Friday 14 January 2011

Jubal

Back around the time when dinosaurs first roamed the earth (the mid- to late nineteen-eighties in fact), I went through a phase of drawing a cartoon strip. For fun, I thought I'd share a few of the least terrible ones in the first of an occasional series.

Sadly, I loaned all the original drawings to a friend to look at, but he split up with his then partner, left them behind at her house and then had the bad manners to die suddenly (yes, Sam, I do mean you, wherever you are!).  All I have are photocopies.

As I was seriously into Dungeons & Dragons and all things fantasy-related in those days (still am, as a matter of fact), the strip naturally got set in a typical fantasy world.

Jubal is our eponymous hero and he is a wizard who is not incompetent as such, but doesn't always think things through, and to whom strange things tend to happen.

His sidekick is Osric whose profession is completely unknown – even to me. He just seems to hang out with Jubal sometimes.

In this strip, named with staggering imagination, Pictures in the Fire. We see Jubal (on the left) and Osric out camping.








This next one is one of my favourites. I called it Rocky (oh, the wit!).  I think I like it because I took a bit more care with the drawing and lettering than usual. I like Jubal's irrascibility in it, too.

Note the odd-shaped frames. All the Jubal cartoons were enclosed in these originally (I removed them from the above strip as it looked really messy after scanning). The frames were made by drawing around a promotional coaster.






Hope you enjoyed.  I'll see if I can dig out some others and scan them in.

5 comments:

  1. Really like the talking rock! I often think that if we really met aliens there would be a media feeding frenzy, everyone would be jumping up and down...and then, in no time, everyone would take them for granted and even start moaning about them. One could say miracles are miracles because they haven't happened. When they do, they cease to be miracles.

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  2. Ah, he told the rock to "go forth and multiply"...

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  3. Loved the rock. :-)

    And Osric?! I've heard that name somewhere and don't recall... It certainly made me laugh, though!

    Pearl

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  4. Dominic - That's a good observation about miracles and I suspect you're right about what would happen if aliens turned up.

    Conan - Heh! He did indeed!

    Pearl - I'm not sure where I got the name Osric from, there used to be a band called Osric Tentacle I think, but I know nothing about them. Glad it gave you a smile. Such friends of mine who have seen the strips like the rock one too.

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  5. These are great - the rock was funny, but I really enjoyed the fire's fantasy. I often enjoy considering what non-humans think of us (which is why I like the Over the Hedge comic so much).

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