Sillicones THE SILLICONES STORY Part Three: The Seventies During this decade, the Grappelypods made sundry appearances in my 'J. Edward Oliver' strip in Disc/Record Mirror. The climax came with the episode that's already on the Web site. It's one of my favourite episodes of all that I did and is certainly the high point of the Grappelypods' career (so far)! Occasionally in Record Mirror, instead of the regular cartoon, I submitted an assortment of shorter strips. One reason I did this was to practise producing material that I might eventually be able to sell to newspapers. Here's an example of a short Grappelypods strip from the 15 May 1976 issue. Subtitled 'The Silly Cones', it probably marks the next step in their continual changes of name! THE SILLICONES STORY Part Four: The Eighties Actually, nothing much happened in the eighties. THE SILLICONES STORY Part Five: The Nineties As Fleetway allowed their humour titles to decline, I thought that the time had come to return to my original ambition of producing a daily newspaper strip. One of the sample series I came up with was the very one you are now reading. I decided to change the title to The Silicones (with one 'l', as in the polymeric synthetic material), because it would be easier to explain than 'Grappelypods'. It seems that the only way of making money from dealing with local newspapers is to sell the same material to several publications. Fred, my Devon-inhabiting brother, volunteered to help. He scanned sample Silicones strips and set his computer to e-mail them overnight to every paper listed in the Artists and Writers Yearbook. Sadly, I had only one reply, from the Bolton Evening News. Even sadder, they said they couldn't afford to pay even £10 for a weekly strip. The Editor asked if it would be cheaper if I produced it as a daily. I was disheartened. It would be a full-time job for less than £50 a week. I declined their offer. This may have been a mistake. After all, I'm currently producing Fresco strips for no money at all! THE SILLICONES STORY Part Six: The What The Heck Do We Call This Decade? Decide to change the name of the characters from Silicones to Sillicones. Just think it looks better. The sample strips are published on this very web site. Still no money, though. Await the call from hundreds of Editors across the world.