This is the worry man.

All day long, he sits in his chair and worries. He responds to each new item of news or information by sitting in his chair and worrying about it. That's all he does.

This is an idea for a daily cartoon I had a while ago but never got around to developing fully. The idea is that each new cartoon will be the same as before, but slightly adapted, and each will show the worry man's response to something in that day's news. Here's today's version:

I'm going to do one of these every day from now on. Just try and stop me.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007 7:39:11 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

Here's part 6 of the Really Heavy Greatcoat "student party" story...

Tuesday, March 06, 2007 9:25:57 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

Another page of the Brigadier Gerard story...

Credit is due to M. Prof. Ronan Jouan de Kervenoel, our neighbour, for the accuracy of the French swearing on this page.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007 9:21:34 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

Here's part 9 of the first Brigadier Gerard story...

The inn Gerard stumbles upon is based on a photo of a building that featured in a tourist website of the Torres Vedras region. The site was in Spanish, and I have no idea what the building actually is, it just seemed suitable.

The British officers Gerard sees from the hayloft are (l-r) a light cavalry officer, a staff officer and a Scots' Grey. The "Sir Stapleton" they refer to is Sir Stapleton Cotton, 1st Viscount Combermere, who was Wellington's cavalry commander at the time. In other words, Gerard has just discovered that he has chosen to hide in the British cavalry HQ.

Monday, March 05, 2007 4:07:02 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

Here's the next thrilling installment of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Crime of the Brigadier, or, How Brigadier Gerard Slew the Fox..

Although I found plenty of reference on Napoleonic uniforms on the Internet, I could never find anything for cap badges and other insignia. Ironically the best reference for British uniform badges I could find was for the South Essex, the entirely fictional regiment featured in the Sharpe TV series starring Sean Bean. In the end, I made most of them up. I know I could have gone to greater trouble to find these things out, but I live in Lancaster and the Imperial War Museum is a bit of a schlep from here.

Sunday, March 04, 2007 11:01:29 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

The latest Gerard page...

Depictions of the landscape around Torres Vedras are accurate, but I got the British fortifications completely wrong - Wellington had 30,000 men building the lines at Torres Vedras, much of which is still standing today. Something a little more substantial than the rough picket fences depicted here then.

Please don't get the idea from all this that I am fascinated by war, or approve of it. Conan Doyle wrote the story as a "boys' own" adventure typical of the time, something that would have gone down well with British readers since the seige at Torres Vedras was a notable example of Wellington's military skill, which resulted in a British victory. Certainly, British histories of this action tend to focus on Wellington's brilliance in having the fortifications built a year in advance of his actually needing them, or the fact that the whole job cost only £100,000, making it one of the most "cost-effective" military manouvers in history. 

But any patriotic pride British readers may feel swelling in their breasts at this point should be modified when I tell you that, due to Wellington's scorched-earth policy, 50,000 Portrugese civilians and 20,000 French soldiers were to die of starvation and disease before Massena was forced to retreat to Spain.

C'est la guerre.  

Saturday, March 03, 2007 11:21:33 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

Here's the latest in the Greatcoat 'student party' story...

Friday, March 02, 2007 8:22:14 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

The next Gerard page...

The pitcher and mugs in the last frame are based on a set designed by my father, and the some of the faces in the same frame are inspired by some of Goya's grotesques.

Friday, March 02, 2007 11:41:43 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

Antonella found something funny this afternoon. If you go to Google, then type in "gerard teamsputnik" as your search string, you get the Jazma Online interview we did recently. This is the only hit - in other words, we're a googlewhack! Well, strictly speaking we're not a googlewhack because it's not our website, but we're at least the subject of a googlewhack.

The thought of it kept us amused this afternoon, anyway.

Thursday, March 01, 2007 7:09:23 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

Here's the next Gerard page...

I hadn't drawn horses in any great detail before this strip, just cartoony horses, which are basically made up of cocktail sausages joined together with sticks. I needed something more realistic for this strip - you'll see why later - and I owe a lot to Walter T. Foster's Horses, part of his how-to-draw series (now 80 years in print), for guidance. I also found Edweard Muybridge's sequence photos of horses in motion useful. The big frame, in case you missed the reference, is based on David's painting Napoleon Crossing the Alps.

Thursday, March 01, 2007 10:35:13 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

Here's the next page of the Brigadier Gerard story...

This was the first page in which I had to draw Napoleonic uniforms in any great detail. By the end of the strip, I'd become something of an expert. Reference was easy to find - there are an awful lot of war gamers and model-makers out there on the Internet - but I had a problem because Conan Doyle didn't specify which brigade of light infantry Gerard was in. The uniform differs slightly in detail from brigade to brigade. In the end, I decided on the 3rd brigade, since this was the uniform I had the most detailed reference for. It was a lucky guess - in the second story we did, the 3rd Hussar of Conflans is specifically mentioned by the author.

Gerard has never appeared in colour, but his uniform should be a really bright orange with a dark blue coat and blue and red shako (it helps if you take LSD at this point). Unless it's dark blue all over. I've also seen versions of the uniform with cream trousers and a red coat, and a painting of Gerard, by Eric D'Antin, with a uniform that was bright blue with red bits all over. God knows which one is correct. I decided to stop worrying at this point and get on with drawing the strip.

Later on in the story, Gerard wears a busby rather than a shako. It's black.

Credit is due to Tex Avery or possibly Chuck Jones for the corny joke in frame 3, by the way. I think it comes from a Bugs Bunny cartoon. If anybody knows which one, please don't tell me.

Wednesday, February 28, 2007 10:53:47 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

Here's the latest episode of the Greatcoat...

There's a bit of a kerfuffle surrounding the Greatcoat strip. For the full story, check out John freeman's blog. The story has also been covered in Forbidden Planet's blog, and also in Journalista, but briefly, last year John set up a page about the Greatcoat in Wikipedia, which was then deleted by a Wikipedia editor on the grounds that it was insufficiently "noteworthy". The decision has been contested, the page has been re-instated but it's status is now open for discussion. If you're a Greatcoat fan, and you'd like to contribute to the debate, please, follow the links to the wikipedia page and add your two-pennorth. John and I would welcome your input.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007 9:42:46 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

Here's page three of the Brigadier Gerard story...

The French general Massena (the one using the telescope) is based on an engraving I found on the internet. I can't remember where I found it so no link this time, although there's a nice entry about him in Wikipedia.

It's basically a nineteenth-century publicity shot. Apparently he had these printed up so that people would recognise him. By the end of the Torres Vedras stalemate, which was the French disaster in which this story is set, he may well have wished he had remained anonymous.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007 10:20:45 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0]