Original Artwork
New Order
1990

“This is from 1990. I'd been living in California for a year and BIOGRAPHIC was a Sunday strip that was syndicated to newspapers throughout the U.S. by United Media (the same people who syndicate Peanuts, Dilbert, etc.) The McGarrys spent a month back in the UK during the World Cup (I watched all the games in my mate Pete Morrall's pub in Cheadle) and I brought the original artwork back to Manchester with me to give to Rob Gretton.

Rob drove me over to Johnny Marr's house in Bowdon to meet Johnny and Barney (they were recording the Electronic stuff there) and get some pics of me presenting the original to Barney, which we were then going to use as promo back in the States. Unfortunately, we had to borrow some guy's camera and I never saw the final pics!

The art was india ink on Bristol board, and the blue pencil marks were there to guide the colorists who added the colour for the Sunday "funny pages." Since the advent of personal computers, most artists colour up their own stuff in Photoshop now. Funnily enoough, most of the conversation that night centred around how ubiquitous New Order and Depeche Mode were in Southern California in 1990 - they still are, btw – and comparing notes on the new-fangled Apple Macs that Electronic were using to record, and I had just started to use in creating black and white art (they weren't really capable of creating colour cartoon art at that time.)”