We finally figured it out.

New stuff!

Finally. 

I'm off and running again. Having got the book off to the printer I found I was in a mood to do pretty much anything that wasn't cartooning. But I kept on writing little notes to myself until a pile of them seemed to coalesce into something useful. And here we are again.

I still intend to post any shiny, new strips and other stuff I do here but all the serialisation is going to happen over on the Facebook page. People seem to actually read it there which is nice. Nobody could accuse me of doing this cartooning thing for the money but it is good to know somebody (who is not my wife) is actually seeing the work.

So, its going to be a bit random here; it'll all get posted in the order that I finish things but, if you 're after any narrative consistency you should look at FB.

Apologies to anybody who's been here in the last couple of weeks hoping to see something new but only getting a sense of neglect and decay and tumbleweeds blown through on a cold breeze. The most recent strip I posted here, back at the beginning of October, was the last page in the McMoist Saga and also the last page in what will be the new book collection. So, I've been cobbling together the book instead of doing any new work.
In the meantime, I finally got around to setting up a Facebook page and am republishing some old stuff - at breakneck speed (a strip every day except Sunday!) and in a sensible narrative sequence that an uninitiated reader might actually be able to follow.
I'll be back here soon with new stuff (which I'll also post to Facebook) and news of the new book.
Cheers,
Richard

In which the ground keeps moving under Andrea's feet.

In which we see that, occasionally, even 'Batman' can become slightly flustered.

Children can be so monstrously insensitive sometimes.

In which we get another clue that maybe - just maybe - Andrea has a tendency to compartmentalise.

The afterglow / The aftermath

A brief interlude (and a sure fire remedy for writer's block)

The kids totally get it.

Most people just love a senseless orgy of free expression!

She doesn't really understand art but she knows what she likes.

Go!

Vertical time.

This one is actually a little late and slightly out of sequence - it should fit between the two previous strips, just before Batman steps in to rescue the moment.

Almost there! Really!

A Friday trifecta

The wild card

In which the dream still has a tiny pulse

To the tune of "Sexual Healing"

Introducing Mister Ebenezer Toogood, Human Jukebox.

And Mister T would also agree that Prince was kind of awesome.

To the tune of "Gett Off" (obviously).

Mr T's Big Moment

The casual, unthinking cruelty of small children.

Andrea Abernathy-Fuchs, Mistress of Hype

Moving right along...

To the tune of "Advance Australia Fair"

I usually consider myself lucky to live in Australia, as opposed to proud.

Pride might come more easily if forty-something years ago we hadn't had a referendum in which the majority of us voted for the turgid ridiculousness of "Advance Australia Fair" to be our new national anthem. I would deny any responsibility because I was only ten years old at the time. Sadly though, I do remember a classroom poll in Grade 4 where we little patriots could cast our own vote - at least feel like we could - for the best candidate. And I voted for this one. I think I was even impressed that it contained the line, "Our home is girt by sea" - probably because I had to look for"girt" in the dictionary. I like to think that if I was old enough to really vote I might have had better taste but in the cultural moment of 1974* I have no idea what I would have done. I couldn't rule it out.

And for the next forty years, there it was - and still is - at every public occasion. I don't think anybody particularly liked it and even fewer people actually knew the words. The moment (which somehow felt so much longer than a moment) always seemed a bit awkward and cringe-worthy. The only thing it really had going for it was that it wasn't "God Save the Queen".

But in this marvelous age of global uncertainty in which we now find ourselves, when everybody seems to be clinging to whatever certainty they can grasp at and so many of us are retreating into vacuous jingoism, you can now see Australians clutching unconsciously at their proudly beating breasts as they sing the fucking thing. Some of them even know the words. But not if they live in the Eggmen universe, obviously.

* Actually I just checked online and the Wikipedia entry for the song tells me that we had a plebiscite in 1977, at which point I thought the memory castle of my childhood might rather be some flimsy house of cards, but there was apparently an opinion poll commissioned in 1974. So now I'm pulling up the drawbridge on my memory castle and going for a bath.

In which the dream seems to have died.

It's been a while.

It's just like being backstage before a show with Beyonce, I imagine.

Because the absolute best way forward in a relationship is to pretend you're somebody else.

Theda Bara, the BVM

Celia

This is the penultimate one of these things. It was a phase I went through but now I'm all stippled out. My eyes are tired. I'll probably end up doing something with them all (or at least a selection of them; there is rather a lot of them by now) but I have no idea at the moment what that might be. To anyone who has enjoyed these: sorry but there will be a lot more Eggmen in their wake. And maybe something else.

In which Andrea is ambushed from all sides

Yeah, why DOES everything glow like that?

Small cumulus

In which we begin to perceive a terrible inevitability

Boy meets girl

In which everything seems to be about to blow up in someone's face

Emil

Emil Jannings: Mephistopheles in F.W. Murnau's Faust, which is a beautiful example of all the things I love about silent films (which is a lot of things).

In which we welcome back an old friend.

Andrea.

Paul

Juliette (the first Girl Scout)

It just gets more complicated...

The Supernatural rears its creepy head. Again.