Clown and Out

I have something of a love/hate relationship with fan conventions. I love the idea of them, but the reality of a packed room of seaty, becostumed bodies, not being anble to hear myself think and the very definite commercial undertones sort of dampen the squib a little. As interested as I;ve been to see my idols in the flesh and even ask the odd question, something usually stops me before I getto the ticket office.

That said, it's been nice to catch up with friends at the events (Hi Paul! Hi Wade!), and that's my biggest takeaway.

Oh, the strip. Yes, this had a bumpy conception, was scripted in part YEARS ago, with the events of a McGann-featured Armageddon still fresh in my ganglions, and among the panels scrubbed from ths incarnation, a hefty use of the team behind the Psychic Circus. In preparation for revisiting the unfinished story I listened to the recent Big Finish story about their origins. And then I took them ot of the strip.

Last note: this will be the final Karkus strip for a while. I'm prepping the next season as I write this, so as the man once said, Stay Tuned...

And thanks for reading!

Karkaeology: Oh, Wouldn't It Be Rubbery!

'Oh, Wouldn't It Be Rubbery!' is the last printed Karkus story, but pointedly still set within his 'lifetime' (hence the editorial remark under the title.) Mr Erato is bigly in snark mode, so some personalities may be thinly-veiled parodies, and depending on your love for the new series and its creators, your mileage may vary. I may return to the world also, because I do rather like Inspector L'zard, and if there's one thing we can count on with modern Doctor Who, it's that it just can't keep its mucky fingers out of Victorian London.

So then, this is the second of two Karkus stories (and one of five? six? seven?) Eratoverse strips to appear in Reverse The Polarity!, a lovely and very welcoming bolthole for Erato after TSV adopted a less-frequent printing schedule, and sort of changed its focus. In its new home the Erato strip just seemed to fit better.

Housekeeping:

As this has an RTP link, it behoves me to mention that RTP's editor Alex and I are discussing putting a collection together of the printed Eratoverse stories. If this happens, there will be extra content - alternative takes, extended scripts, translations and thumbnails, plus behind the scenes stuff like this. 'Rubbery' itself has about a whole page taken out, for example - so if you like this sort of thing, I hope you'll like what's being discussed as well.

Here's One I Made Earlier

Karkaeology: The Karkus Eyes His Opposition

Where to begin with the strip formerly known as 'The Karkus Eyes His Opposition'? How to describe it?

Overenthusiastically juvenile? A hurriedly-rushed first draft? Both will do. I ended up putting a fair bit of effort into subtly reworking this story. Why?

I didn't like the original. It made some obvious jokes about the appearance of its monster (which was designed by a child!), and then turned it into the ending by piling on and piling on references that were barely innuendo. Eurgh. And it undersold the Karkus! I have no problem with our hero losing, or getting the wrong end of the stick, or just wandering off-script, BUT he has to be still in the script - and the original was really more Alpha Centauri reacting to things.

Also, it was done hurriedly. Not 'Sevillian Job' hurriedly, but just with a little less care, and probably with that damned Rotring pen again - so this revision above is an attempt to improve on the original. It's still not a great story, in my opinion, but it's better now.

Ooh, that was a bit of a downer way to close up, so I'll just add that the vicar in panel ten of Page Two ended up looking like my old Presbyterian church minister. If you're reading this, hello Brian! I hope you're well.

The Prosthetic Aesthetic

My first Karkus strip in this revival period, done probably November or December 2019, and already I can see the changes in style, the heavier lines and the busier word balloons. I think I'd change some things if I were doing this now, but I like my Bandrils, and why not have a Centauri baddie?

Karkaeology: The Sevillian Job

Another strip by the esteemable Mr David Ronayne. For a VERY brief time I considered providing some mangled 'foreign' translation of the script - but changed my mind very quickly. Just no need. 'The Sevillian Job; is, of course, a parody of that famous Michael Caine film, Educating Rita, with the Karkus here playing the part of Julie Walters.

This strip has been updated, too. Both 'Sevillian Job' and an upcoming story needed a wee tweak in the artwork department - for a while I persisted, but ultimately failed to gain any skill, with a Rotring fine point cartridge pen in the vain hope that it might make me something closer to a 'proper' cartoonist. We never hit it off, that pen and I, nor I and its replacement when it got clogged with pencil graphite. I switched back to cheaper fibre tip soon after, and it's with them that I've gussied up a photocopy of the original - completing outlines, rendering shadows and holding lines, and even filling in some details. Possibly some colour would help one or two bits, as well. Save that for the next edition, maybe?

Some background: the 'baddies' of this story are the Threshhold, a community of temporal machineers from the Eighth Doctor DWM 'Endgame' series by Scott Gray. They, pointedly, had Letratone faces - and I, pointedly, had no Letratone, so had to make do. In looking through the script for this story from Dave, I discovered that I'd omitted or dropped one of his suggested visual gags - that the marscapone (I'd never heard of marscapone then, or paella) had ingredients from Forester's (from Planet of Giants), which went some way to explaining the Threshhold agents' diminutive size. Imagine my total surprise when that idea reappeared in the recent Big Slug Fest! The Yeti - Toot - was another character dave and I occasionally discussed, as I recall. NOt sure what we had in mind for him, though.

Finally, the last panel is a rewrite, as the original was another small stepping stone that led to the last adventure for the Karkus (at the time.) It's not relevant anymore, so it's been given a revision, which also provided an opportunity for me to draw a better version of the lovely Shockeye.

Scone Girl

Karkaeology: Where Egos Dare

This was the first (and until now only) Karkus strip published online, so it had to be in colour!

The Karkus is green. The reaction to that was a thing. I've no idea what colour he is in the TV episodes - most renditions I've seen online treat him the same way - flesh tones, probably a naked torso. Are there colour photos of him anywhere? Paging Andrew Pixley! I don't know, but what I do know is the Karkus is described as green-skinned in Peter Ling's Target novelisation of The Mind Robber, and who am I to argue with the Karkus' dad?

I had plans to reuse the Great Intelligence for years, and in June 2009 this story presented itself, so that's about it. Colouring him was fun, but slow, and I've never been so attentive of closing outlines and mentally blocking out colours in an Erato strip - the originals, by the way, are still just line art with no blacks at all.

And if the Karkus being green doesn't work for you, then feel free to ignore!

One Vision

Despite ths being the (counts on fingers) fourth(?) Karkus strip done since this new run began, 'A Blow to the Monoids' feels like the start of something new. It has a pre-credits sequence! It plays with the rules of panels (and boy, was it a pain to block out!) It has a linear thingy and an economy (honestly, there's one character and about three panels of clunky dialogue removed), and it neither squanders nor overplays its returning villain. I sometimes forget this story, but I do like it.

Karkaeology: The Karkus Licks a Stamp

"Based on a true story", it says here - and it sort of was. The Space Policemen's collision with a revolving door, and the Karkus' misadventure with the same (plus bicycle) were witnessed in real life but played out by confused fans and ahotel entrance and overseen by the mentioned Jamas, Jon Preddle, Alistair Hughes and me at a SF convention in Wellington in - ooh, 2000 or so? You can't make 'em up, but you can adapt them.

Draw Me Like One Of Your French Girls

Another old script, probably from around 2008, again. This was the second story I embarked upon early in 2020 as a Karkus revisit. And to all my many many French friends of whom there are many? L'sorry!

Karkaeology: Enter the Simian

 

Time for a cutaway! Or is it a flashback? A retcon? 'Enter the Simian' was published in Reverse The Polarity! issue 26, which itself came out in March 2008 - a clear seven-ish years after the last Karkus strip (TSV 64, December 2001 for those of you playing at home.) Why RTP? Because that's where I was doing most of my Dr Who work, outside of my own interest, Zeus Blog - of which more later. Why return to the Karkus? Because this was a story I wanted to tell, and uniquely - until now, of course - this was a Karkus story I wanted to tell. A handful of Erato characters earned a post-TSV return, but this was the only one which was meant to fit into the established chronology. The yborg chimpanzee jet Simian appeared in the last Karkus story, but I wanted to give him an origin tale. I had my own blog, Jetsam, going at the same time, so the Jet Simian name itself was out there. Maybe he just stuck in my head. The idea of a Clone superhero was, I think, sparked by David Ronayne, who proposed something along the lines of a Sensorite working with a mask, which he was kind enough to clarify for me on Facebook:

"From hazy memory that would be "The Lone Sensorite" - the gag being that in human terms the hero wears a mask to hide their identity, with a Sensorite hero they wear the mask to define their identity (and conversly they remove the mask to "hide").
The other upshot was that any Sensorite could become the Lone Sensorite by taking up the mask... which may have predated the idea being reused by a certain dystopian hero film shortly after..."

Thanks, Dave! Other than that, this is a simple, fun story with no particular agenda to push (coughs.) Something's up with the Borad, though - can you tell what it is?

Don't Get Kocky, Kid.

This story started out - if that's the right term, as a story for Ky-Mutt, another Erato character of whom very little later on. To be honest, it got as far as a title ("The Man in the Ironic Mask - been done countless times) and the 'villain'. It took the Karkus stealing the idea and his own brand of... genius... to create this story. I've been wanting to use Koquillion for years; The Rescue is one of my favourite Hartnell stories, guilty only of explaining itself too faithfully, so it seems inevitable. As inevitable as a return appearance, surely.

Karkaeology: Peladon Playset

I actuall don't have much to say about this one. I drew Alpha Centauri early on, so was keen to use her in a story, plus my new Ice Warriors, of course, and the plot pretty much wrote itself. I liked it at the time, and still do. It's VERY silly, a deliberate spoof of the courtly treachery in the Peladon stories, so a revisit beckons. I remember being quite happy with the shadows under the Aggedor statues - the early Erato stories don't have a lot of 'depth to them (in any sense, I guess!)

This appeared in TSV 58 (September 1999), but an appearance by Alpha Centauri preceded this in the pages of Reverse the Polarity! A Christchurch-based zine of which more later, in a single-page Pulp Fiction crossover (the zine was running its own highly inventive series Pulp Who at the same time.) Without jumping too far into the future, Erato characters did make their way into Pulp Who later, but this page is the first published pic of the Karkus' sometime squeeze...

Back in the Garden

How long does it take to draw an Erato comic strip? Usually one to two weeks of free moments - that is, at home, afer meals have been made and cleaned up, the house is quiet and if I haven't been distracted by other things. But it's not always the case. I've found - perhaps unsuprisingly, that I am drawing faster these days; likely it's a combination of familiar characters and having a Plan. But plans can go awry - The Underwater Galaxy took a massive detour and lost two scripted pages, and something similar happened to a strip coming up. Actually, that last one is the one this story replaces for no other reason than I just wanted to get this one up and published, because this story took me THREE days from waking up one morning wiht the story brand new and unfermented in my head, and two evenings' inking over the occasional beak in work hours to pencil it out. Benefits of the Lockdown, I guess.

All of the characters, save for the Jocondans, appeared in strips I've already done. And I had to look up the spelling of Jocondan and Forester - hand in your fan badge, sir! And broccoli.

Karkaeology: Fiesta Scorchio!

Fast Show, Summer Holiday, Young Ones. Oh, and it's translated! Did this with a Spanish (or Italian?) translating dictionary in the VUW library.

Fungi from Gogoch

Suspicious Mines was a long time in the making - maybe fifteen years from doodle to panel?
Originally it was to have Mrs Alpha Centauri blushing at a whole lot of predictable mining/helicopter double entendres, a Nick Briggs (well before his ubiquity) introduction, and the Mandrel Brothers in the mines growing mushrooms with some maggots doing something. B.O.Y.O was going to be terrible at puzzles and may have gone mad after the Karkus accidentally solved his Rubik's cube - but there were too many elements rubbing up against each other, and not all of them were close to being good ideas. Plus, I'm a big believer in economy (if not always its most devoted adherent.) Take out the phallic alien and the story writes itself.

Oh, there's a Gorillaz line in there, too. Fun!

Karkaeology: Copy That

The Borad was an easy, early conscript into Erato. The best baddie from (allegedly) the worst Doctor's worst story? Sign him up! I don't think a lot went into the design - I just took the basis of the baddie (half man, half Morlox), put him into a Tim Burtoniser and... a prancing, slightly dandyish, vainglorious foe was born. The essence of the Borad is he's forever thinking he's too clever for the Karkus, but loses every time anyway. And he's a pleasure to draw - although I've accidentally flipped his flipper hand around in at least two of his appearances (he's correctly aligned here.)

The Borad's clone brood were a quick answer - I may have had a more terrifying prospect in the early doodles, but this simpler version was the one that stuck - complete with Burton stripey socks. And there's another cameo by the Karkus dog in an unmade script section somewhere...

In the real world the Borad's duplication was done by photocopier - many, many, many generations created and thereby distressed on a short break on a library photocopier while I was otherwise working there in my university day job. This is the last Karkus strip I did from Dunedin, before I moved to Wellington.

Frozen Pants and Chilled 'n' Stern are Dead

I do like these new series Ice Warriors. There was something in the early publicity shots for Cold war whihc promised a really faithful return (we'll come to that later), but he prominent teeth in the otherwise beautifully-posed shots were just asking to be lampooned. One of those moments where I drew the face once and knew I'd nailed what I wanted it to look like, and to be candid, it's nice to draw a different version of something you've been drawing for a long time. The new series Warriors have some nice purplish tints in their armour which I'll one day incorporate into a styrene model I've got of a classic series one downstairs.

So anyway, the new Warriors' goofy, toothy overbite owes much of its inspiration to the cartoon advertisements drawn by Dunedin artist John Noakes, who died in 2006 and is better known for his civic murals - 65 bus stops painted and characterised around the Dunedin region and still, I'm happy to say, being restored and preserved to this day. It was an earlier iteration of his work, a weekly back page spot in the Otago Daily Times promoting local hotel the Carnarvon, that was an inadvertent influence on me. The weak-chinned profile on Panel 3 of this second page (above) is a crude approximation of Noakes' caricatures, and I hope he doesn't mind this tribute.   

All Ice on Me

Page two is always a pain to grid out because you have to work to get equal-sized panels from it (no better when I shrunk the margins.) It was a few stories before I overcame by stubbornness and afforded myself the luxury of a double-length panel, and a couple of decades before I realised the logo real estate could also be turned into a panel.

Karkaeology: The Karkus in the Garden

I don't think stories got this silly leading up to this one, and lord did it give me ideas to go sillier. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes not (we'll get to those), but this one did okay. The Mandrel Brothers - Spliff and Nutmeg (Nutmeg's the one who wears a badge) are based off whoever you want them to be: Fast Times at Ridgemont High's Jeff Spicoli, Danny the Dealer from Withnail & I (there's a reference in the dialogue). Whichever you choose, they're drug-addled wasters, playing the punchline in this story - the acme of their character development. They're probably my most rounded and consistent characters.

Hot take: I actually like Harry.

Aaaalriight, He Was a Young Silurian

Wir bin ein Silurischen!

Karkaeology: The Karkus vs Zeg the Dalek