I suppose I'm a sort of an artist. Well, that's how I describe myself on tedious official forms, but really I think of myself as an illustrator. My most successful images may, sometimes, with luck, in a flattering light, stand as art objects in their own right, but I don't kid myself. Most are simply illustrations to my own ever expanding but largely unwritten narrative featuring the inhabitants of a surreal mythological universe. It does bear a vague resemblance to the one we (probably) inhabit, but not closely enough to give the illusion that I have a hotline to The Truth ...or much else really...

So. Comic strips. Why? I used to say that I could have been a good third rate artist or a poor second rate writer (or was it the other way round?) but by combining the two I could just about get away with it. I stopped saying that because I got embarrassed by sounding like a glib tosser, but frankly I can't give a more enlightening explanation, aside from the fact that I fell under the spell of Gilbert Shelton's Furry Freaks way back in the late sixties, which is equally embarrassing, not because of any shortcomings of the brilliant Mr. Shelton, incomparable master of the punchline, but because it makes me sound like a predictable sad old leftover from the hippy era. Which I probably am. However I still can't come up with a better explanation so I revert to glib tosser mode.

I can't pretend that Russell has been my life's work, but he did take up much of my time and energy from the early 1980's to the late nineties. Plus other occasional chunks of time since then...He was also a long time evolving and I can't imagine life entirely without him though his appearances are pretty sporadic these days. Now in my mid- seventies and occasionally contemplating the oldest joke in the world, the one about mortality where the punchline is always the same but the lead-up is infinitely variable, I find myself asking among other more banal and predictable questions: Do I regret not having produced more Russell comics? Yes. I do. But not very much. And maybe a few more could yet happen, given time, health, energy and a generous input of cash! Help the Aged is I feel a worthy slogan, but I'm not holding my breath. At my age it's not a wise policy. But despite all evidence to the contrary I remain an optimist.

Oddly enough, and the glib tosser bit notwithstanding, I do seem over recent years to have spent far more time drawing and painting than writing. As a good third rate or poor second rate artist (you choose!) I am open to commissions, though there's a bit of a waiting list. More quickly (and cheaply) you could buy an original page of Russell artwork.

Meanwhile, onward and Leftwards,
Pete