It's always satisfying when you can think up a joke that isn't a straight pun — all the more so when you can't really say where the idea came from, just that it appeared when it was needed. That said, if the conception was mysterious, the labour was excrutiating. Here for comparison is the original rough.
Having established between us that it was a good enough gag, I started drawing the final. Hours later, I was surrounded by pieces of paper with drawings of foxes on them and no nearer a final drawing that I was happy with. With the deadline looming I just went with the best of a bad lot, scanned it in and got colouring:
But I couldn't escape the feeling that it wasn't quite right; something about the character of the fox in the rough had got lost. Testing Pascal's patience with me as the tortured artist to the limit, I scrapped it and started again. And ended up with what was finally published. Much happier. Much funnier? Probably not. JB
Good, it's about time Joe started behaving like a proper tortured artist. In years to come people will scour this image for evidence of the kind of anxious neurotic hell Edvard Munch was mining in The Scream. PW
The headline could do with punching up a bit … PW