Clown About Town

Okay, well here's something that I've been doing for a new anthology by Chrissie Harper (www.chezchrissie.co.uk) about a clown, based on a dream I had involving foetal orphans, cats and giant eyeballs. I think there's a reason I don't remember my dreams as a rule, and this is the first one I actually recalled since childhood. Well, apart from the one where I was editing an Al Ewing script and Bryan was a middle aged plumber from Stretham. Anyway (because it fills up some space and makes it look like I'm actually doing something), here's my description for panel 4 of page 1 - prepare to be underwhelmed when entering my world of nonsensical madnesss:

Splash: our protagonist – GRIMALDI – sits in a moth-eaten armchair, his feet up on a foot rest, as he watches the television, laughing his head off. He is a middle-aged clown, but he looks about as seedy as the chair in which he is rooted. Hair sprouts out in great bunches from either side and on top of his head, but appears almost as though it is flowing, like it was underwater. He holds a smoking cigarette in one hand, and a black cat sleeps contentedly, curled up in his lap. The room around him is suitably messy and full of clutter and useless ephemera, and the wall is lined with faded posters with titles such as STABFOOT LIVES!, GOOGLY GOGO! and THE ORANGE FROM HELL!, whilst most notably in the centre of the wall sits a poster of Grimaldi himself in front of a circus big top, with the words THE GREAT GRIMALDI in ridiculously large type beneath. Through a window in the b/g, we can see a man with an elephant’s head and an eye patch floating past as though he were unusually weightless, holding on tight to a string attached to a balloon in the shape of a large eyeball.

And here's the actual panel itself, as drawn by artistic wunderkind extroadinaire Dragan Kovacevic - you can see the entire first page over on Dragan's blog (http://hammerson.blogspot.com/2006/10/great-grimaldi.html) - nice, innit?