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.

                                                     

                                           

                                                    

Mick and Hoppa in Texas

I'll be posting some cartoons here about the Alamo but the first one is Mick and Hoppa's encounter with Indians. As usual Mick and Hoppa follow my hitchhiking bicycle trip some seventeen years ago, although, unlike them I did not have to dodge any arrows.

I also visited the real Alamo, or what is left of it in Sa Antonio. I noticed a lot of young 'gangsta' types with the ridiculous fashion of wearing their jeans half way down their buttocks. I made a couple of mistakes there, one being chaining my bike to the enclosing fence around the Alamo and the other was wearing my hat into the monument, Obviously the Alamo is a great monument to Texan freedom. I don't think anything can really detract from the heroism of the men who gave their lives there. They were fighting a dictator and fighting for their rights. However, revisionist historians do point out that some of them were slave holders and so on. The ancient Athenians were also slave owners but they gave us some of our cherished ideas about democracy so nothing is ever totally black and white. One thing is sure - those men in the Alamo did not have to remain there to face an overwhelming force in order to uphold what they believed in.

 

 

 

Arizona Wildlife Museum

 

 

My Old Life Drawing Nudes

My daughter found my folder of drawings from some seventeen years ago and was so impressed that she photographed some of them. I did some hobby classes and also had a few people model for me on the beach. I did quite a lot of quick sketches of a few minutes and worked them up later. You can see I liked Bret Whitely and also the Fauves. Apologies to Michelangelo for my version of God breathing life into a hominid Adam!

 

 

 

 

Mick , the Gazer

Mickand Hoppa in Arizona

 

 

Seventeen years ago I was riding my bike through the desert of Arizona when I really did meet a nurse called Sue and watched a sunset, She wasn't really a 'cowgirl' but I thought it looked good in the cartoon. There wasn't really a talking kangaroo either really, except in my head...... 

Mick and Hoppa in California