Ah, Hartley Hare. So wrong and yet so right. Pipkins was a kids TV show that ran through the 1970s, and the little me lapped up pretty much every episode - my tiny child brain had Hartley down as an icon before I even knew what an icon was. Looking back on the show as an adult, I could see just how bleak and odd it had been: grey, threadbare, sometimes slightly sinister. How could those eerie looking puppets have been considered in any way appealing..? I don't know, but I spent many happy hours with them. Hartley in particular rocked. He was like a plummy, petulant, middle-aged luvvie trapped in the body of a re-animated animal cadaver - how's that for a role model? Like much of what I watched back then, Pipkins almost certainly re-wired my brain for the better, opening it up to a notion I still hold dear, that there's much to love in the subtly/openly/certifiably unhinged.Anyway, Paul O'Connell and I have just cooked up this three page tribute, re-imagining the puppets of Pipkins as a failed therapeutic community, for upcoming small press release "Look Out" (other children of the 70s may well get that particular reference). Loads of top comic folk will be celebrating/perverting the TV of their childhood in its pages, so it should be something special. More news soon.
5 comments:
This is so awesome! i hope you post some more, your work is amazing.
Cheers Eric!
Paul, who wrote the strip, is also on lettering and colouring duties - anyone who's seen his own superb comics will understand why that's something to be excited about - so hopefully there'll be another preview up before too long.
Hi - I loved Hartley and Pipkins too: so much so that I have bought my little girl a series on DVD. I'd love to see what you're doing with it!
PS - Love the artwork, as I moved on from Pipkins (eventually) to 2000AD etc.!
Ha ha, brilliant - you couldn't have asked for a better aesthetic life trajectory, could you? Thanks for stopping by, GreenTree.
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