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I meant this to be an Open Thread but mixed up the days I was supposed to post it (I was scheduled the 8^th and thought it was the 12^th; renewed apologies to anyone who was inconvenienced and thanks to the person who took it over).

The British cartoonist Glen Baxter (1944-2026) passed away a couple of weeks ago. He specialized in absurdist confections mashing together middlebrow cultural influences of the early twentieth-century– mainly boys’ adventure stories and society novels (think Michael Palin and Terry Jones’s Ripping Yarns TV series, that sort of thing) as well as a loving fascination for—of all things—cowboy ephemera. The following, was, for me, a perfect distillation of his work in general.

That’s not only a “chapter” illustration from 1990’s The Billiard Table Murders, it’s also, taken as a whole, one of my favorite single images ever created by a human artist. I’m only half-joking when I say that, for me, this is up there with The Great Wave at Kanagawa. Composition, intent, humorous effect… I badly want this for a T-shirt worse than I’ve wanted anything else (for a T-shirt) in my life. Baxter’s work not only exemplifies an intensely congenial form of cultural satire, but it’s also a great example of something that’s been a mild obsession of mine for a while now—the continuing vitality of single-image illustrations as a form of cultural commentary and artistic expression. While Baxter’s work (and that of people I consider his successors, like John Broadley) necessarily involves gags and text (unlike mine, for instance), it’s an enduring testament to how much one can (sometimes literally) stretch the medium.

Hopefully this’ll encourage me to get things in order this week, as apart from a fairly rewarding sketch session at the Scarab Club Sunday evening, I’ve hardly done anything recently. The header was taken from one of several articles and interviews I belatedly ran across; kinda wish I’d done this earlier but there you are; this one looks especially illuminating: https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/glen-baxter-art-illustration-spotlight-051224

How’s your work going?