It’s been a busy week with not much time for cartooning, so here’s one I pulled from the vault that’s never seen the light of day before.

It’s from a comic strip series I started developing for a magazine about 10 years ago about a struggling young three-piece punk band called Turkeyroll. It was one of those creative endeavours that never really saw its full potential, having never got to publication, as the magazine in question closed down before it properly got off the ground. It was a fun series to draw though; sort of a modernized version of my first published comic strip, The Twangups. 

I originally just drew it black and white, so it’s good to see it light up in colour for the first time. It reminds me of that quote from The Shawshank Redemption, “No good thing ever dies.” The full quote is “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

One writer describes hope like this, “Hope literally opens us up and removes the blinders of fear and despair and allows us to see the big picture, thus allowing us to become creative and have belief in a better future.” I agree with that wholeheartedly, but I imagine those in the United States who believed Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign slogans about hope, are questioning that belief right now.

Following a week where the world seems to have struggled with finding hope in its leaders, the economy and belief in the basic goodness of humanity, taking time to remember precious memories and celebrate the small joys of life seems all the more important.

Speaking of good things not dying, a friend of mine / fellow comics enthusiast in Australia has finally got a project of his own off the ground again. After publishing six issues of John Dixon’s Air Hawk magazine in 1990, the project ended up languishing in the wilderness for almost 20 years.

Having originally been a subscriber of this comic, it was great to finally see the resulting new compilation volume of this classic Aussie adventure comic strip be published and launched. If you’re into that sort of thing, it’s well worth getting a hold of by clicking here. 

So meanwhile, stay hopeful, stay creative; and if anyone has any idea where I can get a hold of a shirt like Wayne’s, let me know!