The end of the J Edward Oliver strip
J Edward Oliver wrote:
At the beginning of November, 1977, when I went into the RM office as usual to
deliver my work, I was told that my strip would end in a couple of weeks. One problem
about being self-employed is that they don't have to give you much notice! With the
rise in popularity of punk music, my style was considered no longer appropriate.
However, the editor, Alf Martin, did give me one last
opportunity to come up with a new cartoon that would fit
in better with the punk image. Of course, it is possible
that they'd decided to dispense with my services no
matter what, but I did produce two new strips, either one
of which I hoped might fit the bill. Didn't work, though,
and these sample cartoons have lain in my vaults,
unseen, until now.
The first one is slightly unusual in that it's one of the
rare strips that I drew with a brush, a common technique
with other cartoonists, but very different from my own
painstaking style with ultra-fine technical drawing pens.
Here is the second strip. The content, though not the style, may be familiar: