Comic Cuts - The Panel Show
A show about comic strips, comicbooks, & comic characters. Each guest brings a panel from a comic. The panel try and guess where it's from, then talk about it. Hopefully we all go away learning something about comics we didn't already know, or maybe we've just showed off a bit. Hosted by Kev F Sutherland, writer & artist for Beano and Marvel, now busy adapting Shakespeare into graphic novels.
Comic Cuts - The Panel Show
Helen Quigley & Paul Savage
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Voice over artist and producer Helen Quigley and comedian and cartoonist Paul Savage bring in panels from a couple of British adult humour icons.
See the images from the episode here (they're also in the podcast artwork).
Every episode, the guests reveal a panel from a comic, we try and guess where it's from, then we chat about it. Half an hour later hopefully we've learned something, or just shown off and had fun along the way.
If you've enjoyed this, why not buy us a virtual coffee at Kev F's Ko-Fi page.
Your host, and series creator, is Kev F Sutherland, writer and artist for Beano, Marvel, Oink, The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, and most recently author and artist of graphic novels based on Shakespeare. kevfcomicartist.com
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Join the Official Comic Cuts Facebook Page, aka Youtoobling, and comment on the show there too, why not?
Hello and welcome to Comic Cuts the Panel Show. I'm Keb F. Sotherland, the bloke who writes and draws comics for Beano and Marvel and now adapts Shakespeare into graphic novels for kids. And also has a hand in the Scottish falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre. And this is your favourite podcast, which has an occasionally remote connection to comics. Don't worry if you don't know or care anything about comics. Half the time, neither do my guests, and it doesn't hurt. My guests have brought with them a panel from a comic or something close, and we're going to see if we can identify it and talk about it. Maybe we and you will learn something about comics we didn't already know. Or maybe we'll just show off a bit and have an enjoyable chat. Let's see. Joining me today are Helen Quigley and Paul Savage. Hello. Hello. Comic Cuts. We're looking at a panel, and we comprise a panel, there's a few of us, so the panel sees a panel and we talk about the comics from the panel we discuss. We call it Comic Cuts. I've asked everyone on the panel to bring a panel to the panel. You'll be able to see these images in the show notes and then on the artwork for the podcast episode, depending where you get your podcasts. But don't worry, you don't have to, because we're going to be able to describe them. But first, let's describe each other. Helen and Paul. Helen first. Hello. Um and welcome to the wonderful world of comics. Who's Phyllis Twigg?
Helen Quigley:Oh my God, how long have you got? She was radio's first dramatist, but was miscredited for the best part of a hundred years when uh it was thought that someone else had written the first radio drama in and performed it in 1924. Phyllis did The Truth about Father Christmas in 1922.
Kev F Sutherland:And how did you come to know about Phyllis Twigg and her authorial history?
Helen Quigley:It was through a couple of routes. I mean, it was the BBC's hundred-year anniversary in 2022. So obviously radio drama was part of that since it was one of the very earliest types of performance that the BBC put out. So I knew about that. Also, living in Chelmsford, there is that radio heritage via Barconi and Wireless and The Riddle Hutt and Dame Nelly Melbourne. And of course, the origins of the BBC, as a result, started in Chelmsford because of the technology.
Kev F Sutherland:And there we have Helen's claims to fame. Helen is a voice-over artist and an audio producer, a radio producer, and a podcast producer. But Chelmsford is the first thing that comes up on your CV, it seems.
Helen Quigley:It has come in handy as a talking point. I mean, look at us now. So that's nice and easy.
Kev F Sutherland:Paul, where would come up first on your CV?
Paul Savage:Um, hopefully comedian. Um, because that is what my uh day job, as it were, is. Uh, but I'm also a cartoonist. Uh I also um have done about 900 different jobs. So uh that's undiagnosed and then diagnosed ADHD for you. So uh yeah, I I like to keep what I call a portfolio career of uh lots of different things.
Kev F Sutherland:And an international one. About this time of year, we're recording this uh listener in January. Don't you gad off to the other side of the planet?
Paul Savage:Uh and I'm doing so uh very shortly. I'll be off to the Perth Adl uh Adelaide Fringes and then the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for three months uh of getting vitamin D and not being sad in February. It's quite good to sell tickets in uh uh other countries that uh you just find being English is um sometimes a little bit of a quirk. They're like, oh, that's nice. And uh quite a lot of the Australians don't they um they're sort of using it to work up shows for other ones. So um Right. Oh, you mean you're developing the full uniform show, and all the Australian audiences are like, oh thank you, someone's trying, uh, which is very nice.
Kev F Sutherland:I found when we performed with the Scottish Falsetto Soc Puppet Theatre in Adelaide, that was the only place in Australia we went to, that the most disturbing thing was that nobody had come from nearby because there isn't anywhere nearby. If you asked the audience where they were from, they were from Adelaide, uh except for a few voices at the back who would say Melbourne, because they were comedians.
Paul Savage:Yeah, it is the uh the they're very like and Perth's even more like that because Perth is just one big town in the middle of nowhere. Do you have to tweak material to adjust to taste? Do they understand? Yes, they understand you. Uh they mostly get our culture, so um, it's not like Americans where you have to explain certain uh just differences in culture. Um They won't let you be as self-deprecating. Um you can do a couple of lines about yourself being a uh an idiot, and then they'll go, Oh, come on. Be a bit nicer to yourself, which I actually find quite charming.
Kev F Sutherland:Helen, has your work taken you on international travels as far afield as Australia and New Zealand?
Helen Quigley:No, just holidays, really. Um I mean, most of my work is based in my home office, so I don't need to do an awful lot of travelling. Um say I'm a doctor Champsford, I'm not an Essex girl.
Kev F Sutherland:Oh, you're originally from the north, I believe.
Helen Quigley:Uh North. I'm a monkey hanger, yeah, originally. But I've been in Champsford a lot of the years.
Kev F Sutherland:You will elaborate upon uh the derivation of monkey hanger.
Helen Quigley:Oh, it's that uh um a f during the the French uh about 1812-ish, something around that, uh when the various wars were happening, uh a French ship was shipwrecked on the rocks off Hartleypool, and the crew were all washed up, and the ship's mascot was wearing a French uniform and the French and that was a monkey. And the people of Hartlepool have never seen a French person before. They just saw this monkey in a uniform and assumed he was French, so they hanged him. It's the short version.
Paul Savage:But I've heard there is actually a link to comics uh because the newspaper cartoons of the time would have um your Britain would be either represented by a line or by John Bull, um Uncle Sam, you know, was representing uh America, and uh French people were often represented by monkeys, and so it they were just like, Oh, that is what a French person looks like. We've seen it in those documentary cartoons.
Helen Quigley:Yeah, and of course there was that headline about the cheese eating surrender monkeys, wasn't there, which pops up now and then as a headline.
Kev F Sutherland:How wonderful! Oh, great to have a comics connection, and how appropriate for this podcast. Um why, it's almost like we're linked telepathically. On which subject? Oh, yeah, we don't just throw this show together. Uh Helen, you were involved recently in a mass telepathic experiment.
Helen Quigley:Yes. Well, again, this ties back to Phyllis Twigg, which was um uh the truth about Phyllis Twigg was the drama that I made, directed with Paul Carenza, who of course you know very well.
Kev F Sutherland:Friend of the podcast.
Helen Quigley:Yes, he is, yes. He wrote uh he wrote the script for it, and we worked hard on a pitch and got it made. But he's such a fan of broadcasting history, the BBCs in particular in those very early days. And while we were working on the Phyllis Twig story, he said, I want I want to do um a dramatisation of the first telepathy experiment on the BBC, which was a panel of people, not unlike this, a few more of them, I think there was ten in total, including the BBC staff. And basically they challenged the l the listeners in a live report recording in a live broadcast, sorry, in 1925 to guess what the panel were thinking. And we had a lot of fun with that because it transpires at the time the panel were not really taking this terribly seriously because it sounded like they'd been put in a room at the Savoy, round the corner from the BBC, fairly close to the bar. And as a result, we're quite refreshed and not taking it as seriously as the BBC or the listeners would have liked. So it was a lot of fun to record, and that's on Paul's podcast, his British Broadcasting Century Podcast, if you want to hear it.
Kev F Sutherland:It's been a fascinating journey, hasn't it, from radio being essentially invented uh as we know it in 1922 to just a hundred years later, everybody having a podcast.
Helen Quigley:Well, the BBC's broadcast with 1922. Radio's been around a lot longer than that.
Kev F Sutherland:Well, the subject of this podcast is comics. My guests have brought in a panel apiece, and we're going to look at them. Who would like to volunteer to have theirs examined? I'm going to say hello uh as a I'm gonna be charming. Right then, brace yourself. Can we all see a lovely big image on the screen? Yes. We can, yes. I am gonna ask Paul to try and describe what he sees in front of him. Listener at home, you'll find this in the show notes, you'll find it where uh on the holding image wherever you get your podcasts from, but you shouldn't need to, because I'm sure Paul is eloquent enough to sum this up.
Paul Savage:Okay, so it's uh three gentlemen in hazmat suits uh in a uh by a staircase looking under under the stair cupboard. And then there's a uh it's a monochrome. There's a man saying uh right at the front of the shot saying he's never mixed with his own kind. And uh yes, the sort of um manga-y effect to be like that's shock right at the top, that sort of uh starburst pattern to just go, uh.
Kev F Sutherland:Right, for the panologists at home that study line and technique, I can say it is a black and white line drawing intended to be printed in black and white. The voice bubble is typeset, which is quite an unusual thing to see. It's done by certain people at certain times to give a certain effect, uh, hand lettering being much, much more common in almost all comic strips. I have a vague notion where this might be from because it looks like a magazine with which I'm familiar. I think I know if that's helpful. Well, I'm gonna let you have first guess. I'm just gonna circle around it a bit. Uh the line drawing technique, um, I think it's from a humorous magazine, but this is a line drawing technique which comes across as serious. You could very easily expect this to be in a dramatic magazine, even given the nature of the expression on the face in the hazmat suit, even from a horror magazine. But I think both Paul and I are gonna guess that it's not. Paul, what are you gonna guess it is?
Paul Savage:I'm gonna guess that that's from Viz, and I'm gonna go even more, and I'm gonna say that's one of Lee Healy and Barney Farmer's. Aha. I I love Lee Healey and Barney Farmer. I think I've just got such a um it's the right wing mail, um, the the Daily Mail one that uh uh I'm most familiar with their work from the uh the angry man online in the in the comment section. Uh but they do a wonderful line in bleakness. They just so many of their ones are just oh it it's a horrible world.
Helen Quigley:Yeah, and this this one is bleak and it does and it really makes me laugh every time I see it.
Paul Savage:So it's sorry, it's the male online, that's the the name I'm looking for. I was struggling around it. The mail online, that's the one.
Helen Quigley:No, I I had to do a little bit of digging. I mean, I I it was quite easy to find out. You're right, it's from Viz. Um the I think it was from Circa, is the best I can do, uh, February 2018. And yes, it is Lee Healy and Barney Farmer. But I couldn't quite figure out uh where where, why it appeared or when exactly, because it was a w seems to be a one-off. And it's called the Green Grass. And this panel is the uh during and it was during a bird flu outbreak, and the men in the hazmat suits have come to Keith Harris's house, broken into the house, or fought their way in by kicking the door down. They've come for Orville. You know, Orville's a puppet, as he says. He's never mixed with his own kind. He's this little green cute bird. I mean, who could possibly have dabbed in poor Orville to the authorities? Well, the last panel very clearly reveals that it's that bloody monkey. It's j Cuddles Cuddles has dabbed him in. So I mean, actually what I really like about this strip is yes, it is horribly dark, but the only colour elements in it, which you can't see in the panel I sent you, are Cuddles and Orville and the flames as he's incinerated.
Paul Savage:Oh fantastic. If I remember rightly, they did get one sued by Trinian Zusanna, um who complained about them using uh their image and likeness, and they just went, What are you gonna do? We've already made it now. Uh I th I think that was their legal case, was just yeah, we're we don't apologize.
Helen Quigley:I I mean I I I was saying I like this strip in particular because I um I bought it for my husband and it hangs in his office, so I see it quite a lot because he was always a big Viz fan and uh always used to have a Profanosaurus in the in the toilet, which of course, with the advent of phones, that's gone. Don't sit and read on the toilet, kids. Um and I I I really liked it as well because my my granddad absolutely hated Orville. He always used to call him awful when I was growing up, and I had an Orville puppet and things. So I it it still it amuses me so much that this, you know, sackeringly cute bird getting caught by the authorities and killed is just yeah, sorry, that's me being horribly dark.
Kev F Sutherland:You've now got me wondering, are there ventriloquists anymore? Certainly.
Helen Quigley:Nina Conti still does a lot of ventriloquists and she does some great stuff, yeah.
Paul Savage:The last year at uh fringe Max Fulham, um, who's a young uh young comedian who does really good vent stuff. Um, but yes, there are uh it is a it is a dying art, but it yeah, he's very good.
Kev F Sutherland:Keith Harris and Orville crossed over, didn't they? I remember seeing them for the first time, and this will show my age, on the Will Tappers and Shunters Social Club. And before Orville, he did it with the monkey. Um, because m what was the monkey's name? Cuddles, yeah. Cuddles. And there was a joke, the punchline for which was a bit on the side. I I can't remember the the gist of the rest of the joke, but I do know that once he started appearing on kids' TV, that gag had gone.
Helen Quigley:Was it was it Huggy Bear?
Kev F Sutherland:I'm thinking of Huggy Bear is a character from Starsky and Hutch.
Helen Quigley:It's something else.
Kev F Sutherland:No. That's where the gag a bit on the side comes from. Nookie, what's that mean? It's it means a bit on the side. Oh, I'm sure some comic historian will be able to put two and two.
Helen Quigley:Oh, I'm sure, yeah. No, Nookie Bear, there was a kid's version he did that I remember Nookie Bears being sort of very, you know, yeah, paired back, suitable for children. And then I remember watching a TV documentary about it, and he did this routine for adults in the clubs that was absolute filth with this puppet.
Kev F Sutherland:We've spoken a lot about Keith Harrison Orville. Back to Viz itself. Um, I wonder what numbers it sells. Because remember, once upon a time, a million copies were sold. It rivaled the Radio Times for the best-selling magazine in the entire country. But that was 1989.
Helen Quigley:I remember being on a s my first introduction to Viz was, of course, a school trip. And I was sitting at the back of the bus with my friends. Someone pulled out a copy of Viz and some pickled eggs. So I always associate Viz with beating pickled eggs.
Paul Savage:I think they'd actually probably quite like that. Um the pub that I used to drink in, in uh I grew up in Wolverhampton, and uh it was a lovely old Victorian pub. Uh, but they had uh Vizes above the urinals um that they used to change regularly, and then the management changed, and they didn't change them for about 10 years. So there was one uh called Driving Mr. David, which was about the uh the three cockatiels in uh the three little mice in um in David Beckham's head who move him around. And uh the last one is basically he's just trying to go to the toilet and uh he peas his pants uh and um and then he goes back in and talks to Poshboys, and the three cockatiels that live in her head go, he's pissed himself again. But that was definitely a good decade.
Kev F Sutherland:Uh yeah. Of course, it shouldn't be forgotten that my first published work was actually in Viz in 1988. I have a strip which appears in the big pink stiff one, the collected edition. Uh, my strip is called Tarquin Hoylette. He has to go to the toilet. Lovely stuff.
Paul Savage:Uh, one of my quotes that I used on the back of my book uh was uh the quality of your work was well presented, which was um a rejection letter from Viz.
Helen Quigley:So we didn't like the content, but it looked nice.
Kev F Sutherland:Yeah, because Paul, you do you do quite a lot of cartoon books. Is it is the cartoon material based on your stand-up or is it separate?
Paul Savage:It's um stuff that doesn't work in stand-up. Um I can be um as boring or as interesting as you want me to be on this, but um basically with uh comics and with um so with stand-up, it's almost purely an audio format. Um you can do little act outs, but um if you're setting a scene, you have to go, okay, so it's this and then it's this and it's this and blah blah blah blah blah. Whereas you can just, you know, draw a thing and everyone goes, oh, immediately it's you know, uh that's clearly a pub, this is clearly this, blah blah blah blah blah. And uh yeah, quite a lot of it's wordplay, which I don't tend to do a lot of in my set. The audiences just don't seem to like it, but quite a lot of my wordplay works better as a visual image.
Kev F Sutherland:Yeah, there's a few comedians who um who work in the one area and the other. Um Moose Elaine uh does stuff which is spot cartoons in private eye, in fact, quite often.
Helen Quigley:I I nearly chose one of his because I have a book uh on the shelf of of some of his sort of single page puns and things, and yeah.
Paul Savage:Yeah, the other one is um Olafalafel.
Helen Quigley:Yes.
Paul Savage:Um Beck Hill's a really good cartoonist, but um uh I I was gonna say she doesn't do enough of them, uh, but like she she doesn't like she's a very busy woman. Uh so uh yes, uh I'm not uh that that sounded uh it was I I preempted myself before it sounded like I was telling her off. But uh no, she's a uh excellent cartoonist and uh just does does the occasional one when she uh fancies it.
Kev F Sutherland:Yeah, can't cartoons with comic strips crossing over from one medium to another is quite often problematic. And Viz, I think, have exemplified that with the few examples that have been tried. There's the Fat Slags, which has been done both in animation and I think in live action. Roger Melly, the man on the telly, which was done as animation, with Peter Cook doing the voice. Uh Sid the Sexist was done with Jimmy Nail. There have been other adaptations, none of which I think have worked.
Paul Savage:Yeah, the Fat Slags movie, um Simon Donald, who founded Viz, was just like, it's nothing to do with us. Like, we sold the rights, don't come and talk to us. Uh but yeah, it's uh the idea wants to be in the format that it's in. Um and yeah, there's certain certain stuff that just doesn't work when it's transferred back into a different medium. Um sometimes you just go, yeah, that's like a stand-up show wants to be a stand-up show and a comic wants to be a comic and a a cartoon uh like animation wants to be animation. Just sometimes they don't want to cross over.
Helen Quigley:There is some yeah, uh it was interesting you were saying about crossovers. So I've been doing a bit of work uh on a podcast which is a comedy sketch podcast, and uh I know you know Fraser Geeson. Um and he obviously does a bit of stand-up stuff, a bit of writing, does comics. And we're working on the next episode of of the podcast to listen through the brown window. Um and he's going through his sketches and cartoon work that he's done to see what. might translate into audio. So even that is now crossing over. But I find it interesting the number of comics people who are working comics print.
Kev F Sutherland:Oh right, the the comics who work in comics. What that's one area where we really ought to expand the vocabulary because the word comics is so problematic over the years. Comic meant comic and then it meant comics and then comics meant comics.
Helen Quigley:Comics then becomes graphic novel.
Kev F Sutherland:And then Comic Cons. The number of times I go to a Comic Con's and there's no comics there. Paul, you and I were at a Comic Con very recently we we shared a table at Thought Bubble.
Paul Savage:We should have uh we should have had two two full days together but um due to a printing error not my fault um they uh did not ship enough books for me so I sold out on the first day and had to go home.
Helen Quigley:Terrible problem to have and Helen you were at Thought Bubble with B7 Media what did B7 Media B7 Media's branch that is B7 Comics yeah so uh set up as a uh B7 Media has existed for quite a long time making films, uh TV mainly audio drama in the last few years. Andrew Marksule has uh a background in comics and publishing himself and he wanted to move into doing more publishing. So we have since published uh Hancock the Lad Himself which is the biography of uh Tony Hancock that's by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page. And we're now on we've just released the third issue of Pilgrim which is a sort of sci-fi adventure comic strip. There's issue four coming in the next year.
Kev F Sutherland:Did I see Pilgrim in uh T.G. Jones Stroke WH Smith?
Helen Quigley:Yes you did. Yeah we didn't manage we did manage to get it in there and doing that thing of every time I was in a different city popping in to have a look and moving it up a shelf or two if it was on the bottom that sort of thing. You know completely guilty. I will put my hand up to that's by John Freeman and uh Neil Edwards from the art for that.
Kev F Sutherland:So just to remind us the image that we have just been looking at was what again?
Helen Quigley:Uh the green grass from Viz. From Viz, yes, by Lee Healy and Barney Farmer.
Kev F Sutherland:And now let's have a look at what Paul has brought in to share with us. Can we all see that on our screen?
Helen Quigley:Yes.
Kev F Sutherland:Now an image has popped up on our screen again I'm unfamiliar with it.
Helen Quigley:Helen, would you like to describe what you see before you this actually is throwing me back to Sunday night when I was at the comedy store watching the comedy store players. So this is a black and white hand drawn panel about half of it the top half is the speech bubble with hand lettered writing. Shall I read the writing?
Kev F Sutherland:Oh do please okay.
Helen Quigley:What's your name mate? Erling off you my name's Erling and I'm a Rudiger c coward and a off Erling. So most of it is asterisked out with lots of swears which I was not going to attempt a guess to fill in so you've got weird parping noises instead.
Paul Savage:If you've got uh if you want to know what those are called apparently those are called Grawlixes. Grawlixes is when you do the when you do the uh asterisk especially the the skull and crossbones ones for swears. Oh yeah that's apparently the uh the technical term in comics for it.
Kev F Sutherland:Listener at home this is what you call an educational that's what you call content.
Helen Quigley:That's what you've tuned in for the calllixes entertainment and information. So it it's a I suspect this is a middle aged white man thing. So he's sort of late 30s, early 40s man with a beard he's holding up a microphone, looks like an SM58 audio standing in front of a suspiciously familiar logo that says I think it says banter store. So I think we know what it's aiming at. I've no idea this is it my comics knowledge is fairly limited despite the amount of time been working on it.
Kev F Sutherland:Don't worry this is fairly niche. If I can chip in from the point of view of the panologists those of us who study line and technique this is black and white line drawing but with wash and I would say the wash, the grey tones have been done with a brush in the good old fashioned brush style. If they haven't, if they've been done on Photoshop they've been done in order to look like they've been done with a brush and massively so uh whether it would have to be printed in black and white in these modern times I don't know because it's definitely modern. We're looking at something I would say from the 21st century from the last half dozen years quite possibly the banter store logo based on the comedy store logo very familiar the brick wall that appears behind the why comedy is performed in front of brick walls I don't know it doesn't help a curtain's better but they've represented the brick wall they've represented It's edgy in it's edgy it's unfinished it's industrial it looks like you're in New York and it's 1978 I think is what they're going for. Anyway this guy is talking at a microphone but I feel he may be supposed to be a real person again because I think we're looking at a football satirical strip and my guess is it's the strip that runs in the Guardian Helen did you want to have more of a guess?
Helen Quigley:Oh yes I I think I think I know who you're referring to yeah but I I'm not sure of the name.
Paul Savage:And neither am I Paul? It's David Squires in the Guardian who I uh I do believe is England's greatest living Englishman. You don't need to know about football to get his strips uh I mean it helps massively also helps massively if you're into um uh Golden Era Simpsons because he'll uh occasionally just throw in a Golden Era Simpsons reference for us. But um I think he's like he does serious ones as well uh when they were talking about the um the World Cup in Qatar he had a illustration that he did of um basically a slave labour worker who was building the stadiums out in Qatar and they did a whole panel of everything that he'd sort of uh given first person account of uh you know of the getting up at six in the morning and working in 40 degree days of uh you know being really badly treated and they did that as a comic in the World Cup football coverage that the Guardians did which was very good. But this is sort of his um so the guy on stage is supposed to be uh Jamie Carragher but he's definitely supposed to be who's a former footballer now a commentator uh but he's definitely supposed to be um Paul Smith the uh resident MC at Hot Water in Liverpool who's gone viral number of times with his uh crowd work clips so that's the the the sort of thing that they're he's just mashing two together um and yeah it uh it was quite funny because I clipped this and sent this to Paul Smith because um we started out years ago um very similar times and then obviously his career's gone uh stratospheric with the the crowd work clips and then doing the tours off the back of it and uh so I was like I I know you were a bit famous but I didn't know you were being satirized in the Guardian famous that's quite impressive.
Kev F Sutherland:That's an interesting thing with comedy both on the page and on the stage is the points of reference. I always worry because of my age that I'm gonna make references to like the pop music of my childhood and a a swathe of the audience won't get it.
Paul Savage:It's a very interesting thing as well because there's um so I run pub quizzes I write my own um and then do them out and uh there is a point where you learn the last name you're ever going to learn. And so there was a point when I was doing pub quizzes where I was just like oh it's a it's a young woman singing oh that'll be Dua Lipa just if you don't have a guess you got you've got to put something down and you don't have a clue and then you're like do I want to you know do the research and find out you know what Sabrina Carpenter sounds like and what uh Olivia Rodrigo and all like the newer names or are you just gonna never change your music rounds and your pub quiz you know um but also audiences for comedy aren't as young as they were when I started the there was um I did a lot of student gigs that I just don't seem to think is the same that I don't think they exist in the same way anymore. Is it harder to know what's going to be uh in the in the common vernacular what's in the common parlor especially with stuff where it is just so atomized nowadays of like I found I could do stuff about stranger things but I couldn't do it about House of Cards. Traitors is another one that's sort of crossed over into people even if you don't know about like even if you don't watch it you know enough about it.
Kev F Sutherland:I'm looking forward to seeing the Edinburgh fringe programme for this year and see how many people have done the traitors in their posters or their subject matter.
Paul Savage:Yeah there's uh it's always interesting with the fringe thing because um every year there's sort of accidentally a theme that no one's said oh okay this is the year that we all do this but it'll just pop up in loads of people's different shows.
Helen Quigley:I've got a technical question about the panel uh that we've got there. So um the figure is holding the mic in his left hand. So I that seems to be indicative of the artist being left-handed like Matt Groening and The Simpsons. Is that a consistent thing?
Kev F Sutherland:Is David left-handed? I think he's holding it in his right hand. I think if you continue down off the bottom of the panel you could see that because we're seeing him from his right profile. That could be his right hand. I mean obviously if there's any other panels then swivel in front of him could be a right hand.
Paul Savage:Well the interesting thing is I'm gonna kick start a new book uh when I come back from Australia and I've got a couple of different titles on it but one of them it might be I I have somehow got worse at drawing hands because it's it might not be any hand they're just like it's cut off there just because hands are really difficult to draw.
Kev F Sutherland:Well that's another thing that comes back to the picture we're looking at here and the two pictures we've looked at today there's a point at which if you get too clever with your drawing it becomes I think less funny. It's no coincidence that the spot cartoons in The New Yorker which have been appearing now for a hundred years frequently are the simplest possible drawings. A hundred years ago you were getting artists like Ferber who would keep these drawings to such a level that they almost looked sometimes like a child could have drawn them. And that helps things be funny.
Paul Savage:Yeah one of the rules I have for myself when I draw is um the the whole thing needs to be done in an hour. So I'll just set a usually I listen to a podcast in the background because that helps focus my mind. But I'll pick something with about an hour episode. I mean I remember uh a guy who used to work for DC Comics uh picking up my book and just going oh you've drawn this far too well it's it's stupid wordplay like it could be like the dude from XCKD um XKCD I forget how oh yeah yes the the the parody site yeah mm-hmm yeah it it it is just focusing on the joke I mean the other way is going um how do I pronounce his name uh Nicholas Goodowich who does uh Perry Bible fellowship oh yes he does three a year but they're works of art they are just beautiful like and apparently spends you know a hundred hours drawing some of them and full paint and all this business because he's just like no that's the bit I enjoy doing and um but yeah there's a couple of different ways of going with these things.
Kev F Sutherland:The number of cartoons that appear in newspapers has very much fallen off a cliff along I suppose with newspapers themselves. Yeah it started roughly the time I started trying to get my work into newspapers the uh decline of the funny painters uh which is a real shame of all places uh metro the free newspaper used to have a cracker it used to have a strip called Nemi by a Norwegian artist called Lees who I've I've met.
Paul Savage:The interesting thing with Nemi was that uh because it was Norwegian was it? Yeah. Um there were occasional ones where you went what? And apparently they had just translated it worked in Norwegian and they just translated it. Oh the Metro just clearly went yeah that would do.
Helen Quigley:No but we can cycle back to Hartlepool with the those strips because of Andicap coming from Hartlepool there's even a statue on the headland in West Hartleypool yeah. I mean I I I love the handicap strips and I know my parents did and but I think with hindsight when you look at some of them and certainly I was too young to fully understand some of the context with Flo standing there with her rolling pin when he comes back from the pub drunk and falls asleep on the sofa and Yeah I'm not not sure that would fly nowadays, but stuff does have a life after that. I mean I I found out I think for the first time about 18 months ago that there is an Andy cap musical. Oh wow the other the um the playlist is on on Spotify I I did listen to it and I was talking to some friends who'd actually been in it and I was completely what is this alchemy? I've never heard of an Andy Cap musical. It's actually quite good.
Kev F Sutherland:There's been a few crossovers over the years uh Little Orphan Annie turning into Annie is probably the most famous I remember from some comics history book I've got that uh Lil Abner was made into a musical and at some point in the 1960s so was Superman with a a play called Is It a Bird? Is it a plane? No, it was obviously shit.
Paul Savage:Well they they tried to do one about 10 or 15 years ago uh called Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark which was uh one of the costliest flops in Broadway history.
Kev F Sutherland:I think it was someone like it was it was you too was it you too yeah it was U2 Bono and the Edge wrote the Spider-Man musical which was uh a yeah legendary uh Moni Luna the the only factoid I know about that is that it was such a big effort that they actually had to put the orchestra in another building down the street which caused all manner of problems as you would expect with feeds and timings and matching in entrances and things like that.
Helen Quigley:I just thought no it's just why make more work for yourself?
Kev F Sutherland:Just have a smaller orchestra and put them in the actual theatre you can see the temptation because um with the fragmentation of the entertainment industry in recent years the stage musical if it works is one of those remaining surefire ways of making a fortune.
Paul Savage:Yeah. When uh Harry Potter and the cursed child came to London they basically whatever the theatre was uh it's in the what was the it's the one at Cambridge Circus now I can't remember they paid off the uh play that was there because they're just like this is gonna run for 10 years.
Kev F Sutherland:And looping our whole show subject matter together I've just had the most brilliant idea for Viz the musical if it if it's not already been done.
Paul Savage:Do you know I wouldn't be surprised yeah I I actually genuinely think that could quite work yeah yeah there you go we've sorted the future well thank you so much for bringing in our two examples our examples were tell us again Paul what we were looking at from you uh you're looking at uh David Squires in the Guardian uh pretty and uh his football uh theme strips um I think it's just called that I think it's just called David Squires I don't think it has a special name um also does one for the A League which is very interesting which is the Australian Football League um uh but not Aussie rules football the sort of football out in Australia um which is very interesting because uh it's trying to get jokes you don't have context for uh um uh because he lives out in Australia now despite being from Swindon um so he does the the uh garden the Australian one which is uh very good as well so uh yes he uh do check him out well there's niche and Helen we were looking at from you uh the green grass uh Lee Healy and Barney Farmer from Viz and I'm went to have a look at Lee's website and I see he's got a whole load of other prints of strips on there that I'm very tempted by.
Helen Quigley:So going to go back and have a scroll through and see what else I fancy.
Kev F Sutherland:Where can the listeners at home find you variously online on the socials?
Paul Savage:Hello I am HQ Voice, you know, initials plus voice uh menu on Instagram uh good old LinkedIn which is tedious but necessary most of the time um and on my website hqvoice.com and Paul where will we find you uh I am savagecomic.com for the website uh where you can see some of my work um about 43 comics for you there I'm uh on savage comics underscore on Instagram uh which is the easiest way to find uh gigs and stuff and uh the book uh which is currently sat in um uh in Sheffield but hopefully it will be back with me uh some point I can start selling it uh is called But Doctor I am a collection of comic strips by Paul Savage.
Kev F Sutherland:Fantastic thank you both for joining us listener at home don't forget to like and subscribe and all the rest of it you've been listening to Comic Cuts the Panel Show hey if you're enjoying this episode of Comic Cuts the Panel show don't forget there's an entire back catalogue in a first season for you to catch up on. My guests have included comic folk like Brian Bollin, Rachel Smith, Metafrog, Gary Northfield, Nigel Octalooney, Nigel Parkinson, Laura Howell, Sonny Long, David Leach, we've had the comics Laureate Hannah Berry, resident alien creator Peter Hogan, podcasters like Adam Roach, legendary singer-songwriter Dean Friedman, Jessica Martin. The list of comedians includes Ashley Story, Bethany Black, Will Hodgson, Paul Karenza, Izzy Lawrence, Doug Siegel, there is too many to list. And they've brought in comics from Marvel and DC to The Bunty and the Eagle, from Robert Crumb to Viz, Webcomics, Obscure Manga, all points in between. And sometimes we don't talk about comics at all. Don't forget to click and subscribe, leave a review, and tell a friend. For example, what could these two be talking about?
Hannah Berry:With a swastika on his shirt, uh, he's got his trousers down, his bum out, and he's he's standing with his feet in a bucket of pig shit on a stage.
Kev F Sutherland:Um, there's lots of people looking behind him and he's saying uh uh uh yes I can feel it coming out now come on fuck off out of it you blasted queen Comic Cuts we're looking at a panel and we comprise a panel there's a few of us so the panel sees a panel and we talk about the comics from the panel we discuss and we call it Comic Cuts
