Rob Murray writes:

Music by The Smiths has inspired a comics collection, Unite and Take Over, due for release in November. Smiths fan Shawn Demumbrum of Phoenix, Arizona has assembled 13 creative teams to interpret songs by the band as comic strips, each three or four pages in length. Demumbrum, who is currently looking for contributions towards printing costs, discusses the project in a promotional video here, and with the Guardian here.

Another rock band, Art Brut, have commissioned a 28-page comic to mark the release of their latest album. The comic features art by Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley, and you can read more about the project here.

Elsewhere, a vintage TV clip of film director and Monty Python animator Terry Gilliam discussing his animation techniques has resurfaced courtesy of Cartoon Brew. The blog points out that, given the continuing interest in animation, it is a shame that such shows no longer exist. Bloghorn agrees, but would also like to see more in-depth coverage of other cartooning formats.

As always, please alert us to anything we might have missed, using the comments below. Thanks.

A film which is out in cinemas this week is sure to prove that cartoons about animals are not just for kids.

My Dog Tulip, a grown-up story of an elderly man and his dog, is no Disneyfied anthropomorphic tale. It often concentrates on some of the less appealing aspects of dog ownership, as this clip shows.

It was created by the American animators Paul and Sandra Fierlinger, a husband and wife team, and while it may look like the antithesis of CGI, this making-of clip shows that computers were very much a tool in the creation of the film.

My Dog Tulip is based on a 1956 book by the English writer J. R. Ackerley, regarded by some as the best book ever written about dogs, and features the voices of Christopher Plummer and the late Lynn Redgrave.

Artist Kazuhiko Hachiya has made an animated short to help explain the ongoing nuclear crisis to Japanese children. The clip’s title character, Nuclear Boy, plays the role of the ill child representing Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.

Reaction to the colorful clip has been mixed, with some folks calling it distasteful and others arguing it makes the situation more comprehensible for worried young children. Please comment below if you would like, Bloghorn does moderate comments if needed.

Quadriplegic cartoonist John Callahan has died, aged 59. Best known for his cartoons satirising attitudes to disability, Callahan was himself paralysed in a car accident in his early twenties. He also wrote books, notably his autobiography Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot (now out of print), its title taken from the cartoon above, and music, and two animated TV shows were produced from his cartoons.

He was also the subject of this documentary for Dutch TV:

Things the Foghorn saw this month…

• Musical comedian and sometime Oink! cartoonist Frank Sidebottom’s creator Chris Sievey has died.
• New museum for cartoon illustrator Heath Robinson has opened in Pinner, North London.
• The US comic strip Little Orphan Annie (probably better known over here for the musical version, Annie) has finally come to the end of it’s 86 year print run.
• Cartoonist Rolf Harris opened the Glastonbury Festival whilst cartoon band Gorillaz headlined over the weekend.

The Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival is just around the corner, so to help you find your way around the numerous exhibitions, workshops, talks and events, Bloghorn has put together a handy interactive map of what’s going on this year.

Just click on the map markers to get a run-down of what’s happening, or use the link below to view a larger version of the map. If you would like a print guide to the Festival follow that last link to a PDF download.

New to the event this year is the addition of the S-MILE trail (the blue line on the map below), a cartoon-infested walk around Shrewsbury’s medieval streets. Specific details of the trail, and the guided Ghost Tour on the evening of 20th April can be found here (again in a downloadable PDF). And if that’s not enough, we’ve also put together a Google Calendar of what’s on when.

View map full-screen

You can catch up with our event previews here (just scroll down the page) and Bloghorn looks forward to seeing you at this year’s event.

Kal (Kevin Kallaugher), cartoonist for the Economist for the past 30 years, will be discussing political cartooning with Henry Naylor (former head writer for Spitting Image). The debate will be chaired by Channel 4′s Krishnan Guru-Murthy and will be followed by Kal conducting a hands-on interactive cartooning demonstration.

Campaign cartooning: Discussing how the art of satire shapes the political landscape is on at the Congress Centre, 28 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3LS on Thursday 2nd October 2008, 7-8.15pm. The event is free, but to register for the event email campaigncartooning@stockholm-network.org.

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent

With Hurricane Gustav battering the Gulf Coast many of the cartoonists covering the DNC last week crossed the country to the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis Saint Paul, including Rob Rogers (who had to cut short his visit to the convention due to his father’s death), Walt Handelsman and al.com’s JD Crowe.

Other cartoonists covering the convention from home include Rob Tornoe (sketchbook), and Ron Rogers. The British media was again represented by Kal (sketchbook day 1, day 2, day 3 ) and Steve Bell (sketchbook days 4-8, day 9, day 10, day 11).

It’s British cartoon talent

Party political conference season is nearly upon us here in Britain, but in the US the Democratic Party have already finished their turn. The cartoonists were out in force both drawing and blogging in Denver, Colorado.

Cartoon blogs from the convention include Rob Rogers from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (convention blog), convention first-timer Walt Handelsman from Newsday, Jen Sorenson from the Charlottesville C-Ville and Denver local Ed Stein from the Rocky Mountain News.

Interesting to note that a number of US cartoonists have chosen not to attend the Convention in person, such as Dan Wasserman from the Boston Globe, Rob Tornoe from Politiker.com (sketchbook), Matt Davies from the Journal News, David Horsey from the Seattle Post-Intelligencier and Ron Rogers from the South Bend Tribune (sketchbook), instead chosing to work from their studios, well away from the media crush.

In the meantime from the British press we had Steve Bell from the Guardian (sketchbook day 1, day 2, day 3)and Kal from the Economist (sketchbook day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4) actually in attendance.

It’s British cartoon talent

As cartoonist-turned-comedian Phill Jupitus prepares to talk of his love of cartoons on the radio, PCOer Royston Robertson looks at some other celebrities who once wielded drawing pens

MEL CALMAN called his autobiography What Else Do You Do?, after the question that is so often put to cartoonists. In fact, there appear to be many cartoonists who not only did something else, but found that that occupation eventually made their name, to the point where the career in cartooning became a largely forgotten footnote.

It was only after the death of the comedian Bob Monkhouse that I heard that he had once been a cartoonist. And quite an accomplished one. He had worked for Beano publisher DC Thomson.

A cartoon by Bob Monkhouse of PCOer Noel Ford, along with a photo of Bob working on that very drawing. Noel, who once worked with Bob at the BBC, assures us that he really did look like that weird in the 1970s

At about the same time, I read an article about the novelist John Updike and how he had been obsessed with cartoons as a child. Updike also tried his hand at being a cartoonist before coming to his senses and deciding that writing was the better path to take. It was certainly the more lucrative.

Another writer who has dabbled with cartooning is Will Self. Some of his work can be seen in a compilation of his newspaper and magazine articles called Junk Mail. The drawing is crude but some of the gags are pretty good.

BBC 6Music presenter Marc Riley, formerly “Lard” of Mark and Lard fame on Radio One, and an ex-bass player with The Fall, is another ex-cartoonist whose drawing was somewhat on the crude side. You may remember his Harry the Head from Oink! Comic. He also appeared in photo strips in Oink! He was the guy with the big nose.

Another former cartoonist is broadcaster Andrew Collins, also an ex-New Musical Express journalist, EastEnders scriptwriter, Radio Times film writer and general overachiever. He chronicled his love of cartoons and half-hearted attempts to make a living drawing owls and wizards for puzzle magazines in Where Did it All Go Right and Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now, his bestselling memoirs of growing up in the 1970s and 1980s.

Talking of the NME, anyone who used to read the music paper in the early 1990s may remember a cartoon drawn in the style of Gillray called Dr Crawshaft’s World of Pop. But did you know that it was drawn by Arthur Mathews who went on to co-script the sitcom Father Ted?

So I suppose there’s hope for us all if we get disillusioned with the world of cartooning. Right, it’s time to get back to the drawing board/typewriter/record decks …

Comic Love is on BBC Radio Four at 10.30am on Saturday 19 July.

The PCO British cartoon talent