Calamity James
Sep. 18th, 2010 06:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidnI wouldn't be able to tell you exactly how I got to thinking about this, but I encountered a much less horrific piece of nostalgia than last time when I remembered how much I used to love the Calamity James comic strip - it was one of the first things that I remember enjoying for how utterly surreal it was. This was either part of the Beano or the Dandy, the famous pair of Scottish comics that nobody could tell the difference between, and it was drawn by an artist who I've just found out is called Tom Paterson. I can only find the earliest strip here, but from the very beginning, the style was very apparent.
I remember that the strip was unusual among its neighbours for being drawn in this... distinctive ugly style. And pushing that week's storyline almost into a secondary place, every spare inch of each panel would always be crammed with random absurd details - furniture wearing shoes, or socks strewn about the place for no reason, were quite common, and buildings would have banners on them such as "Laughably Obvious Wigs Ltd.", or the "Monument to the Unknown Plumber" and melting "Plastic Factory" seen in that strip. As much as the artist possibly could, he would also attach labels and tags to everything, declaring things like a cow being "Prop. Yog Yoghurt Co." or having passing birds drinking worm-flavoured cola. On my first look at it, I hadn't even noticed the window-cleaner in the above strip held his brush by jamming it into his earhole until I looked again just now. It's like watching the artist unload the entire contents of his manic brain on to the page each time.
Having remembered all this, I wondered what the comics looked like now, and found this obvious April Fool Dandy issue from a couple of years ago. It looks like they were trying to parody the loudness and general Americanization of children's entertainment, with the usual hallmark of replacing perfectly good normal letters with those towards the end of the alphabet, out-of-nowhere emphasis on sports, and the obnoxiousness of... what? It's meant to be serious?
Oh dear.
I remember that the strip was unusual among its neighbours for being drawn in this... distinctive ugly style. And pushing that week's storyline almost into a secondary place, every spare inch of each panel would always be crammed with random absurd details - furniture wearing shoes, or socks strewn about the place for no reason, were quite common, and buildings would have banners on them such as "Laughably Obvious Wigs Ltd.", or the "Monument to the Unknown Plumber" and melting "Plastic Factory" seen in that strip. As much as the artist possibly could, he would also attach labels and tags to everything, declaring things like a cow being "Prop. Yog Yoghurt Co." or having passing birds drinking worm-flavoured cola. On my first look at it, I hadn't even noticed the window-cleaner in the above strip held his brush by jamming it into his earhole until I looked again just now. It's like watching the artist unload the entire contents of his manic brain on to the page each time.
Having remembered all this, I wondered what the comics looked like now, and found this obvious April Fool Dandy issue from a couple of years ago. It looks like they were trying to parody the loudness and general Americanization of children's entertainment, with the usual hallmark of replacing perfectly good normal letters with those towards the end of the alphabet, out-of-nowhere emphasis on sports, and the obnoxiousness of... what? It's meant to be serious?
Oh dear.
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Date: 2010-09-18 11:16 pm (UTC)It's definitely a Beano strip, though it didn't appeal to me that much, aside from the bizarre labels.
As far as I'm aware, DC Thompson, the publisher of the two of them tends to employ artists to work in their house styles for strips, quite often.
A schoolfriend of mine, who recently did a lot of work on a webcomic as part of a Masters (http://www.misprintcomics.com), has become a freelance comics artist and illustrator. Vastly talented, he actually had a X week internship at DC Thompson a couple of months ago, and has drawn some strips and/or pages for them.
Among other things, he mentioned that he got to see their archives, which he described as a gold mine, with stacks of illustration from the 60-70-I-don't-even-know year old publishing company. It sounded fascinating.
Also, this comment feels oddly pointless, and I'm not sure why. Among other things, it's reminded me that I really must get around to going to The Cartoon Museum (http://www.cartoonmuseum.org.whisky.webhoster.co.uk/site/) at some point.
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Date: 2010-09-18 11:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 01:20 am (UTC)Eek! A Disturbingly Loud Noise
Date: 2010-09-19 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 07:52 pm (UTC)My thinking was that since the Scottish one's acceptability allows for the French. I don't think I've ever really seen anything complaining about a comedy referring to French as "frogs".
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Date: 2010-09-19 12:40 am (UTC)Also: more furniture wearing socks; ye olde style.
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Date: 2010-09-19 12:01 am (UTC)I haven't seen James in the Beano for ages. Shame, that.
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Date: 2010-09-19 01:15 am (UTC)