It was the summer of 2022. My wife, Becky, was approaching the end of her maternity leave with our second child, and was planning to go away for a few days to visit a friend in Ontario. A couple of days before she left, I had a bright idea… a bright yellow idea!

The end of her maternity leave marked the start of a season of her working from home long-term, which meant that we would desperately need a home office (somehow we’d just muddled through on this front during the Covid lockdowns).

We had a room that we had always planned to turn into an office. The only problem (besides the fact that it had become a junk room) was the fact that it was a small basement room that was painted dark grey, and so was a pretty gloomy. When I was standing in there one day though, I was suddenly struck by a bolt of brilliance — I could create a yellow accent/gallery wall, clear up the room, hang some pictures, put up some new furniture, and surprise her with a brand new home office upon her arrival home!

You might be wondering why the yellow wall was a part of this plan. To which I would reply, it was much more than part of the plan — it was the crowning glory of the plan! I should probably take a moment to explain the level of genius I had been momentarily graced with when it came to this yellow accent wall. The reason the wall was such a masterstroke was five-fold:

1. It would dramatically brighten up the room.

2. Yellow is Becky’s favourite colour.

3. Yellow and grey go really well together, and were our wedding colours, no less.

4. I knew that it would work great as a backdrop to my collected original comics and cartoons, a few of which we had already decided we would put up in the office once we had one, as they’d been loitering around different corners of the house for some time now.

5. Lastly, it enabled me to totally transform the space at a really low cost, and I could do it lickety-split!

… Or so I thought.

The day soon came for Becky to leave for her trip. While she was 33,000 feet up in the air (on an aeroplane), I implemented the important first step of operation yellow-wall — taking the obligatory “before” photo — followed by a few hours spent clearing the space of several years of junk.

Now I was ready to head out for supplies — namely a tin of lush, bright yellow paint. I came home and taped off the edges, got my brushes and roller out, and set to work on this lightning-makeover.

The first coat didn’t cover the dark grey particularly well. “But it’s a bright colour on a dark wall”, I reasoned with myself, “so, hardly surprising”. Surely the next coat would have a more dramatic difference.

Hmm, turned out, no.

Well, the third coat would do it. This was where it was all going to come together! Again, no.

Something was’t quite right here. The fourth coat looked only a little better than the third. And likewise the fifth coat. It was certainly creeping slowly towards embracing its new identity as a yellow accent wall, but the grey was showing through quite clearly in places, particularly on the sections I’d done with the roller, and so it was looking pretty unsightly.

This lightning-makeover was turning into a more of a… really slow makeover. Between painting, washing up all the equipment (the bright yellow certainly had no problem making it’s presence known at this point in the proceedings!), and the drying period between coats, most of my time was now being taken up with this pesky yellow wall, and I still had to address the rest of the space.

So I had to work fast. I nipped to Ikea and got some office furniture; I bought some art that I knew Becky would really like; and also purchased frames for my existing art (all of this, I should point out, was done with our toddler in tow).

Because we’d decided to put some of my collected original cartoon art up in the office, I came up with the idea to limit those to the yellow wall (once done) and to use a few pieces that would fit with the theme but were also items that Becky would appreciate on the wall that she would be facing while she works (one of the walls that was staying grey).

Anyway, her trip drew to a close, and although the whole thing was considerably more stressful than I had expected, I was able to make the room semi-presentable just in time for her return home. And it was a great surprise! — even if she did spot the “before” photo on our shared iCloud photo stream while she was away, and therefore guessed that I was going to surprise her with some form of office makeover. She DID NOT, however, know about the yellow wall!

The saga of which was not not over yet. I think by the end of her trip I’d done about five or six coats, and it still looked pretty rough. A couple of weeks later I went back to the paint store, photos of the offending wall in-hand (well, on-phone, but you get the idea), and asked them what I should do. They told me that the pigment used in yellow paint does not have good coverage qualities (no kidding!), and that I should purchase the same colour in the premium range, along with a premium roller, and then put the paint on really thick, with two roller coats for every one cutting-in coat. If I did all this, they claimed, I should see a dramatic difference.

I did not.

Don’t get me wrong, it was better, but only a little. I eventually lost count of how many coats I had to do, but I think it was somewhere in the region of 12-15. I used pretty much all the paint in both 3.5 litre tins, amassed many, many hours of work, and it STILL wasn’t 100% covered, but I decided that I just had to move on with life.

So much for lickety-split!

After this though came the fun part — FINALLY I was able to hang some cartoon artwork up on there!

And at this point, you might be wondering what these artworks were. Well, I had planned to now segue into highlighting some of them as a springboard to discussing a few of my cartoon and comic inspirations, but this story — like the original events that inspired it — took longer to tell than I’d imagined, so I'm going to cover that in a not-too-distant-future post.

As the proverb goes — good things come to those who wait.

I speak from experience.

An explainer for this one: for those who don’t know, Manitoba, in central Canada, can get inhumanely cold in winter. It’s pretty common for temperates to reach -35°C (-31°F). Even temperatures of -45°C (-49°F) with the windchill are not unusual.

I know this first-hand, as Manitoba is the place I call home. Specifically, Winnipeg, the capital city of Manitoba.

This is not where I’m originally from though. I was born in the UK, where I lived until 2010, when I married my lovely wife, Becky, and made the move over to here. I’m now a Canadian citizen, but whenever winter hits I’m acutely aware of the fact that I myself am an “alien” in Manitoba. And I myself have have experienced the sentiment: “what is this place?!?!”

In my case, I didn’t experience the Manitoba weather in the same order as the alien in this strip — my first visit here was actually in early-January. One of my first memories of this place was walking out of the doors at Winnipeg airport and immediately coughing as the icy cold air hit my throat. My next trip was the following summer, so I essentially had the reverse experience.

Because here’s the thing about Manitoba’s summer — from mid-spring until mid-fall, the weather is generally very nice - lots of blue skies and warm weather. And in that sense, Manitoba sort of masquerades as a “normal” place for several months of the year, and it has struck me that if somebody was to “land” here in, say, early summer, and were not warned by anybody of what was coming, they could be easily forgiven for believing that they were somewhere, well… reasonable. Then winter would strike.

This is what I wanted to capture in this strip, which was actually created for the December 2023 edition of COMRAD - a comic anthology series celebrating Winnipeg artists and storytellers.

Having the comic in this anthology was quite a big deal for me, as, whilst I’ve had quite a number of opportunities to see my illustration and graphic design work in a printed format; have experienced my cartoon-based work in animated video format; and have published comic strips online, this is actually the first time I’ve been able to experience a comic strip of mine in printed format.

I had the idea for the strip a few months ago, and then became aware of the anthology series at a recent independent comics festival. When I found out that the theme for this particular edition was “Below Zero” I felt like it would be a good fit.

But the big irony is that I’m writing this on December 6th — 6 days shy of the of the date I assigned to the last panel in the strip, and unbelievably, it was actually +6°C (42.8°F) today!

Quite pleasant really.

“Vacation’s over”, I said to myself as we returned from our trip the Canadian Rockies, “time to get to work!” I was fired up at the prospect of starting a new project - the publication that you’re currently reading - and I would do so post haste!

Well, that was over a year ago.

So I guess life got in the way somewhat. In my defence, I have a full time job, two young kids, two fur-kids (of the dog variety), and a hundred-year-old house that needs regular attention. I also needed some time to work out exactly what this thing is… so, what is it?

Well, The Comical is essentially an outlet for my comics and single-panel cartoons, many of which are reflections of random thoughts I have as I go about my day. But I’m also going to be publishing my more long-term comic project here - a project entitled Super Scrupulous, which, as the welcome page describes, is a comicky cacophony of constant caped-correctness (if that’s not clear enough, and let’s face it, it probably isn’t, you can find out a little more about it on the About page).

In addition to the comic and cartoon posts, I’ll also publish the occasional “Column” posts (the first of which you’re currently reading) where I talk a little about what’s new with me, as well as some thoughts on creativity, processes, inspirations etc.

So here I go with this thing!

Better late than never.

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Thank you so much.

Stu

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