20 Years Ago

…I submitted this to a large compilation comic for a Canadian (I think) comics con’…Scan 4Scan 5Scan 6Scan 7

…apart from a kids book, this remains my only piece published overseas….

…er…unless you count nearly four years of world wide web stuff.

University Town

..Dunedin is a University town…

…so a lot of my earlier work is “student-centric” for the simple reason that student publications provided the best opportunities to see my stuff in print…Scan 454 Scan 455 Scan 456 Scan 457

 

…mutton pies?….

…try google images.

Blast From The Past

…wow…in about 14 months time I celebrate not only 30 years of living in Dunedin but also 30 years since I produced and “published” my first piece of sequential art…

…parentheses on “published” because I hadn’t figured that bit out yet. Probably because, while I wanted to be a cartoonist, I had no-one to mentor me in the arcane knowledge necessary for being in  &/or making a publication…

…Seeing as  we were in bands and knew how that worked, we copied off a handful of single sheets and proceeded to paste them up (actually I think  tape was involved so that they could be removed and taken home) in all the regular spots that band posters were pasted up…

…(please bare in mind that this cartoon was created before all the right wing fuckwits had completely infiltrated the skinhead movement and made it the brain-cell-lacking waste land that it is today)…

Scan 48

 

…just as we were putting up the last few outside Hank’s Chicken Bar, a police car stopped beside us…

…the window was wound down (ooo…feeling old…hassled by the cops before electric windows!)…

…”and what do you think you’re doing?…in a band are you?”…

…”No Officer, it’s a cartoon I drew”…

…”lets have a look then”…

…he shone his torch on it, chuckled, and handed it to his mate, who snorted a bit…

…”Don’t let us catch you doing this again, it’s illegal to post bills here.”

…they cruised off…

…we scarpered…and I subsequently got a job in the printing industry and found out all about making publications….

…and being in them.

 

…years  later I was at a dinner consisting of my good friend Dee’s work mates & partners…

…one of the husbands was a police officer…when I related the above story, he said he remembered the cartoon…

…it had been hung on the central police station notice board by the accosting officers and it was there for ages and ages!

…(might make this a regular feature of the blog…30 years….I got a million of them!)….