Political cartoon strip from Crowqueen. Four thousand-plus panels riffing on British politics from 1997 to the present. Began as an attempt to draw sketches from defunct British Radio 4 satirical show Week Ending. Relatively soon afterwards it got off the ground as original work and never looked back.
Reflects a Conservative-Liberal-sometimes Labour viewpoint, as the Cartoonist has had more political party memberships than hot dinners (sticking with the Tories mainly to be on the left of the right, rather than on the right of the left).
Very personal and idiosyncratic and unlikely to see print in her lifetime or the lifetime of the characters.
Tropes:
- Author Avatar - sometimes literal (The Cartoonist), sometimes not (Mavis Crow).
- Author Tract - the early strips, particularly while the cartoonist was finishing her A-level Politics. Very socialist in nature. When the Cartoonist converted to Toryism, she gave this up (the author tract stuff, not the socialism).
- Back from the Dead - Mavis in 2005 after dying at the 2004 Party Conference.
- Bilingual Bonus - averted (the Generalissimo can't speak Polish, and thus has no idea of what Piech is saying) and then subverted (it turns out he speaks Russian instead...).
- Catchphrase - many.
- Here am I, briefs the size of Basingstoke/fangs the size of Folkestone... (Generalissimo)
- Munch munch, chomp chomp. Smack-slurp. Burp. (Volpone)
- Epic fail, Bossbastard. (Volpone)
- Oh Volpone, what big...you have! All the better to...you with, my dear. (The Cartoonist/Volpone)
- Crapsaccharine World - the strips between November 2003 and June 2004 count. Generalissimo was having colourful, crazy fun, but looking back, was always hovering on the brink of madness. So was the Cartoonist.
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Creator Breakdown - visible in the strip as either a change in style (the more abstract they get, the more depressed the cartoonist), artwork (the less finished they are, the more depressed the cartoonist) or absence (nothing worth drawing, or the cartoonist doesn't find anything funny, the more depressed...well, you get the picture). Lampshaded at some points by the Generalissimo, but not very frequently, beginning with the "My Little Tory" sequence in mid-2004. - Flanderization - Just about every single character.
- Friendly Neighbourhood Vampire - Generalissimo.
- Goofy Print Underwear - Generalissimo has Union Jack...sorry Flag undies. Often exposed to Good Tony at PMQs while he was leader.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes - originally the cartoonist would make up booklets for her friends of new strips. This was discontinued after about 100 panels.
- Massively Multiplayer Crossover - sort of. The characters from The Nine Lives Of Michal Piech appear in Britain and help the Generalissimo and the Conservative Party out, after getting jealous that they had been abandoned in 2003 when the Cartoonist decided to work on the strip and not on their story. However, the problem is they don't really understand elections that well... Michal becomes MP for Reading North in 2005, and is last seen with twins born on that particular election day.
- Medium Awareness - the fuel the cartoon strip runs on.
- Missing Episode - one book was left in Sibiu, Romania, on holiday, somewhere between a taxi and the hotel. Unfortunately it just happened to be the one containing quite a lot of the cartoonist's best work and the most detailed explanation of how Volpone got to be leader of the Conservative Party, so you'll just have to take her word for it that it was pinched to stop the real truth about Tony Blair coming out before he had to resign anyway.
- No Fourth Wall - quite often, the Generalissimo will address the Readers. At one point, the cartoonist had writer's block for over a week (while living in Poland and away from 24/7 access to the British media) and the Generalissimo broke down the fourth wall to get her to write something...anything. After that, the wall was never rebuilt.
- Our Vampires Are Different - Generalissimo does not shapechange into a bat. He quite often takes crow form, and then later on in the series is haunted by owls - leading him to finally acknowledge his inner owl and occasionally take the form of one.
- Our Werewolves Are Different - Volpone. He is actually a werefox (or fokssss, as he spells it) - and has been in his current form since 2007 when he had a bad case of the munchies and accidentally ate Barack Obama.
- The Magazine Rule - Generalissimo used to subscribe to the ''Nude Statesman''.
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Ukefication - What happened to Nick Dentling, aka Volpone's personal secretary and civil partner as the 2007-08 series (which is reckoned to be non-canon but was a pretty long story in its own right, covering from the rise of Gordon Brown to the Olympics) progressed. Any resemblance to Nick Clegg is purely and absolutely coincidental. Ahem. In the 2009 and 2010 series, Dentling was redrafted as Young Spawn - first introduced in early 2005 in strips entitled "A Portrait of the Vampire as a Young Spawn" as Generalissimo celebrated 20 years in government and went on a nostalgia kick. Arguably Young Spawn, who reappeared babysitting Baby Volp (whom he found down a Kent coal mine during the Miner's Strike and subsequently adopted), can be read as another take on Clegg - a year before the Coalition was formed. Naturally any more attempts to define Dentling/Spawn would lead to mere satire rather than genuine precognition, so the character has been retired pending a further dramatic niche for him to occupy independent of current events. - Xtreme Kool Letterz - Fokssss.
