Mick and Hoppa at War

21/5/16

I started with the idea of Mick and Hoppa in the Australian air force and then changed it to them joining the SAS. I have been drawing it for a couple of years now. Some references to real events may become non-chronological as events in the world rapidly accumulate and sometimes I might refer to something more recent before the older event. For example, the shooting down of a Russian plane by Turkey might occur in the strip (yet to be drawn) before the siege of Kobane (also yet to be drawn). There is a strange combination of slapstick absurdity and references to some very grim events. As in all wars there are varying degrees of moral ambiguity but there is a consistent reference to the evil of IS/ISIS/ISIL. I think of the WW2 Buggs Bunny cartoons that featured Daffy and Buggs fighting the NAZIS. There was no hesitancy by Warner Bros to use ridicule and you will see no hesitancy here. There is a lot more that can be done to undermine ISIL by a variety of means.

There is also an excursion into the hypocrisy of Western feminism which could have gone in a separate section but for continuity I have included it here. It was fun to include myself in the strip, especially as Mick was originally a fantasy version of a much younger me.

The Mick and Hoppa At War will be regularly added to until I think the story is finished and it is my current main project which eventually I hope to gather into a book. New cartoons will mostly be going into this existing page.

The style, especially of the writing will vary as I began with hand written with gel pens and then changed to printing with the paint program. I also ddi my colouring with 'Paint'. I am now going back to using hand colouring with paint pens and paint and even coloured pencils. The end result is a little inconsistency but i think it makes it more interesting visually.