The Biggish Five © Jeremy Nell; Images reprinted by special permission.
South African cartoonist Jeremy Nell is ending his Urban Trash comic strip – a darker social commentary strip that is syndicated to papers in South Africa to create a new strip that is “fun, cute and disarming.” The new strip is entitled The Biggish Five about five anthropomorphic kids who live in a “fantastical world of a game park in South Africa.” The Biggish Five will also be a strip with social commentary, but on pop culture instead of politics.
“The decision to end the strip was an emotional and psychological one. I wanted to move away from its dark, serious and controversial content,” says Nell. “It’s time for a new season. Only focusing on the negative issues in South Africa is draining and I needed a balance.”
Also a factor in the decision is to create characters that are more easily licensable.
The Biggish Five is part of a new start for the cartoonist. “I want the strip to be established. I hope to expand it further and even to create a range of merchandise for the characters,” he says.
The final Urban Trash strip will appear on June, 27 2008 and The Biggish Five will make its debut on June 30th.
Jeremy also does a political cartoon called Ditwits that runs exclusively in The Times.
Really like the drawing style here. Although starting your light & easy comic strip with an animal skull would be like Shakespeare calling Hamlet a screwball comedy.
Seriously, though, I do want to see more.
I think he needs to figure out if his target reader is a child or an adult.
He should go for both, but change the subject he’s started out with. Terrible to pun, but this is a dead end.
Keep in mind, that I was given permission to post only 2 samples out of a month’s worth of material. Any final judgement regarding this strip is a bit premature based on the samples provided in this blog post.
Having seen a few weeks worth of material, I think the strip is inline with his audience and stated goals for the strip.
Jeremy’s new strip is FANTASTIC! I think it is high time he balanced out his comics with a bit of lighter humour not revolving around politics and I can’t wait for the official release.
Being one of his avid readers, I think I speak for many when I say that Biggish Five will be received very well. The hard work and thought he has put into each character is already apparent in his few sneak previews.
GO JEREMY GO!
It’s too few samples to say anything about it. What’s there isn’t terrible.
But If these are his two best gags, and it’s all down hill from here, then yea, I’d say this is a dead end. And it’s way too soon to think about licensing, geezus. I think a strip with animals can’t be a strip with animals for the sheer sake of appeal. There’s got to be some real personality there. I can not harken back to sponge bob enough, the creator of which was a marine biologist.
There is a real dynamic between the characters different personalities. I’m not seeing that here yet.
Boy, I got here aftrer reading the two strips on trashmedia and find it being trashed. Shame on you all not giving poor Mr Nell a more objective ajudication. But lets guess all the comments are by two induhviduals, one who may not comment on trashmedia?