"A strip cartoon of the year 2000!"

"A strip cartoon of the year 2000!"

It's never quite clear how often the adventures of the Karkus appear in 'The Hourly Telepress', but if there is a new strip required every hour of the day, the poor old artist must be well and truly knackered by now...

But our lovely Art Department, also known as Martin, recently came up with the terribly flattering idea of rendering the 'RTA' team in the form of a strip cartoon. We've released the first few on a daily basis and there are several more waiting in the wings.

But if you'd told my earlier incarnation (circa 1980) that I'd feature in such a venture then you'd have seen a very boggled young mind.

I was a regular reader of book versions of collected strips of 'Fred Basset' and 'The Perishers', the latter of which would venture into very strange territory with diversions into such characters as the group of crabs who lived in a rock pool, visited by the mysterious Eyeballs In The Sky.

But my staple diet in this area was, of course, the 'Peanuts' strip from Charles Schultz, even if some of the more obscure references to American culture were lost on an innocent lad from Dorset.

We'd visit the (fairly) local branch of Woolco most Friday evenings, and if there was no new 'Doctor Who' Target release to be found in their book section, there would probably be some adventures with Charlie Brown that could be added to my collection.

So the sly zig-zag detail that Martin has put on Lisa's top is not lost on me. Ironically, I probably identified more with Linus, though these days I think that Woodstock is the one with the best attitude to life.

Though I must not be envious of that evidence that he can type slightly better than me...

(Written by Andrew Trowbridge)
('Round The Archives' comic strip by Martin Holmes)