I created, scripted, and drew Tom Thug for Oink! and Buster comics for 10 years and always enjoyed putting the brainless bully through the mill. The pain and punishment he suffered was always as a consequence of his bad intentions. The moral being that evil has consequences. (In comics anyway, even if sadly not always in reality.) I liked drawing his face in contorted expressions too, usually as a result of his stupidity. Here he is, having swallowed washing powder, thinking it was sherbet. As the woman in the laundrette says, what a pillock.
I'm pretty sure I couldn't get away with anything like that in kids' comics today, even though they were cautionary tales of how not to behave. I grew up on the manic recklessness of strips in Wham!, Smash! and Pow! by people like Leo Baxendale and Ken Reid who had produced this kind of edgier humour for those comics. I always saw Oink! as following in that tradition. Not that I'm comparing myself to greats like Leo and Ken who will never be equalled, but the spirit of their work is what inspired me.
I'm a firm believer that children know the difference between what they see in a comic and the real world around them. As a precaution though I always showed the consequences of Tom's stupidity and aggression; it always backfired on him.
4 comments:
while i'm sure there are some cases in the uk, it's mostly in the USA where parents are so stupid with their kids as to get them to do what they read in a comic or see on tv.. in the 80s and early 90s, in the USA, they had alot of problems with not being allowed to do stuff in kids shows which could be seen as 'repeatable' actions.. can't say 'death' or 'kill', which is why video game manuals say you 'destory' or 'defeat' an enemy and you don't have 'lives' but 'tries'.. Good example, i'll take the Sonic 1 Megadrive english manual.. lives counter is 'number of chances Sonic has to get through the act', the extra life box is 'this gives you one extra chance to complete the game'. come to think of it.. USA comics had a much stronger 'not allowed' list then UK comics did at the same time period..
We had restrictions on what we could show in Sonic the Comic. I remember I had Sonic leaping out of a downstairs window to escape in one episode and editorial added a big blurb about windows being dangerous and not to imitate it.
yeah.. though first thought at reading that, It wasn't Sonic. without getting the issue out to double check number and names, a Kid had gotten an 'insect guy' costume for christmas, then gotten bitten by an insect so he believed he had super powers, so tried to jump out of the window and use his powers. I'm thinking it was probebly that one cause while the mother was trying to tell the kid not to and alot of the story dealt with 'don't be so stupid' in a way, there was a editorial caption about 'don't do this at home'. It would be.. Issue 93 the story 'A Christmas Wish' with Roberto Corona on art.
You Sonic fans have far better memories about the work I did than I do. :) Thanks Ryan.
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