Hi, Stick-man

This is a pretty accurate representation of the weird shit I would draw when I was younger (with a little bit of unconscious inspiration from Teen Girl Squad thrown in).

I only noticed now that this is my second reference to the Gettysburg Address. Nice. 

I Know What You're Thinking...

This was the first time that I played around with the format of the comic, something I did a lot of in 2005 now that I think about it. A true visionary.

Unused Ideas

I think 'Baby Hitler' would make an excellent sitcom. Think of the hijinks that little scamp would get up to!

The Adventures of Hugh Manatee

I weep for Hugh Manatee. While this one's not quite as bad as I remember, it's still my least favourite Canned Laughter strip. It's essentially the same joke as 'The Lazy Cartoonist', except with a lamer title and even more cringeworthy meta-humour. 

Sorry Hugh Manatee, your moderately-funny name deserved a better comic than this.

Canned Laughter: Sneak Preview

People always ask me if it was intimidating to work with a big name like The Square, but he honestly couldn't have been more humble and accommodating. A true professional.

This is also the last time we see guy with the glasses. RIP, whoever you were.

Mailbag #4: Ideas

This was a pretty easy one to draw, but looking at nothing but that guy's face for five frames really hammers home just how much my style was still indebted to The Simpsons at this stage. Next!

How to Avoid Spontaneous Human Combustion

It's now 2005, and I finally have my own half-page in Critic. What better way to introduce myself to the general public than a comic about spontaneous human combustion?

In order to fill my allotted space I had to increase the height of all the frames, which generally worked out well as it decreased the risk of characters being overwhelmed by avalanches of text. Other times, however, I had more space than I knew what to do with.  

Also, the guy with glasses (seriously, who is that guy?) was now a blonde, because who has time to colour in hair when you're a big shot writing for Critic?

'The Lazy Cartoonist', Starring the Invisible People

This is the last comic I wrote for the Critic website. The joke begins and ends with the title, really. The rest is just a meta-gag about how I make too many meta-gags, which I kind of knew was a cop-out, even at the time (although the last panel is sort of funny, I guess). Still, like the Shitty Beatles, it wasn't just a clever name: this cartoon was incredibly easy to draw. 

The Canned Laughter Guide to Becoming a Rock Star

This is probably my favourite of the 2004 run of comics. You can see that things had already come a long way since the first strip I wrote.

A Paid Advertisement For Hell

A rare case of a comic following on from the previous one. Also, the first (and last?) appearance of a butt-chin.

Canned Laughter in Hell

Poor old Gore. It was a cheap shot, but I did it, and you know what? I don't regret a moment of it.

Mailbag #3: Robots

Cartooning tip #19: Robots are very easy to draw.

The Most Offensive Cartoon in the World

I originally wrote this one for the website in 2004, but when Critic's annual 'Offensive Issue' rolled around in 2005 (and I was writing for the actual magazine) I decided to submit this again, as I had with a few of the stronger website comics. 

The 2005 Offensive Issue ended up being banned due to a controversial article that allegedly offered a 'how-to' guide to date rape, which was intended to draw attention to the issue and alert readers to the different methods that may be used. It was kind of a big deal at the time, and I felt a weird sense of pride that one of my comics was now included in a banned publication (as mild as the actual strip was).

Looking at it now, I think this comic would work well as a live-action sketch, filled with unnecessary bleeping. Unnecessary bleeping is hilarious.

Mailbag #2: The Creative Process

Another mailbag, which means more meta-gags and references to weasels.

The Adventures of Larry the Limpet

I believe that the phrase 'turgid episode' was stolen from a reference to Ren and Stimpy.

The 25th Annual Canned Laughter Convention

Another comic based on the idea that Canned Laughter has been around for a long time. Also, it's not too soon to joke about Hitler, is it?

The Canned Laughter Guide to the Undead

...and another 'guide to' comic. I think by this point I'd decided that the unnamed dude with the glasses was the 'host' of Canned Laughter. Whatever the hell that means.

The Canned Laughter Guide to Plagiarism

The first of many 'guide to' comics. Check out the dude being crushed by a wall of text in the fifth panel!

Mailbag #1: Explaining the Joke

In the early days I liked the idea that Canned Laughter was a well-established comic and we were just joining it well into its run. This led to a lot of self-referential jokes that I thought were so clever at the time.

The final panel was a reference to the Paul Holmes 'cheeky darkie' scandal, which, unbelievably, was actually a current issue when I wrote this (my god, it feels like an eternity ago). I did worry a bit that the irony would be missed and people would think that I was just being racist.

When I showed this to the editor of Critic he asked "Are all your comics going to be racially themed?" Awkward! I hadn't even realised that the first two strips I had submitted had that in common, and it definitely wasn't supposed to be that kind of comic. And so, I never attempted social commentary again.

The Library Desk

This is the very first Canned Laughter I wrote, way back when I was 18. It's different from pretty much every other one I did, for a number of reasons. For a start, it was the only time that I really tried any social commentary, and the only time that I wrote a strip specifically targeted at Otago students. (Back then, the desks in the central library were often covered in barely coherent racist graffiti - nice!)

It also looks a lot, well, shittier than later comics. Partly because I was still trying to find the right pen (we've all been there, right folks?!) and partly because I just had no idea what I was doing. You'll probably also notice from these early strips that I clearly learned to draw cartoons by studying Simpsons comics. I once ran into a guy who told me that "Matt Groening would have me over a barrel" if he ever saw my cartoons, a charming line that still echoes in my head whenever I look at these old strips. Thankfully my style did evolve (a little) as the years went on.

At this early stage I was still patiently waiting for one of the Critic cartoonists to call it a day so that my stuff could actually be published in the magazine (back then they only had room for two strips, apparently). For the time being, though, I was happy enough to have my comics posted onto their website. Even if only a handful of people were reading them, I was part of the team! Boo-yah! 

This strip did eventually make it into the magazine one week in 2006 when I was too sick from food poisoning to write a new one (no, not from the time I ate raw chicken on purpose, another time), though it was an annotated version alerting readers that it was not quite the slick, professional and amazingly hilarious comic they were used to.

Well, that's enough self-important rambling for now. I'm out.

P.S. This marks the first and last time I wrote anything under the pseudonym 'Doctor Dangerous'. Thank god.