Sunday 6 April 2014

He must be Joe King!


If you buy today's Mail on Sunday with its free 32 page all-new Beano you won't find any strips by me in there unfortunately BUT you will find a series of little vignette head drawings that I did, running along the foot of several pages. It's the return of Joe King to The Beano, and recently I was commissioned to supply numerous head shots of the character to accompany the joke strips that now appear at the end of each story. 


They use six of those drawings in the free issue, and I presume you can expect to see the others over the coming weeks in the regular Beano. I've noticed that reader surveys often show they'd prefer more jokes in the comic so this is a good way of including them without taking up a page. Reminds me of the gags that would run across the foot of some pages in the early issues of Wham! Sure, some of those jokes aren't exactly new to us, but for The Beano's young readership they'll be as fresh as a daisy.

As an aside, it reminds me that I can still clearly remember the first joke I was told, 50 years ago at infant school. Yep, it was the old "Why did the chicken cross the road" gag. Told to me by classmate Dave Gadsby, in the playground. I was five years old. I thought it was hilarious. Like most of us, I soon took jokes for granted, especially when the same ones kept rolling around, but the memory of that first one still remains. That gag was ancient even by 1964, but I guess when you're that young, every joke is someones first! 

9 comments:

Manic Man said...

If that is the returning character.. I would never have guessed.. while he is a bit new for me, I know of the character.. I know they tried to so that thing they did with characters like Dare-a-day Davy in that readers could win a prize for having there letter printed.. or something like that.

Lew Stringer said...

The previous version was drawn by a different artist and I was asked to do it my way so there are similarities but naturally he's not exactly to how he was when Bob Dewar drew him.

Manic Man said...

Didn't Peter Grey also draw him for a bit?
either way, those headshots look pretty good design, hope it does well ^_^

TwoHeadedBoy said...

Wonder what Bob Dewar's up to nowadays? Probably my favourite of all the DC Thomson folk.

Lew Stringer said...

http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/books/bob-dewar-on-life-as-a-cartoonist-and-illustrator-1-3357985

Lew Stringer said...

Peter's never worked for The Beano. You must be thinking of someone else. I must admit I wasn't too familiar with the character as he must have appeared before I started buying The Beano again.

Peter Gray said...

I have dreamed I've worked for them and drawn for them...

;0)

Lew Stringer said...

Manic must be reading your dreams! :)

Manic Man said...

I can't think who I was getting confused with.. Oh well ^_^ Life is all about learning