Any Lessons learned?

A corruption enquiry in Victoria has uncovered an alleged conspiracy to misappropriate large sums of money allocated to improve conditions in Dept. of Education administered schools. Two senior department officials have already been dismissed from their posts. One has admitted that when he became aware that investigators were 'onto him', he panicked and dumped all of the relevant documentation in a bin at a Bunnings hardware store.

Who is this?

During my recent romp through 'kept' 'toons I came across this dip-pen n ink B&W caricature sketch. It's on pretty cheap layout paper and was found among lots of other scraps labeled '80s drawings.

'Helpfully', I did not notate the piece with any indication of who it is supposed to be. However, I reckon it might be Brian Kogler who was a beaut comic strip and gag cartoonist in the ABWAC/ACA Sydney stable thru the '80s and 90s. before apparently dropping out of the scene altogether? I never had the pleasure of meeting B.K., but very much liked his strips 'B.Bunting esq.', 'Herb and Flora' and  'Thin Ice'. The latter featured a little furry animal tied to a large rock by a rope. On reflection, that character was a lot like the ill-fated squirrel and his acorn in the much later 'Ice Age' animated film series. I think this caricature was drawn from a photo in some ABWAC publication(?)

Can any of the old hands tell me if this sketch is anything like B.K. ,,, and, what happened to make him apparently disappear from the scene so abruptly?

1956!

Yesterday, I was rummaging through some really old 'kept' cartoon material and came across a sheet of yellowing paper on which there were 3 little coloured drawings I had scribbled 59 years ago! Featuring caricatures of OZ pollie Harold Holt, Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev and a girl of nondescript origin... here they are so you know what I was doing at age 21.

Being strongly influenced by Clarrie King, my favourite artist of the time, apparently.

Funny Business.

This is the result of mind wandering whilst practice scribbling on a daily newspaper stock exchange page.

Sunday strips

Another dose of Rarebits - Henge Primary series... in the same order they were originally published during 1994.

ANZAC

This was my Anzac day cartoon for 2012. It was posted on a predecessor blog which was hosted by an  'over 50s' site with well over 500 subscribers... a reasonable number of whom were overseas adherents.

The purpose of the 'tongue in cheek' post was to perhaps further confuse any in the audience not aware of what the acronym ANZAC stood for.

Lift and/or Lean?

Glenn Stevens, exercising RBA control over the cash rate, can variously be described as a Lifter or creator of Leaner conditions depending on individual perceptions of his regular pronouncements.

How does he fit into the glib categories of people established by Treasurer Joe Hockey?

Budget 2

Coming soon to a TV near you... BUDGET 2 starring the same comedy team as featured in the first epic production in 2014! Now more boring than you thought possible.

You don't want to miss this one!

Cartoon rejections

Remarkably, there were none in a pro-career spanning some 26 years from 1979 to 2005. Hardly the stuff of interesting reading. However there were a couple of abrasive instances between me and editorial staff over them changing captions because my words might tend to upset some segment of the  readership. The one I remember most involved today's revisited 'toon originally published in TravelWeek magazine c.1993/4.

Singapore Airlines had designated their Boeing 747 fleet 'Space-ships' as a marketing ploy... because the aircraft set new standards of spaciousness within the cabin, rather than an ability to defy Earth's gravitational hold. Qantas didn't respond in kind. Rather, they chose to repaint several of their 747s in stunningly colorful aboriginal motifs covering the entire fuselage of each aircraft. The editor or one of his minions thought my choice of words in the speech balloon together with the psychedelic nature of the aircraft colouring may lead some gentle folk to think of it being a DRUG culture reference! Well, THAT was the intention... lost completely by the stupidly irrelevant gibberish they substituted for mine! Luckily I have the 30 x 23cm original from which you can adjudge whether or not the caption required alteration for any reason at all. I don't have a copy of the published alternative (principally because it annoyed me so much all those years ago!).

Day of Coincidents?

This morning I went to the local Chemist to get a prescription renewal. Having a quantity of coins in my pocket, I was able to cover the $6.10 'script fee without breaking a note. That left two 50 cent coins in my pocket which turned out to be both 1994 minted jobbies in circulation for over 20 years. What are the odds on that happening? If you think that lacks a 'WOW' factor...

This morning, I also noticed a breaking news story that the OZ dollar had fallen 2 US cents in value in overnight trading. That reminded me of a 'Pacific Peso' cartoon I had included in my blog (I thought) a couple of years ago. Since the currency seems to be heading rapidly back to that status, I went into my archives to trace the earlier reference. Believe it or not, the subject cartoon was actually created and published on the web in 2011... on April 21st!

Now, that does deserve a WOW! in my book, I've re-sized the piece from 8 x 8 to 20 x 20 cms and given it another run today.

Iran Bazaar?

Getting Iranian spooks to identify our own nationals who have joined-up with ISIS is a kinda embarrassing diplomatic 'tick' I suppose.

But, the flat refusal of the Iranian leadership to accept return of failed asylum seekers presents a very tricky conundrum for our bumbling government. Good luck with that one people!

Sunday Strips,

During 1994 after having produced the strip RAREBITS for 8+ years, I needed a spell from the main story line. Noting the emergence of children's natural adoption of I.T., I dreamt up 'Henge Primary School' as a spin-off of Rarebits.

So began what might be termed my 'Lazarus' period... that's Mell of Miss Peach fame, not the biblical 'come backer'. I have always admired the work of Mell Lazarus and, no doubt there is evidence of that influence in this stuff.  

Saturday Strips

On April 2nd., I published two Nutshells strips which I thought at the time were the only ones I had drawn in 1988 before learning that the title was already in use elsewhere. Whilst restoring date order of other haphazardly filed old strips for airing here, I came across a number of additional unpublished strips under the title Nutshells... some of which were apparently drawn in 1987 in anticipation of it being more than a 'flash in the pan' affair.

Whatever, here are 3 more 1988 pieces you might find interesting. As mentioned  earlier, this was still the era of B&W for most cartoon artwork so I intended to publish them as they would've been seen back then. However, I've been moved to add spot colour and clearer text to the computer screens in the first example, because the original was cut and paste dot-matrix text which probably would have reproduced adequately on a rotary press plate... but almost disappeared in the scanning process for this outing. To lend a spot of colour to the others I have used pink to emphasize the expletive outburst in strip two and yellow to high-light the subject dealt with in the third.

COAGulation?

The WILD West...

The COST of rank political opportunism!

Both Left and Right of Victorian politics will be slinging mud at each other over the almost $400 m, of taxpayer's money which has been paid out to NOT build a grossly expensive and questionably useful piece of road infrastructure. The whole saga has been a dreadful exhibition of political opportunism and one-upsmanship by both sides, leading inevitably to today's loss of a fortune in tax-payer funds which could have been allocated to more pressing problem solving than compensation of aggrieved contractors!

The only redeeming feature is the fact that Dan Andrews was elected to demolish the so-called East-West Link project, and his promise has been full-filled today. But, that doesn't absolve he and his party from their shared role in a debacle, the origin of which can be traced as far back as 1969!!

Carving up the GST cake

The Feds want the States to re-apportion GST shares without their help or advice because "... it's your tax folks!"

Now there's the ingredients for a 'food fight' if ever there was before?

VacANT2

I was preoccupied with several time-consuming events today. No time left to research anything worthy of an original cartoon... so, here's a 'filler' culled from the same day in 2011 when I was authoring a predecessor blog for a Queensland-based site titled GoodOldTalk (GOT) for short. This was part of a series based on words incorporating the letters ANT.

Just happens to fit a situation like today almost perfectly?

Vax or Tax?

The pros and alleged cons of child vaccination aside... doesn't Mr Rabbit's dictum to 'nay-sayers' amount to overt coercion, blackmail... or both?

Funnies Sunday

As mentioned in my blog of April 4th., my longest running comic-strip Rare-Bits was initially rushed into existence during the latter part of 1985, sans story-line, regular characters or even a vision of how it should be presented in terms of layout and drawing style. The only editorial given was that it must relate to IT in general and computers in particular.

In the event, the strip endured for 10 years after a few early erratic meanderings, finally settling on the premise that the ancient monument Stonehenge was, among other things, a very early computing device. You've already seen the style of the strip in its last year of publication... here's a sample of how it began.

Vale Richie Benaud

He was doubtless one of Australia's greatest all-rounders, an admirably effective Captain and later, a household name in his role as cricket commentator on TV. In all, a role model if ever there was one.

However, in his latter years, Richie always reminded me of a FROG when delivering his verbal wisdoms as a media star. Sadly I don't draw frogs well... but maybe that's appropriate at this sad time?

Quite interesting?

One of my main roles with the magazine TravelWeek was to illustrate the 'Cover story' of each issue with either a humorous portrait or caricature of the notable personage in focus. One of the industry leaders I 'did' on multiple occasions over the last 12 years of my work with the publisher was Graham Turner who remains Managing Director of the Flight Centre organization in 2015. One of my earliest colour renditions of this gentleman appeared in the April 27th.1994 issue of the magazine and, a detail of the 220 x 280 mm original is displayed above.

The magazine is still published monthly in print form under the masthead Travel Weekly. Though I no longer have any working relationship with the publishers... I still receive copies of the magazine as a 'contributor'. In a recent issue, Graham Turner was part of a feature in which industry leaders looked at business prospects for 2015 and beyond. Each contribution was accompanied by a presumably fairly current photograph of the participant.

The point of this piece is that I'm amazed GT appears to have hardly changed over the past 21years...  as the small head-shot insert attests.

Bad Apple?

The senate is grilling multi-national companies on their alleged failure to pay taxes comparable to their commercial operations in Australia. Apple is one of those in the frame.

Once again... good luck with that adventure in wonderland guys.

De-Icing?

Ken Lay is to head-up a task-force to develop strategies aimed at stunting the startling growth in distribution and usage of the 'social' drug 'ICE' (aka Crystal Meth.).

Good luck with that endeavour chaps.

The wider ADF?

A report today indicates that obesity is a growing problem among members of the armed forces. The British military is famous for its BLACK WATCH. Now we can have our own WEIGHT WATCH?

Reclaim Terra Nullius?

Who are these weekend warriors trying to impress with their combatant stances over the meaningless slogan Re-claiming Australia? Those words pre-suppose the continent was/is OWNED by some clique or other.

No,,, it is a body of land which sat for millions of years waiting to be occupied by some lucky human tenants. So far as we know our 'aboriginal' brothers and sisters were the first fortunate punters to stumble over the haven some 50/60 thousand years before anglo-saxon settlers/prisoners of another 'state' also took up the offer. Since then people from hundreds of other global locales have either joined us willingly in a search for better living conditions, or been compelled to relocate here in the face of danger in their previous home-land. Like me (who was born here a tad over 80 years ago), none of us own the place... so the word reclaim has no meaning in a physical sense,

If, on the other hand, the slogan alludes to lifestyle, race, or religious beliefs then I say to the combatants... "stop wasting your breath, time and endeavour to impress me and, I suspect, a large majority of ordinary Australian residents who do not need to be told how to live their lives in this community by a bunch of tat-stained skin-head neo-nazis on the one hand, or self-appointed militant holy-rolling 'do-gooders' on the other.    

Bloodmoon 2

Twice within +/- six months. This phenomenon is becoming a bit Ho Hum isn't it?

Rare-Bits strip... the last year.

Two days ago, I posted a couple of unpublished strips from 1988. In the supporting words, I mentioned another strip of mine which ran in Pacific Computer Weekly for 10 years between 1985 and 1995. I had been supplying gag cartoons and humorous illos to the paper for a year or so when the editor suddenly decided a comic strip might be more attractive to readers. When I agreed to give it a whirl, I had no preconceived idea of a story line, characters or the finer points of either information technology of the mid 1980s itself or the industry jargon I was meant to be lampooning. And... only a couple of weeks lead-time in which to produce something.

As a result, the first dozen or so strips were simply industry oriented single gags stretched out to fit a strip format. No standard characters or continuity and set in modern times. Then, crash-swotting of computer development history revealed that Stonehenge was considered to be one of man-kind's first endeavours to harness a structure to assist in computing things like agricultural seasons and other such aids to the welfare of people of that era. Bingo! Ancient technology laced with modern industry jargon gave Rare-Bits sustenance through stuttering early development of characters and strip design... to finally end a decade later due to demise of the paper, rather than a drying up of story lines.

The strip was always printed in black & white only.

Being egged on...

... by an Easter theme?

Ideas going nowhere.

Comic strips have always been my first choice for working as a cartoonist. During the 1980s whilst primarily 'tooning on various magazines in the Isaacson publishing stable, I had one strip Rare-bits running in Pacific Computer Weekly and several other short-run titles appearing in other special 'mini-mag.' issues...all in differing styles of presentation. Today's nostalgia piece is one of those ideas which never quite made it onto a printed page... because almost on the cusp of publication, I learned that the title Nut shells was already in use somewhere else in 'Comicsdom'. In the event I substituted something else I had in reserve to avoid any chance of a writ.

I'm pretty sure the gags were used in other strips of mine... but 'Nutshells' was never used commercially as a strip title by me after that. However, at some time during the 1990s, I've hand-coloured the 2 strips with ink -- perhaps in the form of practice, as the opportunity to use colour in much of my magazine work had materialized during 1993.

Let's have a party!

Jacqui Lambie to launch a new political party. I was bemused by Palmer's 'selfie' party name being inevitably linked with the doggie world. I trust JL wont fall into the same trap by naming her putsch anything like the Lambie United Network Embrace!