I was going to photograph Charlotte today, but she cancelled. I took some nice shots of Heleyni, though. I then sat in the Salient offices all afternoon reading through the entire set of ’90s issues… because, for next week’s 70th anniversary issue, Brunswick is being interviewed about Salient in the ’90s.
I wouldn’t recommend trying to read 260 issues at once to anyone. I hadn’t looked very hard at 1990 or 1991, and was surprised to find that there hadn’t been much of a cartoon presence after Tim Bollinger left. Although in the ’80s there were several beautiful A3 cartoon strips, the elaborate half-page A4 cartoons that I based Ivory Tower (the proto-Brunswick) on were not the Salient norm. I was also surprised by how pervasive I was from 1993 to 1999… I only stopped doing extra things like illustrations in 2001. There were also bits I’d forgotten about, like interviews, and the time Brunswick was forbidden from running for President, and a remarkable number of picture of exes.
I met the lovely Helen, who draws Henry Ball, PI. Robbie was in the office as well, and there was a magic moment when I said “Now, if only I bang your heads together I’ll have the cartoon page to myself this year”.
