My aim for these Glastonbury comics was to try and capture a bit of the feeling of the festival, what it is like to live in this city of tents for 5 days and witness the weirdness and the wonder of the place, while also keeping true to the everyday nature of my comics. However when an event like the death of arguably the most famous person alive occurs, I felt I had to write about it. The news didn’t really overshadow any of the rest of the festival, but for that Thursday night after a drunk and joyful day I couldn’t contain my thoughts and feelings about it and ranted on for hours to my poor, poor friends.

I considered writing a sentence or two in the last panel, to try and sum up how Michael Jackson was the coolest person in the world to any kid when I was young, how the Bad album on vinyl was one of my most treasured possessions or how I can’t remember liking any musical artist or band before him. But it all felt pithy in a way, there’s nothing I could say that would be any kind of epitaph for the man, for his limitless talent and his troubled life. So I hoped that a simple picture of me doing my MJ dance moves would say at least something, and might even raise a smile in memory.

Kate Beaton linked to a comic by Sally Bloodbath that embellishes a similar memory and I really, really enjoyed it. She is perhaps a couple of years younger than me so it is the Dangerous album that meant as much to her as Bad did to me, and as Thriller did to the kids older than me.

And if any other comic artist have drawn themselves busting out a moonwalk I’d like to see it.

Tags: Beth Stratford, Dr. Gary Lawson, Glastonbury, Jolene Cadwell, Michael Jackson

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 3:05 pm and is filed under The Everyday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.