“Scriblings from under the wargame’s table”

OK well first off let me start with an apology as originally this post was supposed to be a “battle report” of a game we played over the last week while we were all off of work, well that never happened (where does the time go!) and as I sit here on Boxing day I will have to resort to my back up plan which is to share with you some of the cartoons I’ve drawn over the years and give a little insight into the stories behind them and what they were created for. And I promise to start painting again before next weeks post, (though there will be one more rather special post before then but more on that as and when).

This was one of the first cartoons I did for “Ragnarok” the Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargamers “irregular” magazine, way back in 1995 (in fact looking through my old cartoons most of them seem to come from this year, this seems to be my most prolific drawing period since I was young. At the time Myles my eldest son was very into Postman Pat, so this was origially done for him, and as he has been brought up with Dr who and Dalek’s they also had to be included of course.

Another “Ragnarok” cartoon this time with more of a Wargames theme to it, I used to send batches of these off to the editor (Steve Blease I think was doing it then) and he used to include one each issue, going back through some of the issues looking for ones to include here I hadn’t realised I’d done so many.

I think this was also done for the “Rag” in 1995 as well, the idea that all aliens speak perfect English often with an American accent is one that has always amused me (as do some of the excuses writers come up with to explain why!), though the thought that all these programs being beamed up into space might be picked up by aliens (like in “Explorers”) does have a certain appeal . So the idea that these anglophile aliens would not be able to understand a Russian speaking astronaut just seemed to work to my twisted sense of humour.

This is one of my favourite cartoons and was done for “The Pale Squat”, the club newsletter we used to produce for the “Wirral Games Club”. Rather than writing the text out by hand as I usually did I printed it off on the electric typewriter I used to use at the time and glued it under the picture before it was photocopied. I was also quite pleased with how the dragon came out.

Another of my favourites, I’ve said before that I’m a big fan of the “G” man and the inspiration for this came from the release of the US version of Godzilla with it’s computer generated special effects. As we know now this wasn’t the end of the “man in a rubber suit” movies but it’s ironic that the latest Godzilla movie, though a “proper” looking Godzilla film is now once again CGI, so this cartoon is relevant again. I must apologise for the quality of the picture as I had to scan it from the pages of the magazine as I don’t have the original.

This last one was done for “Ragnarok” but was never published. For some reason I can vividly remember drawing this about one o’clock in the morning on a night just before the millennium. It was based around the television program “Changing rooms” that was on at the time and I thought it would be amusing to compare it to Arthur C Clarke’s vision of the year 2001.

Well there you go I hope you’ll forgive me this little indulgence (I promise to go back to actually painting figures in the New Year!), I have enjoyed this little trip down memory lane. Looking through my old scrap books, I can’t for the life of me remember why I stopped cartooning, I might post some more of my old ones at some point. I might even be inspired to do some new ones someday, who knows. If your still in the mood for more cartoon action I recommend you go here to “Mooretoons” and check out Simon Moores excellent strips!

http://mooretoons.blogspot.co.uk/

Cheers Roger.