Studs Up

Bringing Paba Diop back made me nostalgic for some of the characters I featured in the early days of SU but then never wrote about again.

One of my favourites was Edna. She appeared in one of the first ever SU’s as part of my very first Rafa joke which I drew back in 2007 as a bit of a lark, well before I decided to draw comics on a regular basis. I never published it so here’s a never seen before, and maybe with good reason, Studs Up!

(click to enlarge)





She then made another appearance after I began doing SU seriously in the summer of 2008, popping up to round out a Euro 2008 gag.

It strikes me now that while I have so much more I want to achieve as an artist, and so much to improve on, I am at least quite a bit better than when I started out. That is some seriously shocking doodling.

Anyway, despite her obvious physical deficiencies Edna has a strange charm about her as well as that special gift of always popping up when people least expect, or want, her to. Apparently she doesn’t talk or something, but delivers a devastating thrust to her nostril as her only form of communication. I haven’t yet dared to draw the next panel when you discover what comes out of that nose, and perhaps I never will.

For some reason Edna seems like she might be foreign, even though the name “Edna” hardly invokes the far reaches of the Earth. Perhaps she was merely cast away by her own family for being too unpleasant, cursed to roam the streets until finding her true love… or perhaps a horde of Somalian pirates looking for a new recruit.

Edna the Pirate. What would be her pirate nickname? Perhaps the “Ginger Minge”.

Too far? Ok…