of cartoonists who come from a webcomics and meme-based background rather than the old-fashioned newspaper strip cartoon tradition I cxome from. And that means there are a whole new set of tropes to deal with. For example, there’s a new comics shorthand which originates from manga comics which I have to learn. Why are all sweat drops perpendicular? What’s with the eyes that keep disappearing into a dark shadow? Why the pout?
But that’s by the by – it’s a different culture and one I have to learn. The only thing that really annoys me is what I’ve come to call the curse of the Greys. There’s a strain of slice of life comics which are all bout the cartoonist. And they have a habit of casting the protagonist as the only real person in a universe populated by generic ‘randoms’, rendered as blank human outlines. You can usually tell the level of self-obsession of the cartoonist concerned by the amount of detail they are willing to put into their Greys.
When not standing in as icons for ‘those idiots that don’t have the sense to think and be exactly like me’ they stand in for abstract concepts. In that way they tend to act in the same way as labelled objects in the laziest sort of political cartoon. I thought I’d have a little fun…
Oranges
The Scrumpy dance
My tribute to Snoopy’s dances of joy from the Peanuts cartoons. Two of the poses are taken directly from Schulz. But then the reality of dancing with ears has to intrude.
Sponsor me. I’m dreading this.
Dance like nobody’s looking
This is an aphorism I just don’t understand. If no-one is looking there is no way I am going to choose to dance just for the joy of it, because i find no joy in jigging about a bit for no reason. As far as I’m concerned, dance is a reason for clodhopping misery more than anything else. As ever, when I come across a bit of popular wisdom which after a moment’s thought turns out to be pure nonsense, I make fun of it.
The return of Sandy
As last week – Sandy hasn’t appeared in the strip much since we went weekly, so here she is again.
The return of the skateboard
I haven’t done a skateboard strip for a long time. So this is to remedy that omission. I’ll have to have the cats visit the new Source skate park in Hastings when the strip returns to its thrice weekly schedule.
Conductor
I haven’t been to a Proms concert for six or seven years now. I must see if I can fit one in before they end in September.
What is a Prom? See here.
The music, quite fittingly, is Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance.
Below are are a few of the original pencil sketches of Jones conducting which I used as the basis for the poses in the final comic.
Foomph!
I did some real soul searching about whether to publish this one after the horror of the Grenfell Tower disaster in Kensington, but in the end the joke won through.
You can contribute to the Red Cross fund to help the victims of the fire here.
Cause and effect
I was invited to a housewarming barbeque a couple of weeks ago, and of course this happened. In Britains barbeques invite rainstorms in the same way trailer parks invite tornadoes in the States.