polarized double

A Cherished Dream regarding the future of the BABY BOOMER strip is the transition of the characters from my paper drawings into print: and long-term, if all goes well, perhaps we will see a large-scale,  mega-bucks, Hollywood Blockbuster --directed by Spielberg, no less-------featuring the strip's core characters in a lavish, CGI/hand-drawn animated spectacular. In the event of this not actually becoming a reality, I can always console myself with the fact that one of the characters actually 'made it' in the animated stakes: at least, in the form of a home-made 'animated avatar!' sorry it's a bit small: the scaled-down ACTUAL AVATAR is all that sadly remains in my archives. Please excuse the slightly clumsy 'JERK-O-VISION' production values, readers, --------this absolute 'rough-n-ready' presentation was assembled without the benefit of proper registration pegs, etc, but 'sort of' works....... in motion, no less! This avatar of JET BLANC ...

Heaven and Hell  turn up with occassional frequency as stylized backdrops in a fair few BABY BOOMER strips: again, the almost-limitless premise of the project means that these Afterlife locations are treated in an almost matter-of-fact, very casual basis, as if this sort of setting can be the target location of a cheap package Holiday! It is never explained exactly how B.B., Jet, Vibes or Veronica  manage to shift from their usual Downtown N.Y.C. location to the extremely alien trappings of Hades or cloud-bedecked Paradise: it is simply established as just another couple of scenarios in which the characters can inhabit and function in. There are equal amounts of gag situations set in both 'upstairs' and 'downstairs' in the Afterlife, and somewhat guiltily, I have to admit that scenes set in Hell are the most fun to work on: the appearence of the Devil himself is symbolized as having him appear as an almost Vaudevillian Villain, as he encounters the somewhat unimpressed ...

Depending on idea/gag requirements,  the appearence of the characters is sometimes tailored to fit the partickler situation: one of the main characters may win the State Lottery, for example, or at the other end of the 'social scale', be reduced to living as a tramp/hobo/down-and-out. This storyline device is spanned out over three or four tiny frames, meaning easily-recognized symbols of opulence--or financial hardship-----must come to the fore. Thus, in good times,   B.B., Jet, Vibes and Veronica can be seen in lush and tailored attire, and in bad times  they are reduced to wearing rags and carrying that old   cartoon cliche:   the knotted hankie around with them as need be. Comic-strips and fantasy is often about subverting accepted conventions and stereotypes, of course, and in the following cartoon we see three of the central figures down on their luck and downtrodden, but somehow have managed to overcome their poverty-stricken status and acquired a full-on...

This very controversial drawing remains the most doom-laden, destructive and pessemistic cartoon I have ever undertaken within the banner of the strip known as BABY BOOMER. What on Earth was I thinking of, coming up with this idea? Was I depressed, or experiencing a day when my faith in Humanity was at an all-time low ebb? I've no idea where most of my ideas actually spring from, and this cartoon remains something of a mystery. I have always loved drawing Atomic Explosions, however they are amongst the all-time taboo subjects of cartoonology, and best left avoided, especially if an artist is trying to get a foothold in a commercial setting: Death and Destruction on this scale is a bit of a downer,  to put it mildly. The experiment you see here is never likely to be ever repeated, so it's a true 'one-off' you see before you here: I am, however, still trying to work out how to portray Nuclear Explosions into my daily strips.....thus far, I have come up with a scenario inv...

The Second Instalment in my ' Illustrated War Guide' ' is a relatively restrained gag, that has already appeared within other forums. One commentator pointed out that the Drill Sergeant/Inspector/Whoever had stripes on his arms that were 'not accurate' or words to that effect;  I got the impression that perhaps he came from a Military Background [or something]. This would explain such attention to detail, however, if I spend too much time looking up visual references on GOOGLE IMAGES etc [which is very handy at times, it has to be said] then all spontanaeity in the original rough drawing will be lost, making for weaker and less effective cartooning. Such meticulous attention to detail is admirable in some ways, but perhaps is more relevant if you are drawing a COMMANDO comic or something.......in cartoonery as brazen as mine, the artist can get away with ' screaming blue murder'. The majority of my drawings are penciled in very quickly, in order to retain sp...

The subject of WARFARE:--------- especially in it's most extreme, 'all-out' sense [ ie: as in World Wars  One, Two and Three]  is yet another recurring theme within the daily strips, and source of never-ending potential for extremist gags [ I simply LOVE drawing tanks, missile-rockets, exploding shells, etc]  and although this very serious theme may not appear to be an immediate candidate for slapstick humor, it has of course transferred successfully into the worlds of Charles M. Schulz' PEANUTS with some dailies set in the trenches of  fully-fledged War Zones, and Mort Walker's  long-running  BEETLE BAILEY   of course, set in and around a U.S. Military Base. My own 'take' on this very loaded subject is to ridicule the wasteful and [ in my view] pointless and destructive elements of War in it's many guises: this subject has of course to be handled with extreme delicacy, but there is no doubt that this concept is among my favorite themes, and offers up ...

Creating Cartoon Horror-Iconography is yet another well-beaten path within the annals of cartoondom, with entire comics put out at one point in the early mid-70s [in the UK] : Shiver and Shake, of course, from 1973, and Monster Fun comic which followed a scant two years later. Sadly, my policy of not showing vintage UK comics---or any other copyrighted material------ on this site precludes me from adding illustrations as we speak, but I will state that these IPC comics were keenly devoured by myself at the time, and in fact I grew to prefer them, over time, to the over-familiar D C Thomson output of the same era. It has to be recorded that both of these comics had fairly short and brutal runs, indicating, perhaps, that their short-lived success proved to be the proverbial flash-in-the-pan. I can't think of a single 'horror-themed' newspaper strip that has proved long-running and successful, although that's not to say that it can never be done. LIO by Mark Tatulli may be...