Genius

Genius was a cartoon that appeared in the Observer from 1978 to 1983. It featured Anode Enzyme, the greatest genius since Leonardo, who had an IQ of 12, 794 (it was higher, but he lost a few points through watching television). Working for Lord Doberman, the world's richest man, gave him a lot of freedom, but he mostly confined his talents to doing whimsically obscure things like firing colour televisions into the sea, or recording the sound of a tape recorder being destroyed by a chain saw. Aged about 11 or 12, I hugely admired this serial work, so much so that I collected the strips for a while, pasting them into an old notebook. It's hard to say whether I prefered the surreal humour, the delightfully messy ink drawings and lettering, or the rather lovely watercolour that formed the main part of each week's installment. They clearly came from a complex, witty, un-bourgeois, and generally splendid intelligence. It always felt faintly subversive, as if nobody at the nice paper quite knew what the chap was up to. They never really gave it enough space. The same point is made in a nice appreciation here. I recently came across my yellowing cuttings, complete with original dates in my own childish hand. The one above was undated, before you ask.

John Glashan, the creator of Genius, seems to have rather sunk without trace. A great pity.