why bother

You know, you can spend so much time trying to rescue something that you use up all the time that you could have done it again, only better. I am just going to redraw this it wasn't that nice looking in the first place. Particularly the bottom row of panels where the jagged centre frame just looks like shit. I don't know what I was thinking. 

the rest of quiglet

I did this in early February this year and when Steve asked me if I'd do a graphic novel I decided to expand on it, which has meant redrawing these pages. You have seen most of the redrawn stuff. It's interesting to me how when I'm drawing freehand I seem to take many more adventurous leaps with my drawing which means bigger errors and weird bodies etc but when it's good it's better. I don't think I got a pencil out once for this little publication. 

whistle woooh yay

What's that joke about I've suffered for my art, now it's your turn? Was that a Hey Hey it's Saturday thing? Anyway, this page was for some reason a real psychological hurdle for me and I finally surmounted it. It's not that great or interesting or worthwhile as a page, I drew it without any pencil, and it is more or less adequate but this whole section is just going to be talking heads and not very nice ones either. 

Have you ever had the displeasure of watching the film The Allnighter? I can't remember where I read about it but it got 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, it stars Susanna Hoffs and Joan Cusack and it was written and directed by Hoffs' mother. I'm watching it now and much to my surprise I am 3/4 of an hour in (I thought it was about 15 minutes) but I really think I have to stop. 

one side - side one, actually - of how dare you

So I have really only listened to one side of How Dare You which is I think the fourth 10CC album so they were probably (whether they knew/acknowledged it or not) trying to get over the hurdle of having the massive fuck off hit of 'I'm Not In Love' and stay true to Christ knows what they thought they were doing. I don't wish to sound derogatory. I'm super impressed by the bits but it's so-o-o disjointed! (Maybe I shouldn't say 'but'). It's described in various places as 'art rock', obviously most art rockers would not expect to sell a million albums particularly with a selection of sweetly played deconstructed hooks like this. 'I'm Mandy Fly Me' is so much not single material, it's a fucking mess, silly histrionic George Harrisonesque guitar (Todd Rundgren has this problem on some of his 70s material too, it's gross) and a really basic tune and words that... look, maybe it's just that the world has moved on in the last 45 years and so it should have. Of course, what do I know - I wasn't in one of the biggest selling, best-known bands of the 70s - I guess they were doing it right. I'm still amazed at how bitty the album is, it's like a freaky scrapbook.

As per the first album, there are bits of songs which I can't get out of my head they're just so catchy and so good, but most songs are a shamble with a strong presence of indigestible, fibrous, matty crap in there that make it hard to listen all the way through with pleasure. So, 'I Wanna Rule the World' for instance has a brilliant opening, an amazing section (the slightly ska 'watcha gonna do...' bit) and then sort of ridiculous chanting and silly theatrics... then the ghastly 'child vocal' section... who are these people!? It's like they are trying to make something new, but they only have these limited, archaic tools at their disposal. That track is more like a radio play than a song, and it's not much like a song - ! Then you know 'Icebergs' - what was it with the 70s and their obsession with the 30s? I blame it on Paul McCartney, but I guess stars like 10CC were entering their 30s in the 70s so their own parents were in their 50s/60s and had the 30s as their reference points... they're engaging a bit with their parents' culture (and I guess their parents' culture was what they saw as 'adult'). 

Exhausting! Can't wait to play side 2 (although I have waited 44 years). 

(Later: I watched the 2015 BBC documentary on 10CC tonight, whoever uploaded it has inserted some completely bizarre material towards the end with captions across the screen justifying scenes from soap operas etc as being thematically related to 'I'm not in Love'. I had to stop watching.)

rabbit rabbit

two months to do three times as much as I have done in the last three months

So now I am at the beginning of the second chapter. I have written the whole thing, but I have only drawn about four pages of it. There are pros and cons. There are more pictures per page (8) but I have already constructed most of the frames already, photocopied on A3 pages, and the action is largely static, with some bits that are more complicated than my talent as a drawer can handle. If I got another 20 pages of this thing done by this time next week, however, I would really feel like I could relax and pay attention to the whole; this chapter 2 is kind of an arduous grind but in the scheme of things an easier get. All the characters (I made up the three publicity ladies, above, this morning) are created and I feel like overall it's more the boredom of repeating the same scenery/people that will be the challenge (boring for the reader and me) rather than the difficulty of conveying things. 

This chapter is about the actress/performer known as 'Biltong' who appeared as the robot maid in The Rest of Quiglet. She is promoting a memoir and if there's anything funny about this chapter it is that she has had an exceptionally adventurous and extraordinary life, but the host of the tv show she's appearing on just keeps bringing conversation back to the fairly dull details of the Quiglet show. Even when she talks about that she gives up all kind of information that he fails to absorb or quiz her on. Ha ha, right? I don't know if it's funny or not. Also, she keeps berating the stupidity of the studio audience, who are extremely fickle. 

As the philosophers say, 'it is what it is'.