Does anybody really laugh out loud* at sitcoms anymore? I mean, really?

There are only so many ways of making the following situation amusing: a family at home. What? You want more? Oh, come off it. You know that 80% of sitcoms are and always have been summed up with that sentence. Sure, you can add the odd ‘kooky grampa’ or environmentally aware teenager here and there, but it’s just dressing on an otherwise very bland salad. Here is my list, off the top of my head, that illustrates what I’m getting at.

1. The Dick Van Dyke Show
2. Everybody Loves Raymond
3. Family Guy
4. American Dad
5. 8 Simple Rules
6. The War at Home
7. Frasier
8. The Cosby Show
9. Hangin’ with Mr Cooper
10. Joey
11. That 70s Show
12. King of Queens
13. Two and a Half Men
14. My Two Dads
15. Roseanne
16. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air
17. The Simpsons
18. The Upper Hand (She’s the Boss)
19. The Nanny
20. The Flintstones
21. The Golden Girls
22. My Family (shudder)

Okay, I’ll concede that they don’t all represent the traditional family model, but there are enough similarities to make me tear the few hairs I have left out in frustration. Hasn’t that concept been played out? Let’s try something new, huh? (For the record, I like some of those shows so don’t go thinking I’m knocking them all. Except Joey. I would rather contract the ebola virus that watch an episode of Joey)

I’m a firm believer of the idea that any situation can be funny, given the right slant.**  We don’t need to start every episode with the cast gradually introducing themselves in the kitchen (to whooping and applause). That episode about the guy who gets talked into a job interview and lies about his experience and gets his bluff called and has to keep lying to cover for it and then gets found out and admits lying and makes a heartfelt plea to disregard his error and is surprised to learn they still want to hire him? Bin it. It’s nothing special, and the audience knows what’s coming a mile away. We all know Raymond will learn his lesson. We all know that Frasier’s myriad misunderstandings will again miraculously all come to a head at the same time, forcing a sentimental ending. For God’s sake, stop before the corkscrew actually perforates my eardrum.

Encouraging signs? Well… they’ve been here and there. I’m probably going to be lambasted for my bias, but I’ve racked my brains and all I can come up with are UK shows***. Red Dwarf, Spaced, The Office, Extras. You might argue that Red Dwarf substitutes the suburban home for a spacecraft, but its setting immediately supplies a wider range of comedy potential. Spaced is set in the suburbs, but is specifically about that building and the plot revolves around how the characters can continue to live there. It also has the most effective use of homages and editing in the genre.

Why am I bringing this up? Because I want to laugh more. I want to turn on the TV and have a show that dares to be different. Nothing stifles laughter like knowing what the joke will be before it’s told.

Oh, and I’m writing a sitcom. Me and a couple of guys I work with. Now the subject feels like its engineered to promote what we’ve done, right? Well, no. We haven’t written anything yet. We’ve only agreed on the fact that it has to be different. The ideas so far have been ridiculous, over the top, genre-confining and unbelievably offensive, but they are not the norm. You’d know what the show was on sight other than by the design of the sofa. You wouldn’t have to see the blonde daughter and remember which one she is.

Anyway, any concept has legs that will take it only so far. The two-season rule is king. Don’t outstay your welcome. How Friends got to… ten seasons?… is beyond me. Say what you have to say and leave while there are still stories to tell. Leave the damn audience wanting more.

As this progresses, I’ll update on the status if not the details.

In the meantime, does anyone have sitcom recommendations? I want to know what not to write.

* Yeah, I spell it in English. Deal with it.  ** I am in no way saying that I would laugh at any of your personal tragedies past, present or future. *** Although I hear that Eastbound and Down is hilarious (though home-based).

Hello folks.

You may have noticed (yes, spammers, I’m talking to you) that I haven’t updated in a while. It’s fair to say that I haven’t been all that motivated. It’s something I’ve struggled with on and off for years, and every time I lose motivation I go quiet. Conversely, every time I have a wave of inspiration, I post some upbeat blog about how “everything is great, and I have big plans and yadda yadda”. Ultimately, it amounts to a couple of commissions and the odd ongoing comic book project, which, although I love the medium in a way, I can’t get majorly excited about for more than a couple of weeks at a time.

How’s this affect things? Well, with that kind of attitude, I’m never going to be a comic book artist, full-time. It’s time I faced up to this. The realisation that I’m not cut out for comic books I thought would be pretty depressing, but it’s liberating.

Here’s the thing: since the day I read that first issue of the Transformers comic, I’ve known what I wanted to do as a career. Whilst my schoolfriends and classmates scrabbled around to grasp something they might be suited for, I was happily drawing The Ultra-Bionic Wonder Sheep and handing out my own specialised versions of Top Trumps cards featuring the characters I’d created. I was set for life. This made me resistant to the more open-minded attitude I felt was being forced on me by my college tutors later on (Jim, the tutor I remember most for a) having a beard and a Greenpeace t-shirt, and b) supposedly refusing to accept that I wanted to be a mainstream comic artist — I really should track down and thank for at least trying to help me introduce some diversity to my work). As the years have rolled on, I’ve had a smattering of success. Marvel submissions were responded to personally and critiqued very well by Darren Auck (thanks, dude), my scripting work was accepted into an anthology which was never published (sad face), and the as yet unpublished Doxy Proxy tale I worked on in collaboration with Stephen Reedy might still have a home one day. Of course, there’s my Zuda entry My Daddy’s a Super-Villain! which is the brainchild of scribe supreme Scott O Brown. It’s a level of success that should be encouraging and would have any self-respecting comic artist dying to improve on.

I don’t feel that need.

While I’m committed to those two projects until completion (and make no mistake, I will complete them. I made a commitment and I won’t let anybody down), I won’t be taking on any comic book work from this day on. My last project is an upcoming Digital Webbing anthology book, for which my contribution will be the words and pictures of a short tale based on The Three Little Pigs. If you pick it up, you’ll get an idea of where my art is going after I’m done with comics.

But anyway, back to the ‘liberating’ part.

The immense weight off my shoulders went unnoticed until today. Literally today. At no point in the last three years have I been cheerier than I have been since I made the decision to leave the old dream behind. The prospect of not having to spend all of my evenings working in solitude is fantastic. That’s not to say I won’t be working at all, but the discipline that I’ve always struggled with won’t be as much of a factor. I say this now: no commercial or fine artist has to work as hard as the comic book artist. Key words: has to. It’s an existence which requires a dedication and a love for the industry that you either have or have not. I’m the latter, these days. My eleven-year-old self would kick me in the shins for saying that, but times change.

Think of all of the opportunities you miss when you have career tunnel-vision. The blinkers do nothing for an artist. I spent my twenties trying to become something I ultimately lost interest in. Lost faith? Maybe. But either way, it affects output. Since I decided to refocus, I’ve seen opportunities in everything. My initial desire was to illustrate posters for bands/concerts/venues. That’s certainly part of what I want to do, but why not t-shirts, wall art, flyers, logo design, book covers and all manner of applications? Hell, I want to design custom canvas trainers with marker pens.

What I haven’t thought about before, and I think artists as a whole should remember this: your art is the product. Don’t create art to fit into a hole. Of any shape. Create art that people want to put into their own holes (oo-er) and the result will be that your art is the star, rather than just another part of a medium or series.

I’m rambling a little here, but I need this to be understood. This is a great week. The best thing I ever did was give up my dream. And hey, there’s nothing stopping me from dipping my toes back in the ‘funnybook’ water from time to time (in fact, for quite a long time to come, this site will be one of the hosts of one of the aforementioned projects), but as a career: kaput.

So this blog will change. I say that as if there was actually a long history which gave this blog an identity, but still… there’s going to be a shift. I’ll post sketches and I’ll post art appreciation. I’ll update regarding how things are heading with regard to my new direction (thinking studio space, or coffee shop, or small indoor market stall may be in the immediate future). I hope this excitement shows through.

Speak soon.

Okay, so everybody and their dog and their dog’s life coach are going to post a blog about this. Most of them will give you the facts.

I won’t.

I will lie to you.

The Walt Disney Corporation, or ‘Big Walt and the Mecha-titans’ have today announced that they are buying Marvel for the princely sum of 16 turnips and a full-body massage. Joe Quesada has been quoted as screaming “Aaaaaayyyyyyyiiiiieeeeee!”, but with one of those funny upside-down exclamation marks at the front. Hans Gruber, working for the Disneytron Announcement Carousel, issued a statement but sadly the wind was blowing quite a bit and his words were scattered to the four corners of the world, owned by the Disney Corporation.

We contacted Hulk at his holiday home in Majorca, but he declined to comment.

Daredevil was more forthcoming, requesting “…some damn privacy! I’ve been through all of this press @##$%!! before and you people still hound me! I went to prison! I’m bliiiiind!”

So what does this mean for the inhabitants of the Marvel Universe? Will they be forced to relocate to Florida? Will Jean Grey’s cryogenically-frozen body be revived? Only one man can tell:

Phil Uatu, 65, is a former Watcher who retired amidst allegations of abusing his ‘watching’ privileges in locker rooms and public parks at night. Keen to sidestep that issue, he’s only too willing to provide a commentary on this shocking turn of events.

“Stuff’s going to ‘appen, mate!” he enthuses in a surprising Cockney drawl. “Ohhh, I tell ya. Yer gonna see singing fish, robots that learn life lessons… Doctor Octopus is going to be working in the mailroom of a large publishing company by November. Listen to me, son, I’ll see you right.” Uatu takes a drag of his herbal cigarette and picks up his binoculars. “Mate! Look out there! There’s a dog ripping a man’s face off! You wanna see this, it’s off the chain!”

We left Uatu’s house with a sense of unease and no answers. He was clearly a mental.

So did Disney even buy Marvel? Some are saying it’s a trick to lure us into buying more comics and more DVDs (sorry, Disney DVDs), and some are saying that Joe Quesada walks the streets at night, salting the sidewalk. All we know for sure is that something definitely happened somewhere, possibly involving hostages, but probably just money and cufflinks.

This is Jamie Roberts, for the sake of fillng thirty minutes, signing off until tomorrow.

Sleep well (don’t sleepwalk and wee in the wardrobe).

When you think of the future, specifically the way things will look, what better reference than movies? That’s my motto. Despite the credibility-saving reality check most will experience when confronted with the question “What will the future look like?”, causing them to reply “Pretty much the same, only teenager will have even more ridiculous hair”, it’s safe to say that people will immediately think of flying cars, hologram phones, robot butlers, spacecraft etc.

Yeah? Not even a little? Liar.

Now, one of the myriad lifestyle changes you’d expect to encounter would be media entertainment that’s a step beyond anything we have now. Perhaps, 3D TV and gaming? Well, maybe I’m late to the party, but today I saw an exhibition (Videogame Nation, at Manchester Urbis gallery), one section of which was an article about 3D videogames. Apparently, the technology already exists and games are already in a testing phase. This is mindblowing, particularly to someone who hasn’t really had an extended gaming session since the days of Dreamcast. Perhaps this is something of which the gaming communities have been informed every step of the way. To a casual observer, however, we’re pretty much getting to Back to the Future 2 territory.

To cap it off, in the space of one commercial break tonight, two ads for hybrid cars. One was the Prius (sp?) and one was a Lexus of some description (I realise I’m about 10 seconds away from the answers because of the Almighty Google, but sod it). Cars that run on electricity. Now, they definitely have been around a while, pissing off Republicans everywhere, but we’re not far away from making the break from petrol now, surely? In fact, on BBC2’s Top Gear last year, I recall seeing a car which ran on compressed hydrogen, emitted only water, and was being used on a trial basis in California. Get that sucker out here! Then make it fly!

Sometimes, you’ve got to take a step back, wash off that cynicism and marvel at how some people are making things better. Robot butlers can wait. They’ll only take over anyway.

Anyway, for the time being, here’s my mission statement:

I’ve spent thirty years on this planet. In that time, I’ve been overwhelmed by the urge to create. Since I was about six or seven years old and my mum bought me a Transformers comic (the UK edition, issue #4, if you’re wondering), it’s been my goal to be a comic artist. I have no idea why, I certainly didn’t have a career plan, and to some degree I still don’t. All I knew was that I loved drawing and writing my own characters, thinly-veiled rip-offs of Transformers, Masters of the Universe and Thundercats though they were. I may post some of that early stuff one day.

While that single-mindedness has meant that I passed into my thirties without really achieving much outside of refining my art, it’s also forced the realisation that I’m too far in now to stop, too far gone to return to the humdrum everyday existence without that creative spark.

Whether I write, draw, colour, assemble, design, film, capture, play music, create an interactive property or a simple black-and-white photocopied scrawled ashcan, I will create until I die. Life’s too short not to spend it basking in the things you love.

So what to expect from this blog?

I’ll have regular comic pages. You’ll see new ongoing properties, in arcs. I’ll post one-off humour strips, posters, portraits. In all honesty, I’ll indulge myself far more than is healthy, but believe me, I’ll make myself pay for it by working stupidly hard to entertain. If the mood strikes, I may post prose, poetry, and a proliferation of pointless ideas and thoughts. Well, that’s standard for a blog, I suppose. Photos and videos may well become a part of the assembly line of awesome. After spending a year or so trying to figure out my focus as far as creativity goes, it just makes more sense to do a bit of everything, and make the focus ‘to entertain’. I figure this blog is the best way to start.

Still awake? Yay! That means I’m not boring!

Now for a sip of red wine and some pondering. Watch the step.

Woodles.