Artoon of the Day

Dream Gang

Some People

Delinquent Jimmy Olsen

Brendan: A sketch image for a pitch I concocted for DC Comics:

DELINQUENT JIMMY OLSEN was an idea for a three part miniseries that I planned to write and draw.

The Reverse-Flash, Professor Zoom, attempts to reverse-engineer a Bizarro back to human form, but instead unleashes a terrible reverse-Bizarro plague.
Superman is imprisoned in a purple-kryptonite cage.
As society crumbles, Superman's pal, Jimmy Olsen, finds that he and a few others are immune to the contagion. They are outlaws in a lawless, bizarro world.
It is up to these delinquents to save our lives.

DELINQUENT JIMMY OLSEN
Coming soon.

They didn't go for it, but I think it would have made a good comic miniseries. Saturn Girl was in it too. And a new character, Dr. Zyxtiplytk, appears as well. Something a bit different...

Art School Days

Brendan: A polaroid picture from my art school days at Kingston Poly from over 30 years ago, when I was 18 doing my 'foundation art' course, before I went on to Chelsea to study painting. As you can see, I was producing dodgy early-Hockney "homages' at that time.

Lambeth Readers and Writers Festival

JohnMK: Brendan will be hosting a talk as part of The Lambeth Readers and Writers Festival 2009

Saturday 16 May
Minet Library
2.30pm

To avoid disappointment please book tickets for the event

For more details visit the Festival website here

You can also download the Festival brochure here

The Specials

JohnMK: To celebrate The Specials reforming here’s some vintage McCarthy artwork from 1979. Also some Johnny Rotten artwork done around the same time.

Sooner or Later

Brendan: I was clearing out some old cupboards and a few old copies of 2000AD fell out. I'd kept them because there were episodes of SOONER OR LATER on the back covers. This was a one-page strip that I did with writer Pete Milligan over 23 years ago. When I saw the dateline on the cover, I had a hard time believing it was so long ago.

Unemployment was the big social theme back then... and Swifty is feeling like a contemporary character again. I guess things really do go around in a circle.

Pete Milligan wrote S&L. We just knocked it up one afternoon on a phone call. We had the title first, but no idea of what it would be about. Pete named the hero after one of his favourite writers, Jonathan Swift. Tony Riot drew about a third of the strips with me and was the unofficial "other artist".

That reminds me, I must go and revisit Tony's one and only solo strip for 2000AD, "Tribal Memories", which also written by Pete. Wonder if anybody remembers it!

It's astonishing to think of the variety of strips that Pete was writing around that (white-hot) time in British Comics: Bad Company, Paradax!, Johnny Nemo, Mirkin The Mystic, Sooner or later, Skreemer, Shade The Changing man, Rudcliffe and Williams, The Extremist, Rogan Gosh, Skin... That's an amazing slab o' stuff! A very wide difference in tone and mood, from very dark violence to a surreal and foppish wit.

And, whatever happened to that 'Bizarre Boys' comic thing written with Grant Morrison and to be drawn by Jamie Hewlett? I saw one weird bit of art and that was about it...

Interestingly, it was Jamie Hewlett who took over Sooner or Later for a sequel, which was also written by Pete.

Brendan McCarthy Art Show at Orbital Comics

JohnMK: An new exhibition of the art of Brendan McCarthy is being shown at London's newest comic book store, ORBITAL COMICS. The show features images of Brendan's comic book work for both UK and US publishers from over the last twenty years. Featuring a lost image from the graphic novel SKIN, some drawings from a new comic project, DREAMTREES, a number of published ARTOONS from the CRISIS period of the early 90's and more pictures from Brendan's archive of unpublished art.

Brendan is currently working on a new Spider-Man/Dr Strange mini series for Marvel Comics, out later this year.

ORBITAL COMICS is the UK's newest major comic book store, located just off London's famous Leicester Square.

Orbital Comics & Collectibles
8 Great Newport Street,
London, England
WC2H 7JA

Phone: 0207 240 0591
eMail: comics@orbitalcomics.com

Artoons Rediscovered - part three

The last two...

Artoons Rediscovered - part two

More next week...

Artoons Rediscovered - part one

Brendan: A cache of old self-rejected "Artoons" was found by Tony Riot recently in a drawer in his studio. They're all drawn with coloured pastels on colour paper. Most from about 20 years ago, around the CRISIS era.



More next week...

Handlight On!

Unused Shade Cover

An unused Shade the Changing Man cover

The Codes of Childhood

The Electrick Hoax Revisited

Brendan: The ELECTRICK HOAX was my first solo strip after Sometime Stories, when I was starting out as a comic book artist. Although it's pretty embarrassing looking back at all my dodgy artwork from 1978...

It featured Johnny Rotten as an Irish punk, a Patrick McGoohan robot, The Subliminal Kid, Moby Train and Human Ken. The last enigmatic words of the Hoax strip were, "It's beyond me". It was also where me and Peter Milligan first started working together.

The first image shows the first episode and the last two pages are the final two episodes. Another shows me and Pete appearing in an episode commenting on the story's progress, in true post-modern art-student style.

It's a historical UK comic curio, very much of its time, with the collaged cut-up lettering and punk-rock designed characters.


You can read more about The Electrick Hoax here

The Flash Dream

This-Here-Now

Heroes of British Comics

JohnMK: The lastest issue of Bizzare salutes the heroes of British comics, who include Leo Baxendale, Hunt Emerson, Pat Mills, Alan Moore, Posy Simmons... and Brendan who talks about his upcoming Spider-Man and Doctor Strange team-up. If your credit's slightly crunched at the moment you can also read the article on Paul Gravett's website.

Unpublished Crisis Artoon

An unpublished Artoon from the CRISIS era...