c.1980? | age 12? My battles with this word don’t seem to be achieving a resolution! If anything we’re getting ever more brain-torturing variations and spelling atrocities.

Really Nessercerarilyaryry?

Sometimes a reader can get lost embarking on a long sentence. With this comic of mine, the same fate can befall the reckless traveler over the span of a single word. You can almost sense my own frustration in the triple exclamation marks and the expletives symbols.

Artoo, though doubtless a master of many languages, has blown a gasket on hearing this one!

Art Notes & Book-binding Tips!

Scene inside the millennium falcon copied from a Star Wars trading card

‘FOTO FEATURE’: Non-comic drawing. Copied from a trading card, c.1979? View larger»

This is also a curious page because it was scrawled in pencil and has only one panel. I think it was a case of a blank half-page opening on this side of the spine when an A4 sheet was was added for the «3D Plasticine chess game on the other side. But with the story well covered on this side of the spine the only thing to be done with this space was to draw a big supplementary bonus illustration. I’m surprised that I didn’t add the words ‘PULL-OUT POSTER’ or something, or emblazon ‘FOTO FEATURE‘ on it, as I think they did in the Marvel comics.

It was always great fun to pretend that you were actually making a real commercial publication, that would display—for sale—on a newsagent shelf. With staples and… everything!

comic parodying how children make comics

How to make comics, like a pro! From my Between * Wars Webcomic

It was great fun when dad brought home an office stapler. You could flatten out a thin homemade comic on the bedroom carpet, open out the stapler, position it over the outside spine and thump it with the heel of your hand. Yank the comic and staples out of the carpet and floorboard and carefully bend the staples in. Et voila!—you had a real looking comic! To do this with SWa9 however, would have necessitated something more heavy duty: like the big long u-shaped staples you hammer wire to fence posts with. So, no staples. These days there’s no carpet in that room, so next time I visit I must have a look for staple holes! A wee memento—or footprint from nearly 4 decades ago!

Let’s try this again: Necesitayteded. Neseciteted. Neccessititad…

Next: Look out for the funny Wednesday episode tomorrow!