« Rockets, canoes, bagpipes, fish, good old chaps with patches on their elbows and jokes about Derrida: Glen Baxter’s world is always instantly recognisable. » — Harriet Lane
As our more astute readers — just kidding: you’re all astute — have surely noted, WOT? is a safe harbour for surreal and absurd cartooning. And so it was only a question of time and fate that we would spotlight Glen Baxter (1944-2026).
He’s been much eulogised and analysed, and so I won’t bother with rehashing his history or trying to explain his work. Instead, I direct you to the Lambiek Comiclopedia’s exhaustive biography.
The Guardian’s Baxter obituary declares: « The genius of the cartoonist Glen Baxter was the happy result of a childhood in postwar Leeds – periods of dreariness interspersed with trips to the local cinema to watch black-and-white cowboy B-movies, and afternoons spent reading Boy’s Own annuals and the adventures of Dan Dare in Eagle comics – combined with an artistic education influenced by Magritte and André Breton. »
I’m sorry, but that sounds like tidy, simplistic reverse-engineering, a pat ‘origin story’ wherein the artist does little more than randomly recycle and recombine the sights and sounds of his childhood. The man’s œuvre surely comprised far more than the sum of its parts.
That said, I’ve plucked out an even dozen favourite Baxters for your consideration. It wasn’t duck soup, I assure you.
What Roy Lichtenstein might have produced if he’d had a working sense of humour.
In this household, we’d take the more direct route and just eat it.
Indeed! Meanwhile, here’s a recipe for one of my favourite Szechuan dishes, Yuxiang Eggplant.
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Thankfully, the situation’s evolved, and the Society no longer has to hide in the shadows and gather in a clandestine way.
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This level of dedication to one’s craft brings to mind John Waters’ ‘Serial Mom‘.
Although I love greens now, I can’t help but shudder at the way my poor mom — bless her soul — used to ruin spinach and broccoli by boiling the dickens out of them. I’m happy to say she experienced a culinary epiphany when she learned to sautée asparagus a few decades on.
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-RG
*so spoke Edward Gorey on the subject of Baxter. I’m inclined to trust his judgment.
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