Comics nerds fans among you may have spotted my little tip of the hat to one of comic artist Brendan McCarthy‘s first published works, ‘The Electrick Hoax’, in the title of a track on the new album, albeit with my own spin on the spelling. Appearing in Sounds magazine in the wake of punk in ’78 was a half page strip of utter madness, drawn by Brendan and, after a while, written by Pete Milligan, who McCarthy went on to do much great work with.
Packed with cultural references and trademark phrases the adhoc ‘plot’ featured cameos by the like of Jonny Rotten and Patrick McGoohan amongst others. Until recently only a few were available to view on the web, via Brendan’s site, but recently David Hine‘s excellent ‘Waiting For Trade’ blog has bought to light a few more, along with a couple of equally vintage strips from the Cipher anthology. More McCarthy here and here and also to come on this blog, maybe I should ask him to draw a special one-off episode for the cover of my forthcoming ‘The Illectrik Hoax’ remix 12″ in April?
Yeah, great to see a few more of these pop up. These and Summer of Love need collecting and making widely available (along, let’s face it, with everything else from Artoons to Zaucer of Zilk). Look at those episodes David Hine dug up, check the newspaper headline on the McCarthy pic I sent you a while back and feel the smile creep across your face… Awesome stuff.
“maybe I should ask him to draw a special one-off episode for the cover of my forthcoming ‘The Illectrik Hoax’ remix” Maybe? Of course you should! Get to to it at once!