A Bulldozer is about to pave a garden labeled PARADISE. The cigar-smoking Boss says to a complaining passerby: “What do you have against parking lots?”
Yeah, what’s your problem?
Everyone knows I’m a fan of Billy Bunter, “The Fattest Schoolboy on Earth:”
George Orwell was a reserved admirer of Billy (he called him “a real creation”), but he outright hated the English schoolboy stories Billy appeared in; they were reactionary, repetitive, formulaic, ossified, etc (and they are). But they’re still good stories.
The Greyfriars stories, which Billy appeared in, ran from 1908 to 1940. They were written by Charles Hamilton (using the pen name Frank Richards), who also wrote dozens of other serialized adventures; it’s estimated he published around a hundred million words in his lifetime, which makes him history’s most prolific author.
Billy is a genuine anti-hero: Greedy, snobbish, stupid, dishonest — you name it. You don’t exactly root for him, but you don’t mind when he succeeds, and you laugh when he gets punished.
In Alan Moore’s “League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” which mashes all the characters of literature into one universe, middle-aged Billy, still dressed in his Greyfriars uniform, is a hermit living in the wreckage of his old school, under a government taken from Orwell’s 1984. Alan Moore is very smart, so he knew what he was doing, if nobody else did.
I really like this illustration (which is why I’m posting it). Bunter wants to sneak out with some other boys after lights out, even though he’s not invited, and he’s set an alarm clock to wake himself up. But it’s a cheap alarm clock and he can’t turn it off. As you can see, his classmates aren’t happy with him.
Draw my cartoons.