Tuesday 13 December 2011

Death and laughter.

 A click should result in considerable biggerification.


A long time ago I developed an interest in cartooning. They were never good enough to let me turn professional although a few did manage to get published. Cartoonists get paid peanuts, unless they come up with a cartoon called Peanuts and sell it themselves. It wasn't a career option. Some were too subtle, some had to be stared at for a long time to get the joke and people these days have no patience. Some were just plain crap.

I was good enough to be almost forcibly drafted into drawing all the posters for a social club at one place I worked and I did get better with practice. I'll never be Charles Addams though.

Still, I thought I'd pick out some of the less dreadful ones and combine them with the stories in the Christmas book. You could call it padding because I don't have time to write enough short stories and you'd be right. Still it amuses me to put the jokes next to the scares. It ought to drive a few people nuts.

This time I hope to have a hand-drawn cover for the book. It's been a while since I dipped a pen into Windsor and Newton ink but if I'm not too rusty, it'll be better than my usual Photoshopped imagery.

Or maybe worse. Worth a try.

Opinions on the combination of cartoons and bizarre stories are welcome. If nobody would ever buy it, I won't do it.

(Updated to add - I'm thinking of separating the two for the electronic version. One of stories and one of cartoons. Is a cartoon Ebook even possible?)


7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I mean this in purely an observant non-critisizing manner only, but you do seem to have a definite pre-occupation at times on the subject of death. It's interesting.

JuliaM said...

" Is a cartoon Ebook even possible?"

Why not? There's lots of graphic novels already available, and Marvel has an online 'virtual bookstore' for the iPad...

Leg-iron said...

Anon - you ain't seen nothing yet. I can make Goths look jolly ;) No, I don't dress up in funny makeup nor do I sleep in a coffin. I'm just a natural-born miserable git.

JuliaM - I can but try. At least it costs nothing.

P T Barnum said...

Having had to "return" a Clive Barker graphic novel in Kindle format because the text was unreadable (blurry and fuzzy), I'd be cautious about all ebook formats being equal for cartoons. .cbr was invented for a reason.

Leg-iron said...

I can make the Ebooks separate (and a lot cheaper than print), so if the cartoons don't work I won't release that part.

Kindle could do them if I can get the image size right, but that can be tricky. And formatting it to work on every type of reader could result in hair loss and ground-down teeth.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Did you draw that cartoon? It is brilliant.

Leg-iron said...

That one was from 1983. I had dreams of being a cartoon strip creator but wasn't consistent enough between frames.

These days I dream of being consistent between drinks. That would be good enough.

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