Comic Cuts - The Panel Show
A show about comic strips, comicbooks, & comic characters. Each guest brings a panel from a comic. The panel try and guess where it's from, then talk about it. Hopefully we all go away learning something about comics we didn't already know, or maybe we've just showed off a bit. Hosted by Kev F Sutherland, writer & artist for Beano and Marvel, now busy adapting Shakespeare into graphic novels.
Comic Cuts - The Panel Show
Louisa Gummer & Paulus The Cabaret Geek
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Voice over artist Louisa Gummer and Paulus The Cabaret Geek bring in panels from a childhood treasure and a cartoon legend.
See the images from the episode here (they're also in the podcast artwork).
Every episode, the guests reveal a panel from a comic, we try and guess where it's from, then we chat about it. Half an hour later hopefully we've learned something, or just shown off and had fun along the way.
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Your host, and series creator, is Kev F Sutherland, writer and artist for Beano, Marvel, Oink, The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, and most recently author and artist of graphic novels based on Shakespeare. kevfcomicartist.com
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Hello and welcome to Comic Cuts the Panel Show. I'm Kev F. Sutherland, the bloke who writes and draws comics for Bino and Marvel, and now adapts Shakespeare into graphic novels for kids, and also has a hand in the Scottish falsetto sock puppet theatre. And this is your favourite podcast, which has an occasionally remote connection to comics. Don't worry if you don't know or care anything about comics half the time, neither do my guests, and it doesn't hurt. My guests have brought with them a panel from a comic or something close, and we're going to see if we can identify it and talk about it. Maybe we and you will learn something about comics we didn't already know, or maybe we'll just show off a bit and have an enjoyable chat. Let us see. Joining me from the worlds of voiceover and entertainment are Louisa Gommer and Paulus the Cabaret Geek.
Louisa Gummer:Hi, hello.
Kev F Sutherland:Comic Cups. We're looking at a panel, and we comprise a panel, there's a few of us. So the panel sees a panel and we talk about the comics from the panel we discuss. We call it Comic Cups. I've asked everyone on the panel to bring a panel to the panel. You can see these images in the show notes or on the artwork for the podcast, wherever you get your podcasts from. But don't worry if you can't see these images because we're going to be describing them. But first, let us describe ourselves. Louisa! Hello. Hello. Now many people won't know your face, they can't currently see your face, but they'll but they'll know your voice.
Louisa Gummer:They might. They might.
Kev F Sutherland:Why would that be?
Louisa Gummer:Uh I am and have been a professional voiceover for a a while, shall we say. Um, so the most recent thing I've done that I didn't realise was as big as it was, but got all my relatives coming out the woodwork on social media, is that I am now the voice of Little Miss Surprise and Little Miss Brave in the Mr. Men and Little Miss Adventures that you can find on YouTube.
Kev F Sutherland:How fast.
Louisa Gummer:And for some reason that that tick box is with everybody. Um, I also can be heard on the Northern Line uh for any tube that's going to Battersea Power Station. And anytime you change at Kennington, because it's got very complicated with the new Northern Line extension.
Kev F Sutherland:This is fantastic.
Louisa Gummer:Um and everywhere else in MRI scanners, in planes, in thousands of corporates, documentaries, everything and anything.
Kev F Sutherland:MRI scanners. I can think of something like one.
Louisa Gummer:So I something like please stay still while the table moves. Breathe in, breathe out. Now hold your breath.
Kev F Sutherland:Do you may breathe again? Do you find you're triggering people when you meet them in the street?
Louisa Gummer:I think it's only one very small brand of MRI, so it doesn't matter too much. Um, I did have a text from a friend of mine the other day saying, Have you done some amounts for Chiltern Railways? Because we're stuck somewhere. And this voice keeps telling us about a delay repay system, and it's just like you. And I thought I might have done, went and looked up, and yeah, that was me.
Kev F Sutherland:Paulus, do we ever hear your voice? Or do we just see face and voice combined at all times?
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:No, I don't. I I I used to be the voiceover uh to introduce uh Fascinating Aida's live show. I used to do the ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage, uh Fascinating Aida. Uh, did that for a couple of their tours, but other than that, no, nothing at all. But I do have very fond memories of using the North London end of the Northern line, Louisa. And uh always That might have been before me then. Ah, well, I was gonna say I was have always been delighted by the woman who uh who uh pronounces Highgate as Higgins. Yes, the next edition of Higgins.
Louisa Gummer:Unfortunately, she wasn't available when they added some extra stops on the extension, so they chose me instead. Do you hear both of us?
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:I don't know. I think it's a different voice, but um on the Jubilee line, the the person uh that does Canada Water seems like they live there. They're very proud of it. Canada Water! They said to live proud.
Kev F Sutherland:London is very much a world unto itself, uh and contained with the uh impression given that many people haven't travelled beyond its bounds. Uh but Paulus, you very much have especially embraced the north in the form of Victoria Wood.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Yeah, I have. I spend uh an inordinate amount of time going up and down motorways and a lot of the time to go into Yorkshire and Lancashire because I have a stage show set that celebrates the songs and music of Victoria, which I uh I boldly attempt to sing. And uh, of course, Lancashire is where she's from, and Yorkshire and Lancashire are probably the most popular uh spots and the biggest audiences, and they just go wild. There's so much love for her. I mean, I know there is across the country, but it's it's something really special when you go out there.
Kev F Sutherland:What would you say is the magic that Victoria Woods material has?
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Uh, Julie Walters once said in an interview that what she thinks Vic did best was that she punctured the pomposity of daily life. And I really like that because it doesn't speak to a divide between North and South, or men and women, or fat people, or thin people, which I think a lot of lesser ponderings on what Vic was saying and doing do lean into. And all those things, yeah, I guess there's some truth in them, but it's a bit blooming obvious, and she was much smarter than that, wasn't she?
Louisa Gummer:Louisa, you have leant into comedy yourself, because you and I began we know each other from an another lifetime now, um, where we met through the sitcom trials, and including the TV live version, um, which I think your line was something like um people were only watching it if they were insomniacs or burglars, because it was on late, very late on a Friday night just in the Bristol area.
Kev F Sutherland:It was a show that we did, uh I think it started at 11 or even 11:30. Something like that. Something ridiculous. I say ridiculous. They're going to be doing a new series of Saturday Night Live, which will start at about the same time. People coming in from the pub, basically. Well, I think we were pioneers.
Louisa Gummer:Although the theme music you chose for that still makes me feel sick. Because I hear that and I just immediately go back, Pavlov's dog style, to that moment where we were about to go live on telly thinking, what have I let myself in for?
Kev F Sutherland:Uh well, of course, I can go back uh in time with Paulus as well to when we first met, which would have given me cause for seat sickness as well, had it not been concreted in. It was the Battersea Barge.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Yes.
Louisa Gummer:Has it been concreted in? Oh, how awful. Sad.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:No, it's not. It's never, never has been.
Kev F Sutherland:Oh, I've just I've drank this.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Yeah, the but the barge doesn't go up and down the Thames, it's moored, but it has to be moved uh quite regularly for maintenance, and it goes down to Maidstone, I think. So no, I don't believe it's but it's ever been because I I was in talks about buying it for a long time, um, about 10 years ago. So I I've I've got some data there. Um, but we were indeed doing cabarets um probably nearly 20 years ago now when I first started.
Louisa Gummer:Which is about the same length of time our live TV was on.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I the first thing I would have seen Kev do, and the thing I've seen him do most is the Scottish Falsetta soccer theater.
Kev F Sutherland:Oh, my claim to fame is winning a plate of cheese on the Battersea Barge, and you won't probably remember who I beat into second place. It was Tom Allen, who at the time had hair. Now, voiceover work. We've spoken about this quite recently. We have. It's one of those areas that's threatened by the new technology, am I right?
Louisa Gummer:Uh yes, I think so. It it the industry is very quiet at the moment, but then the whole television and film industry is very quiet. And I think there's a lot of reasons why voiceover is quite quiet. But one of them is definitely the belief that AI can do it anyway. Um and even if the production companies don't believe it can, their clients believe it can. So they're being pushed from that side to maybe make things cheaper and quicker. And it's a frustration. It's also frustration that, of course, I know, as do you as an illustrator, that my voice being on the internet has been scraped and does sit in AI systems to recreate my voice, and I can't do anything about it.
Kev F Sutherland:It is a dreadful situation. I mean, especially when you're thinking about those jobs, which frankly would have been onerous tasks to record, like the voiceovers for the underground.
Louisa Gummer:Well, or or really long e-learning is way more onerous, I think. The underground, not too bad, but really long, quite complicated technical e-learning about legal things that you know only a few people are going to listen to. It's all dry voiceover, and they can train systems with that, unfortunately. And the difference, the one thing I think is different is that my voice is part of me. I know your illustration is part of you, or your drawings are part of you, but it's not part of you in quite the same way, I don't think. So to feel that my voice can be recreated somewhere else without me is quite a horrific thing.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:The thoughts that come to mind, in number one, I saw a bunch of um uh social media posts, which were clearly AI made, for a New Year's Eve cabaret show in London. And my instant thought was, I'm not going to that because they used AI for that very reason. You know, what does that say about how they feel about quality of uh the art that they put on their stage and how much, how do they invest in those in the arts and in those people? And I and I put me off hugely. The other thing I think is I mean, this will work and save some companies a tremendous amount of money for a certain amount of time, but at some point there'll be nothing original left to scrape, and they'll just end up like pop will eat itself, you know, it will just go round and round and round and round and round. Do you know very, very early on, like two years ago, when the first time I ever heard the words AI, I asked it to make a monologue in the style of Victoria Wood. And I recorded it and I put it online. And although I must admit that stylistically it was extremely uh accessible. I mean, I I managed, I think, to turn it into something that sounded like a cross between a Vic uh monologue and a Julie monologue, actually, and perhaps a little bit of kitty thrown in there too. But what I did also note was there wasn't a single joke. It was a three-minute monologue, and they and it didn't manage a single joke, but it's certainly got the style and the and and and a lot of the sort of nuance.
Kev F Sutherland:Well, what it would be able to get would be the vocabulary.
Louisa Gummer:That's that's all it's that's all it's good for. Because that's all it is. It's a it's a large language model, it's a mathematical algorithm that looks at all its information and comes up with the probability of what the next word will be. And I I don't understand how people don't know that, how they think they can ask ChatGPT to do research. It doesn't look things up, it doesn't go and find things for you. It just it's like a slightly more advanced auto autocorrect or auto-fill on your phone. That's all it is. You, I think, have got another podcast with Helen Quigley. Helen Quigley and I had a Zoom a year or so ago, and we used the transcription to see what it was like. And we got very confused by the fact that it summarized our conversation, that we were talking about cliches. Cliches. We'd been talking about cliches. We decided we'd been discussing recipes for quiches.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:I like the idea of a cliche lorraine.
Louisa Gummer:Yes, exactly.
Kev F Sutherland:Why, I think I was watching that on ITV just this morning. Now, each of my guests has brought in with them a panel from a comic strip or some such. We're gonna have a look at these and see if we can guess what we're looking at and what it inspires. The first I'd like to look at is the panel that has been brought in by Louisa. I have zoomed in close. Let us share this. Now, Paulus, I would like you to begin by trying for the listener at home's benefit to describe what you see. Listener at home, you should find this on the show notes, you should find it on the podcast holding image, but don't worry about that because it's about to be summed up in the best tones.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Oh, really? Because I've got no idea what I'm looking at. I'm looking at I don't recognise these characters at all. If I was forced at gunpoint, I might suggest it's a couple of this famous five and their dog. Um, but then they turn a corner and there's men on horseback and they seem to be knights or in full um armour. Uh, and I don't think that ever happened in the famous five. So I'm really confused. There's a pogo stick, a girl on a pogo stick, and she's got blonde pigtails, and the boy seems to have roller skates on that are also gladiatorial sandals. And the dog has a water and can in its mouth.
Kev F Sutherland:I think what's happened here is that Paulus has shown just how young you obviously were agreeing. So that is what roller skates looked like in my youth. Rollerscapes were strapped like uh round the feet with leather straps. And what we're looking at is a comic strip page that I've not seen before either. But my guess is that it comes from circa My Childhood in the 1970s. We've got the children you've just described, one bouncing on a pogo stick, one running along in roller skates, and then they uh bump into some round heads riding on horses. It's done as black and white line artwork, then coloured in with watercolour or with coloured inks. It's the sort of style of artwork that was very popular in children's comics, particularly girls' comics, it published by DC Thompson in the 1960s, 70s, into the 1980s. And another reason why I'd suggest it might be DC Thompson is that the voice bubbles and captions are typeset. The typesetting in the captions is um a serifed typeset, as in a newspaper. In the voice bubbles, it's it's supposed to look like hand lettering, but I think it's a typeface that they used to call something like DC Thompson hand lettering typeface.
Louisa Gummer:I know none of that.
Kev F Sutherland:Where what you think it might be from? Is it Bunty? No.
Louisa Gummer:I read Bunty a lot, but no, it's not from Bunty. Oh, okay. Because there's very little Bunty.
Kev F Sutherland:We see okay, some more fairy tale characters. What else do we see, Paulus?
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Um, yes, I've got sort of a jester type character. Um, but he's also got keys. No, is he a jailer, actually? He seems to be dressed as a jailer, uh dressed as a jester, but acting like a jailer. Um, and then there's, oh, there's shackles on the walls. Uh, they seem to have gone down some stairs into a cell. I can't read the text, it's too small, and these glasses are fake. Um, and there seems to be some important men with capes and hats.
Kev F Sutherland:The captain tells us there was a group of captive cavaliers in the dungeon. So it's roundheads, it's cavaliers, it's some time-traveling 1970s youngsters. Louisa, put us out of our misery. What are we looking at?
Louisa Gummer:So, uh, I had a real difficulty finding something because yes, I am of the same generation as you, and I read more girls' comics than boys' comics. So my mainstays were when I was about six, Twinkle, and then I moved into Bunty, and occasionally June and Schoolfriend, and my brother would get the Beano and Whizer and Chips, and I think shoot. And I'd read all of his magazines, but he wouldn't read mine because they were girly. Um, and I then moved out of those just for instance, just for interest to blue jeans, smash hits, Jackie, that sort of thing. I don't have any of my 10-year-old, 11-year-old magazines. I do have quite a few Jackies up the stairs on the mezzanine up there that I will at some point sell when I get round to it. Um but one of the things that I loved being a child, and Kev may remember this too, is at Christmas, yes, we got presents, we got chocolates, but we got annuals. We got annuals. And so I'd get the Bunty Annual, I'd get the Guinea's Book of Records every year and get all geeky about that. But I also got something called a Diana Annual. And I didn't read the Diana magazine, but I read the Diana Annual. And it was brilliant because it had all sorts of this sort of thing in, as well as girls who were fashion models and girls who were ballerinas, and lots of history too. And I was looking for anything I could find, because there is not the online depository of stuff for girls' magazines of my childhood as there is for the boys' ones. And I flicked through this online, some of the pictures they'd taken to show what it contained, and I suddenly flashed back to distinctly remembering this particular annual, mainly because there's an article about the Titchborne Dole in it. And there's a whole page on the Tichborne Dole, you see, very educational girls' magazines were. Um the Titchborne Dole was uh an inheritance that was left to um the son who vanished, basically, 200, 300 years ago. Um and then a pretender turned up, claiming to be the the Titchborne Dole heir.
Kev F Sutherland:And there was all sorts of claimant. That's that's the phrase I remember.
Louisa Gummer:But but the story was from the the perspective of the mother who died, and and how therefore that child was apparently lost. So it was it was given from the female perspective. And I thought it was interesting because of course there was the whole Anastasia story at the same time, in my head, anyway, about people trying to prove who they were or were not. And the title claimant was proven to not be the real person, so he didn't get the money. Um, so I saw that, and then I saw this and thought, oh no, I remember this one too. So I thought this was more confusing and more interesting, and time travel, and so it's on the Diana Annual 1971, and uh the artist is Jose Ortiz.
Kev F Sutherland:Oh, I was going, you won't believe me, but that was one of the two names I was going to say out loud as a guest, Jose Ortiz or another fellow called Jim Baker. Lies, it's all Jose Jose Ortiz was one of the Spanish school of artists. They used to send over to the studio in Barcelona to employ these artists because essentially the Spaniards were cheaper than British.
Louisa Gummer:I'm gonna put my reading glasses on now because I need to read something from here. So I've looked up who all the artists are in the 1971 annual, and quite a few of them are Spanish. Agustín Navarro, Jesús Redondo, José Gonzalez, José Ortiz, Luis Bermejo, um, and then some people who are not Spanish.
Kev F Sutherland:The Redondos, there were a couple of them, and Luis Bermejo and um Jose Ortiz all went on to work in 2000 AD comics. Oh, okay. They were employed a lot by IPC comics in the 1970s because of the cost of them, and also because the reliability, the Barcelona studio were really, really fast, and their draftsmanship, as you can see, was always top-notch.
Louisa Gummer:This is from a strip called the Swish, Swish with an SH Family Robinson. And they are on holiday in Wales, these family, and the two kids are making such noise that it turns out that they uh wake up Merlin, who is slumbering under a mountain somewhere, and in his frustration, he sends them back 300 years to the roundheads and cavaliers. So we're on page two of this story, and they're completely confused about where they are. And at the time, I was into Time Slip and um Various Tomorrow People and all of those things that were that were sci-fi, uh, which I still am now. And so I loved this. It was very much my sort of thing.
Kev F Sutherland:Very much the voyage of adventures that kids' comics took you on.
Louisa Gummer:Not quite so much dystopia. In those days, I think, than we have now, perhaps. I can't remember anything particularly sort of futuristic hellhole type stuff. But I just remember thinking it was such a shame my brother wouldn't read the stuff I had because it was really interesting and it wasn't just girly. And it's such a shame now that it doesn't exist in the same way because the stuff was great.
Kev F Sutherland:It is surprising that it doesn't. I think the reading of comics fell out of fashion. We're lucky that the reading of actual proper books carried on. And a lot of the slightly older female readers that I meet in schools read manga now. Oh, I've never done that. Manga. Manga covers these similar territories of fantasy adventure, fantastic adventure, but featuring school kids rather than uh macho superheroes and necessarily giant robots, although there's a lot of that. But there's a lot of uh extending from your own natural life into a fantasy world, which is what these strips did. Paulus, did you read anything of this Hilk?
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Uh uh Annuals. Uh, I I had look-in when I was a kid. That's what we got at Christmas time. You know, I wanted Jackie and uh anything with the girl's name, but uh they did their best to try and avoid giving me those things as long as they possibly could. So we got look-in for a really long time. So that was uh real um memorable when you mentioned the annuals. Uh, I I have to tell remind everybody of Victoria Wood's joke about uh when she goes on uh a holiday to Spain, but it's a very, very cheap flight, and so there isn't an in-flight movie, it's just a stewardess flicking through the bunty very quickly.
Kev F Sutherland:That's another thing. The divide between boys and girls' comics was um universal at um the time of our childhood. Boys' adventure papers and girls' whatever girls things had in the world.
Louisa Gummer:It was adults as well as children, though. So my mother would read Woman and Woman's Own. Um my father would have fishing magazines and car magazines and never the Twain. So it was it was very much of its time. Um, but I would always read my brother's magazines, because why not? Because I was a voracious reader, he wasn't really that interested in mine, and I always felt he missed out.
Kev F Sutherland:Yeah, yeah. I mean, I find that echoed in the the uh magazine shelves now. I was in a waiting room just the other day, and uh the horror show that is the women-oriented magazines, one doesn't normally come across them, but every single front cover was about uh losing 10 years and 12 pounds or whatever it is one needs to lose to I don't know, preserve mental health.
Louisa Gummer:It is quite frightening when we see how we subconsciously genderise our society and how we force people to fit in a box they don't want to fit in, but tell them they should.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Yeah, I did I did eventually uh uh start buying, or I think my sister started buying me Jackie magazine when it was such a good magazine. Yeah, once she got when she got her first job, because she was 10 years older than me. Um, and so I was lucky enough to to to get to read that, even though I wasn't supposed to. I remember horses, a tremendous amount of stories and pictures of and love of horses. If you remember.
Louisa Gummer:There is a point at which, and I have no idea what it is and whether it's evolutionary, but there is a phase you go through where you get quite into horses.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Yeah, and National Velvet and there was a whole series of books, Jill's Jim Carner.
Louisa Gummer:There's about 25 books that you could read that were all Jill riding her horse and going to competitions and things. And I read all of those too. I never rode a horse in my life.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:If we compare that to what we might have seen in some boys' magazines, let's say bicycling, go-karting, whatever, much less accessible for most people with normal incomes, horse riding. So you're giving the girls this one thing that is adventurous and energetic and good, health, you know, healthy, good for you. Um, but you can't afford it, so you're never gonna have it.
Louisa Gummer:So the story I wanted to find, because I'd completely forgotten about it until Paris 2024. The story I wanted to find was a story that I think was in Bunty about a synchronized swimming team. Because we had gymnastics and all those sports as well in Girls Magazine. And there was a story about a synchronized swimming team, and they were trying to compete, and for whatever reason they couldn't. And I remember being intrigued by the idea of synchronized swimming. But we didn't have a very big pool, and I wasn't very good anywhere, and I wouldn't have done it. I'd completely forgotten all of that until Paris 2024. Out of nowhere, finally, Britain actually has, for the first time in my entire life, a synchronized duo who won the silver medal. And I was so excited because the little me was just sitting there going, it is something I could have done. You see?
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Yeah, this is not uh cartoons, this is this is puppets on on film, but I'm uh I'm reminded of Miss Piggy and her excellent great Muppet Caper of synchronized swimming routine.
Kev F Sutherland:The sporting comic was, I guess, the male equivalent of that. Because there was an entire comic called Tiger, which had a racing car driver, skid solo, there was a swimmer, Splash Gorton. Uh there were a few football strips, including Billy's boots. He found some magical boots that had been played uh in the 1930s, they'd been worn by um made up name, and as soon as Billy put them on, he could play as well as made up name. That sounds familiar.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Yeah, that's it.
Kev F Sutherland:Well, he sounds like he was cheating, is what he was doing. Yes, but there was there was a lot of that, and uh not so much now. I don't see uh aspirational sport being represented in fiction, really.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:There was a there was an 80s cartoon on the television called Sport Billy that you've just reminded me of, and I think he had a sports bag which was magic and he could get things out of, like Mary Poppins. He was the only sporty character I was interested in at all because there was magic involved, and so that was interesting to me. I understand that entirely. Yeah, I can understand that.
Kev F Sutherland:Yeah, you know what? I think sport has always uh overlapped into reality TV, because sport is reality TV, and what's happening there is the stakes are real and there's no kidding around. Whereas made-up stories, those overlapping into sport, it's got a slight remove because if you're interested in real sport, in real football teams, in real athletics, real people, then you'll look at these made-up stories and say, but that's not the real person.
Louisa Gummer:I think it's the same with films. There's very few sporting films that are really brilliant, unless they're not actually about the sport. So Ted Lasso is brilliant, it's not really about football.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:It's not about football, which is why I like it and why I will watch it. Yeah, because it's about the people, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.
Kev F Sutherland:And I guess the adventures with horses, which you were opining for, those very rarely get done because you'd have to work with horses.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I remember reading an interview quite recently about um the making of uh a Wolf Hall, uh, and the creators were saying, Oh no, I mean, it's just a few years later, and we wouldn't even we wouldn't get the funding for that. And for so for the sequel, uh Fire and Mice, I think it's called, or something, they had to cut all the outdoor scenes, they had to cut loads of scenes which had horse races and horses involved. And basically the second series of Wolf Hall, the sequel, it became a chamber piece. Everything was indoors. There was no crowds, there was no outdoor shows. It was walking up and down uh medieval corridors, the West Wing, but with candles. It was basically it. Sorry, this isn't about cartoons, I beg your pardon.
Kev F Sutherland:That's quite all right. We have just been looking at a page from the Diana Annual 1971, drawn, and I genuinely was going to So sorry, I I ruined your thunder. Stole your thunder by Jose or Tiz. I would have undoubtedly said one of the other names had I not been.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:I think I'd like I like the idea that all was it seven names that Louise Louisa just read out are all a woman called Jane Jones who gives them way of Christmas.
Kev F Sutherland:Now, let's have a look at what Paulus. I have dropped in close first to one of the smaller panels from the larger page that you brought us.
Louisa Gummer:Oh, I did think of this.
Kev F Sutherland:Now, not only is this instantly recognizable, but if you look, reader at home, you won't notice this. But if you look on the Zoom at what a Paulus has been wearing around the neck throughout, and now has resting on a shoulder and on a t-shirt. Uh, Louisa, do please try and have a guess. Well, describe for anyone who can't see it.
Louisa Gummer:There is a small bald male child uh in an orange top and shorts that just sneak out from under the top, and a pair of green shoes, holding an old school phone with a uh uh coiled cable, talking into it. Uh he's obviously inside because phones only were inside, presumably in those days, and also there's some curtains in the distance. And he's saying, No, I think he's writing into the phone. That's all we have. However, that small child is absolutely recognizable, I would think, to many, many people. I mean, there's probably an age cutoff, sadly.
Kev F Sutherland:Well, I don't know because I see a lot of kids in schools who are also au fay with this character. Uh listener, we are looking at a character whose head is circular, whose hair is a small clump on his forehead, whose nose is the letter C, whose eyes are two full stops on either side of that letter C, whose mouth sinks down, down, down near the foot of his circular face. He wears, in most pictures, a yellow top with a black zigzag line crossing it. He wears black shorts, he wears brown shoes. Louisa, who is he?
Louisa Gummer:Well, it it in my head, he's called Charlie. You're gonna tell me he's not called that at all now, aren't you? Oh no, he's definitely called Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown.
Kev F Sutherland:We're looking at Charlie Brown from Peanuts.
Louisa Gummer:Peanuts, which always confused me because I didn't know who Peanuts was. No, I know, it's very strange.
Kev F Sutherland:Paulus is Paulus is going to tell us more in a moment. We're going to pull back and see the particular page that we've shared. Um, that was one of the frames of it. The second frame features Louisa.
Louisa Gummer:Uh Snoopy typing on the top of his kennel with some clouds in the background, writing a letter that starts, dear friends.
Kev F Sutherland:And then we read the rest of that letter that uh is being written. It says, Dear friends, I have been fortunate. Oh no, why should I read this? I'm not the voiceover artist, Louisa. What's it say?
Louisa Gummer:Dear friends, I have been fortunate to draw Charlie Brown and his friends for almost 50 years. It has been the fulfilment of my childhood ambition. Unfortunately, I'm no longer able to maintain the schedule demanded by a daily comic strip. My family does not wish peanuts to be continued by anyone else. Therefore, I am announcing my retirement. I have been grateful over the years for the loyalty of our editors and the wonderful support and love expressed to me by fans of the comic strip. Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy. How can I ever forget them?
Kev F Sutherland:And it's signed. It appears to say Charleston Barclay.
Louisa Gummer:I was thinking it said Elizabeth Umbridge, but hey, whatever it says. I thought it said William Ludwig, and I know what it is.
Kev F Sutherland:It should say Charles M. Schultz, but uh Paulus, do please fill us in on exactly what we're looking at.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Well, I I I've got a lump in my throat just uh hearing Louisa read it out, actually. It's tremendously emotional for me. I believe this was published in the UK on the 13th of February um 2000. So 25, 26 years ago now, um, or maybe 2001. Um, but I I got it and and read it in a paper the next day, so February the 14th. This is the final strip. This is the goodbye of my entire childhood, and these characters who I I adore so much. And what what I remember very, very vividly is sitting in a cafe um uh reading the mag uh the newspaper and and reading this on Valentine's Day, the day after it was published, um, and crying. And people around me clearly all thinking I'd been stood up on Valentine's Day and having no idea why I was sobbing like a baby. The thing about Snoopy and Charlie Brown, and uh, I I completely agree, Louisa, Peanuts never explained, never never made any sense, just confusing, really. It's like it's like the franchise has three different names, isn't it? The Snoopy, the Peanuts, and the Charlie Brown. Um I think I I think one thing I remember very clearly about reading Charlie Brown and Snoopy when I was young is how many things it taught me. And if the I don't think there'll be anybody listening to this that thinks that comics are pointless, because otherwise they wouldn't have tuned in. But if, you know, there are parents or people out there that think that comics are pointless or frivolous, or you should be reading a book instead. I I wonder if you two would agree with me. The amount of answers I get right in a pub quiz that come from having read a peanuts comic is astonishing to me, and it endures to this day, and I'm 50 now.
Kev F Sutherland:The thing for me is that they're tiny little clumps of empathy. Yeah. As a as a teenager, I used to get the books, I still have them here, the Peanuts Collections, and I used to get other cartoons as well, like uh BC, which was about cavemen and Wizard of Eve. Oh, yeah. Those had more recognizable jokes with laughs in that I would get. And with peanuts, I was often wondering, oh, why is that supposed to be funny? And as the years went by, you realized it was more than just jokes. It has warmth, it has a shared sensibility, a cussiness would be the best Scots word for it. It makes you feel like you're part of this extended family.
Louisa Gummer:It's relationships, it's about negotiating, it's about living with other people and sitting in the same space with other people. And as a small child, I don't think you quite understand how you're going through that when you first go to school and you work out friendships versus home and all of that. But I loved Snoopy so much, so much. And I I had a tiny little version of the one that is currently perched on your shoulder, and just adored him.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Adored him. Sorry, I've also got Linus with me as well, by the way, just in case anyone's wondering. That was my nickname when I was a kid. I was called straight A Linus. I mean, I must have got one A once, and my mother was like, Yes, we'll call him that way, everyone be impressed.
Louisa Gummer:Whereas Lucy and I was thought were slightly bossy, so that was clearly me.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Yes, and my sister, my big sister was Lucy. But you know, broadly, to uh the often on the peanut strips or or on a poster for peanuts, you will see all of the characters together, Franklin, Peppermint, Patty Marcy, and Linus and Lucy. And it will say something like, The gang's all here. Now bear with me while I try and sort of unpack this idea. Lucy is very, very bossy, and she's often very, very unkind to Charlie Brown. Most of them are quite unkind to Charlie Brown at one point or another. Um Peppermint Patty is clearly queer-coded, and I didn't realise that as a very young, queer boy. But Marcy and Peppermint Patty spoke to me. I didn't know why they spoke to me, but they spoke to me. And I think you both are aware of the impact of um Schultz injecting Franklin, his only black character, and I believe the mid-60s, about 67 was it. And he said in many, many interviews over the years, we didn't, there wasn't ever going to be, and there never has been a storyline about Franklin's blackness. There isn't a storyline about why Charlie Brown has no hair. Why does he have no hair? He's not a baby, he's not an old man. And but we don't have an alopecia plot line, do we? And the idea that we are allowed to be different, that we're allowed to be unique, we're allowed to have, you know, foibles, if you will, and yet we are still part of the gang. Yes, you're dreadful at baseball, but you can still play. Yes, you're quirky and don't fit in, and you're not, you know, we'll have you anyway. But but but we're your friends, and and and and when push comes to shove, the the you know, the the nastiness will stop and we'll be there for you. And I yeah, it's not about jokes, it's never been about jokes. Peanuts isn't funny, it's bang on hilariously intelligent. It's so intelligent and it's so emotionally intelligent, and I think it's yeah, it helped me through a lot of tough times as a little boy.
Louisa Gummer:I can understand that.
Kev F Sutherland:And it's timelessness as well. I don't think I've looked at any um peanuts cartoons and found that it's aged badly. It's there's nothing that seems inappropriate. Some things with sharper humour or contemporary humour or um the the the taste of the times, you're looking at things now and thinking you wouldn't say that now. But peanuts, no, it's its universality has continued.
Louisa Gummer:It's so much so that at the moment, until I think the 18th or 19th of January, there are hordes of people wandering around the Fleet Street area of London, slightly confused, looking at really rubbish maps, trying to find one of 12 statues of Snoopy that are in place with a little Snoopy trail, which are beautiful, and they're all Snoopy lying on the top of a different canal. And and and you you know exactly what people are doing because they've all got this really rather rubbish map, unless they've been to Reddit and they've found somebody who's done a Google map with actual pins because you just wander around going, I can't see it. Um but it's glorious, and and everyone's taking their kids and it's lovely, and it absolutely is still um something that people connect to and love. And I don't think it's the families dragging their kids necessarily, it's just something that connects to everybody.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Yes, I did it. Me and the lesser spotted husband did it uh just before Christmas.
Louisa Gummer:We didn't I did about half of them. Did you? And then got to a pub.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Yeah, very wise. We did all 12. There's photos on my Instagram, and there's a really good one of my husband in his Snoopy Christmas jumper, which is exactly the same as the the kennel he's standing next to. So that's good.
Kev F Sutherland:Yeah, delightful. It's managed to resist the cynicism that a lot of updatings have done as well, because there was a film not long ago which uh carried they they rounded the characters off when doing it in CGI, but they kept them true to the animated version, which started uh 50 years ago, 1965, was that first Christmas animation with the bizarre Vince Garaldi jazz.
Louisa Gummer:Oh, I liked the jazz, you see. Yeah. That that was probably the most contemporary thing about it.
Kev F Sutherland:And those are still shown regularly, and uh when they've remade or or added further episodes to them, they've kept them in that style. Then when they made that movie, which I guess is 10 years ago now.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:It is about 10 years, yeah, yeah.
Kev F Sutherland:Yeah, with the CGI versions, they were still true to the 1960s feel. They used the Vince Caraldi music again, and they didn't put in those postmodern jokes where you've got one level working for grown ups with a nudge nudge wink wink, and another version working for children. They kept it Charles M.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Yeah, if I'm honest with you, I agree with everything you said there, Kev. I do. And I did like the film. A second watch of it just last year made me admire it even more. But it is definitely aimed at uh at kids, at little kids. And uh and I perhaps perhaps it it raised a little bit of the intelligence and the uh there's something rather ruminative, rather ponderous about a short strip. But it asks questions. They're tremendously uh philosophical for what are they, seven, eight years old? I'm not quite sure what age they're supposed to be, but they talk about the most astonishing things, especially Charlie Brown and Linus leaning against a brick wall and discussing all manner of things. And that for me was missing, but I understand what matters probably more is a new generation get introduced to these characters uh and and Schultz's work. And I believe they are there, uh it might not be the same people, but there's a second movie in discussion right now.
Kev F Sutherland:It'll be interesting to see how that works and whether it it reaches out in the same way. The beauty of the original line drawings, that's where the timelessness really lies. Because you look at those drawings and the ones he did in the 1950s, right up to the ones he's doing in the 1990s, they're the same. Yeah. He's he's not strayed, he's not decided, oh, it would be clever to suddenly put a Albrecht Jura background in here, or they didn't even mess around too much with the colour for the Sunday pages on this final Sunday page, it's still flat colour, just like you had to do once because that's all they could afford to print. Uh, by the 2000s, this could have been all singing, all dancing photoshops.
Louisa Gummer:But it wouldn't have been peanuts, it wouldn't have been Snoopy, it wouldn't have been Charlie Brown.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:No, because it's that that's the charm, isn't it? I think. And even, I mean, obviously, this is his last one, and I and I feel like even at the time of it being printed, I I noticed as an older man his hand was getting shakier. But then he'd never drawn straight lines or clear circles anyway. It was always a little bit wiggly and wobbly, which it's like going bold when you're 23. Nobody realizes you aged years late.
Kev F Sutherland:Thank you so much for bringing in what you've brought in. Uh, let's just remind ourselves of what we've been looking at.
Louisa Gummer:Uh, Louisa, you brought in uh a strip called The Swish Family Robinson from the Diana Annual 1971.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:And Paulus, you brought in the very last uh Charles M. Schultz Peanuts strip in uh national newspaper saying goodbye. I'm retiring.
Kev F Sutherland:And thank you so much for doing that. Where can we find the pair of you on the socials? Louisa?
Louisa Gummer:Uh well, most of the time, if you search for my first name and my last name, Louisa Gummer, you will find me. If, however, so at Louisa Gummer, for example, but if you Google me, what you'll find is Meryl Streep's youngest daughter. Even though she has changed her stage name so that she and I are not confused, and she goes by Louisa Jacobson, Google has decided that I now no longer exist. So if you search for my name, you still get sent to her. But I do have the.com, so my win.
Kev F Sutherland:Excellent. And if you had the world's greatest voiceover artist, you wouldn't get me a job, Robert.
Louisa Gummer:But basically at Louisa Gummer, I have to be first on every platform because if I'm not, some random Meryl Street fan will pretend to be her instead.
Kev F Sutherland:Do you pick up work from Meryl Streep?
Louisa Gummer:Never once, once my voice agent in London got asked if I wanted to read for a pilot in Hollywood. And I said, I think you'd better go back to them and ask if they meant me or if they meant the other one and they meant the other one.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Their loss.
Kev F Sutherland:Paulus, where do we find you?
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Now look, don't be typing in Paulus because you'll get Fred Friedrich Paulus, who took over from Hitler after he shot himself and ended the Second World War. So if you want Nazis, type in Paulus. But if you put the cabaret geek, then you'll be all right. But some platforms, and probably easier to remember, um, called Victoria would tribute um now. So yeah, one of those will work. And the show which is touring right through this year is called uh the the original show, which uh ends after six long years of touring in May, is called Looking for Me Friend. And the sequel will premiere in Edinburgh this year, and that's called What Would Victoria Do? Fantastic.
Kev F Sutherland:My thanks to Louisa Gummer and to Paulus the Cabaret Geek. If you're listening, do please remember to like and subscribe. And there is a whole back catalogue still to visit. You've been listening to Comic Cuts, the panel show. Thank you both.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek:Yeah, my pleasure. And thank you for not saying Comic Cuts incorrectly, because that's I'm glad I don't have to say that.
Kev F Sutherland:Podcasters like Adam Roach, legendary singer-songwriter Dean Friedman, Jessica Martin. The list of comedians includes Ashley Story, Bethany Black, Will Hodgson, Paul Karenz, Izzy Lawrence, Doug Siegel. There is too many to list. And they've brought in comics from Marvel and DC to The Bunty and The Eagle, from Robert Crumb to Viz, Web Comics, Obscure Manga, all points in between. And sometimes we don't talk about comics at all. Don't forget to click and subscribe, leave a review, and tell a friend. For example, what could these two be talking about?
Hannah Berry:With a swastika on his shirt, uh, he's got his trousers down, his bum out, and he's he's standing with his feet in a bucket of pig shit on a stage. Um, there's lots of people looking behind him, and he's saying, uh uh uh, oh yes, I can feel it coming out now. Go on, fuck off out of it, you blasted queen.
Kev F Sutherland:Comic cuts. We're looking at a panel, and we comprise a panel, there's a few of us. So the panel sees a panel and we talk about the comics from the panel we discuss, and we call it Comic Cuts.
