Roger Langridge is the New Zealand-born cartoonist behind FRED THE CLOWN, currently "self-published whenever I can find the time to put one together," and also appearing weekly at ModernTales.com. His other work includes KNUCKLES THE MALEVOLENT NUN, ART D'ECCO and ZOOT (Fantagraphics); GROSS POINT (DC Comics); and DIABOLICAL LIBERTY and DOCTOR SPUTNIK (Deadline). Most recently he's completed a two-part Batman story for LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT and a short story for DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE.

BIG NEWS:

Right now I'm drawing a Hellboy six-pager (written by John Arcudi) for HELLBOY: WEIRD TALES. It's a daft bit of nonsense about Abe Sapien being the BPRD's number one badass and Hellboy being a useless boob who he keeps having to clean up after. Once that's done I'm hoping to get another issue of FRED THE CLOWN done, ideally so I can get the damn thing out before the end of the year.

BIG BUSINESS:

I decided to make cartooning my profession when I was six years old, after a particularly enlightened teacher set our class the inspired assignment of creating our own comic strips. That was when I really caught the bug.

My inspirations include THE GOON SHOW, Monty Python, Kurtzman and Elder, British weeklies featuring the likes of Leo Baxendale and Ken Reid, Carl Barks' UNCLE SCROOGE, old-time newspaper strips (especially EC Segar's THIMBLE THEATRE), and just about anybody whose work I've ever liked.

BIG TROUBLE:

The most difficult thing about comics for me is finding the time to write and draw the bloody things! Between the work I have to do to earn a living and having a baby daughter around the place, there aren't many spare minutes left in a typical day. I usually have to ring-fence a month or two every once in a while where I don't earn any money but just do my comic. It's a luxury that seems more and more selfish with a kid around.

BIG SPENDER:

I earn my living mainly by doing illustration work for educational textbooks, mostly foreign-language textbooks for schools. And there's the odd commercial comics job like the aforementioned BATMAN thing, which comes along once in a blue moon.

BIG AMBITION:

I wish I could spend a lot longer writing and drawing FRED THE CLOWN and that I could afford to print it in colour. One of these days I'd like to do a big ol' graphic novel with Fred the Clown in the style of a Buster Keaton film; that would be a blast and a half.

My dream job - and I acknowledge that this is well into the realms of pure fantasy these days - is to be a 1930s-style newspaper cartoonist, i.e. one who has a full page to play with every week, as well as a daily strip that is read by millions of non-comic-buying people, neither of which is demographically targeted to within an inch of its life.

BIG UP:

In comics, I always check out anything by Chris Ware, Dave Cooper, Al Columbia... you know, the usual suspects. Outside comics, I try never to miss anything Armando Iannucci, Chris Morris or Graham Linehan are involved with.

BIG TIME:

It would be lovely to have time to do all the projects I've discussed doing with different people over the years but have just never come together because of time constraints. In particular, a children's album in the European Tintin tradition called SWIFTY AND THE BOX FROM BEYOND with Scott Gray, my occasional DOCTOR WHO collaborator; BANANAS McGURK, with John Arcudi, about a talking gorilla in turn-of-the-20th-century New York; and an untitled project with my brother and ZOOT! collaborator Andrew, which is a big, sprawling, ambitious formal exercise with teeth and is otherwise impossible to describe in a single paragraph.

I'd also like to do a children's book, or even several children's books.

In the immediate future, the most important project is getting a fifth issue of FRED THE CLOWN sorted out, and then doing a book collection of the five issues to date plus the Les Cartoonistes Dangereux one-shot from 1999. Then I might do something other than FRED THE CLOWN.

Or I might not. I haven't decided yet.

BIG FINISH:

I'd like to be remembered as the man who kicked Jamie Oliver to death. Failing that, as someone who kept getting better.

BIG DEAL:

FRED THE CLOWN should be available in all good comic shops but, due to the caprices of Diamond Distributors when it comes to reorders, probably isn't. Fortunately, you can order them from my website.

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