You might have – I hope – noticed that the website’s had something of a face lift. I’m still working on the finishing touches. I guess, as of January 31st, it’s still in the soft-launch stage. Anyway, I felt sorry that these guys missed out on the cut. They were initially destined for the speech bubbles next to ‘me’ (the monkey) in the header but they just had too much detail to work at that size.

There’s a bunch of other incidental illustrations that didn’t make the cut either (mostly for not being very good) but I quite like this sporty stopwatch:

I’ll put up a longer post about the website process in the next couple of days.

And now I’m back from binge eating in Italy there’s a lot of rad stuff in the pipeline for 2012; I’m excited! I hope everyone had an amazing new year and Christmas stuff time!

Behold the tyranny that is the North Pole!! Elf workers of the world: organise!!!

For Christmas I decided I’d redraw the Pyramid of Capitalism, as the Pyramid of Christmas, so the elfs can organise against Santa’s exploitation, or whatever. I’ve no real idea why, I just thought it’d be fun!

It’s a bit too boring to go through everything (you know Santa embodying the state; TV false consciousness blah), but I like the idea of the bourgeoisie being reindeer. Also, this is the first time I’ve worked properly with pencils rather than ink; I like the softness it produced in the image.

Being serious, and dull, for a moment what I didn’t realise until I drew this was that the original poster is now exactly 100 years old. The International Workers of the World (IWW) first printed it in 1911. I once had a really interesting conversation with Josh MacPhee (from Just Seeds) about the simplicity of the poster; the image removes most of the nuances and complexities that make capitalism such an efficient – and pernicious – social relationship. But I suspect it’s that simplicity that’s meant the poster is still being referenced 100 years after it was printed. Not surprising then that there are a lot of other reworkings of the image out there. Personally I think The New Pyramid of the Capitalist System (on Libcom) and Work (by Packard Jennings, published by Crimethinc) are the most interesting updates, and worth having a look at.

• Download 300dpi version

The characters, of course, from the previous poster are also in this one, including my favourite troll.

I’m going to try and do a screenprint of this, and the Occupy Everything poster, at the start of the new year. I’ll let you know when they’re done! Also, Occupy London have released and Occupy Everything toolkit if you’re interested in looking at it.

Greenpeace asked me to create a comic in November about McKinsey & Company, who are a large business advisory company who for some reason were involved in giving countries advice about deforestation. This is a comic about what would happen if the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) took their advice.

Greenpeace published it as an A3 poster in English and French (there’s a PDF of the two versions here), which has been handed out at the climate conference in Durban that’s happening this week.

It was a really exciting project to work on. And I hope it has some – beneficial – impact on proceedings down in South Africa!

It all reminded me of being at Panos London when we were trying to pull together our video about REDD for Copenhagen two years ago. Oh, you can read more about Greenpeace in Durban here. I’ve also realised I haven’t published the main comic I did for Greenpeace that they took to the conference, I will do very soon, for the moment you can read a Flickr slideshow of it that Greenpeace produced.

Below are some of the images from sketchbook one. I’ll put some other images up, and a more coherent explanation in the next couple of days (there’s a lot more images after the jump!)

The Mount of Olives viewed from the walls of Jerusalem's Old City

The ninth service of Christ on Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem

Damascus gate (then Jewish quarter), Jerusalem

The Tomb of the Rock and shabbat ending on Jaffa Road, Jerusalem

Road leading from Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City at dusk

An unimpressed chaperone of some young girls stands next to a closed up shop in Old City, Jerusalem

Garden of the Tomb, Jerusalem (some British dudes believe this is where Jesus got buried)

The Holy Sepulchure (where most people believe their fictional messiah got buried)

A tour group outside the Holy Sepulchure

Pilgrims and soldiers on top of Temple Mount, Jerusalem

Bus from Ramallah to Jerusalem via Qalandia checkpoint

Cafe above Lion Square in Ramallah

Al-Wehdeh hotel, Ramallah

Service taxi from Ramallah to Taybeh

People at the New Palms Hostel (Faisal hostel), East Jerusalem

The Twelfth Service of Christ at the Holy Sepulchure catherdral thing

A couple chatting after shabbat ended near the Western Wall, Jerusalem

The Western Wall, Jerusalem (with singing American dude!)

Train journey up to Haifa/ Acca (there were more soldiers on the train than is implied by this image!)

(Click above to see it bigger…)

I made this a little while ago, but realised I never posted it. I like the idea of bed bugs being huge and hiding behind cupboards… much more fun than they really are.

A short comic I did for Chris 12o5‘s new zine. It should be awesome: it’s all about punks getting old. This is obviously autobiographical but I didn’t feel like using the monkey (or any figure that looked like me!). Anyway, the park is Battersea park; when I was a kid it used to have a rad waterfall behind the Pump House, but it’s gone now. The statue is by Barbara Hepworth, which is beautiful but for some reason did scare me as a kid. Last time I was in the park though it was on loan to a museum! Actually the ‘ice monster’ is from near my grandparents house, he lived in the ice house that sat on the hill underneath the village’s manor house.