Near Death

- So this week I'm posting up an old cartoon from my 'vault' and once again sorry to all those that have seen it before (just squint and pretend for now ok?), but I have a good excuse/s. I've had a rather shocking last week or so; first off my 16 month old son, Dash was sick and really difficult to look after. After a week of thinking he was teething I took him to a doctor to find out he has tonsillitis. After putting him on some antibiotics (The genius who invented antibiotics is a freakin' legend, that and kids Nurofen.....my 2 new heroes, who are they? Maybe I should Google that shit) he was all good, but literally the next day I came down with a flu of some sort (of which I'm still sick, I can't get over how much more I get sick now that I have a kid, it's amazing) which kind of prevented me from doing any work, which was a shame as I was planning on starting some mid-week update stuff last week, oh well. Oh and the other reason I can't do a new cartoon, even though I've been working on some stuff today, is that I have to go to my other work tonight to do stocktake (so no usual late night cartooning for me), yay! Normally I would have had the cartoon done already but I was sick and all, so sorry. So anyway, you're getting an old one, but I'm working on the next few weeks cartoons today and I plan on having some backups ready to go for the next time something like this happens again, which I'm sure it will. Plus I'll need one as I'm going away for a weeks holiday very soon.


As I had to look through my old stuff to find a 'toon for this week, I've noticed there's quite a few I really like the idea for but not so much the artwork. Some were rushed and others are very old, back when I wasn't as good at drawing cartoons or using computer software. So I thought maybe I might do some 're-booting' of some old cartoons! Hell, it works for Hollywood why not me hey? What do you think? Some of them I may change a fair bit more in them as well to improve them, which could be fun honestly. Is that cheating? Should the past stay as the past? As I mentioned last week sometimes I get really lazy when it comes to backgrounds, so there are quite a few there that could use some sprucing up in the background department....hmmmm. I'd end up completely redrawing them so it's not all cheating.


Anyway, I ended up picking this one in honor of my wonderful lady, Penelope as this is one of her favourites out of all my cartoons (for years now she's had a printed version stuck up in her office at her work), plus she was the one to convince a sleep deprived sick man to stop working at 9:30 last night and go to bed and post an old cartoon the next day instead. So this one's for you baby! I hope you all like it as much as she does! I love 'death' as a character, he's got so much potential! I also have another idea for a death gag where someone abuses his girlfriend for something and says to her "what are you fucking deaf?!" and Death over hears it as 'death' instead of 'deaf' and gets very cranky. Something like that, not sure how to do it yet, and it still needs some work I think, I'll keep you posted. This one is quite a few years old but still has some of my basic staples in there, you may notice the purple colour in the window in the background and it also has my other thing where I sign my name with a red dot for the 'i'. Why do I do that you ask? Well my 'logo' of sorts is an anti-social clown named Englebert, who I've been drawing for a very long time now, if fact look up...there he is! So as he's a clown he should have a red nose....wait why does he have a black nose anyway? Hmmmm, not sure, maybe I should change it back? So anyway as my logo is a clown I thought I'l sign off with a clown nose....which kind of doesn't make as much sense when he has a black nose does it? Man I really should change that. Anyway, so I've been doing that with my signature for ages now and I like it, even though it makes little sense, probably why I like it honestly.  Another thing of note is that this was drawn during my period of working for a Motorbike magazine, hence why the guy in it is bald with facial hair. You see as I was catering to a specific audience I had all the characters in my 'toons try and look like bikers. Which most of the time was; bald, facial hair, tattoos and vests or jackets. So there's another 'fun' game! Look through my back catalogue and spot the biker! Not fun? Yeah, you're probably right....


Anyway, I'm going to try and knock out some more cartoon ideas for the rest of the afternoon before I have to go pick up my little man from daycare and then off to work scanning shit and hearing 'beep.....beep....beep' about a gazillion times.....ahhh good times. So until next time,




Mike