The Really Heavy Greatcoat is a cartoon strip created by John Freeman and Nick Miller revolving around a sentient Greatcoat and its owner(s). The strip began in 1987 and first ran in the Lancaster UK listings magazines On the Beat and Off the Beat, and the latest strips now appears on ROK Comics - comics for mobile - with a more online-friendly version on www.downthetubes.net.
Comics-inspired Really Heavy Greatcoat Strips are also
published in the acclaimed comics magazine Comics
International, subsequently re-published on
downthetubes.
The
strip currently mixes straightforward craziness concerning greatcoats
with deep pockets and the occasional dig at local politics and events,
but could easily be adapted for any newspaper or magazine publication
interested in tales of relationships with a heavy slice of weirdness.
It is available for syndication and licensing.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY...
"The Really Heavy Greatcoat by John Freeman and
Nick Miller hearkens back to the newspaper strips of old, rich on both warmth
and character. Where this comes into its own however, is that Freeman's
sci-fi sensibilities mix in, thereby giving it a unique, surreal identity."
Chris Bunting, Comics International
WHO'S WHO
Greatcoat \Great"coat"\ (?), n. An overcoat.
-- web1913
greatcoat n : a heavy coat [syn: overcoat, surcoat, topcoat]
-- wordnet
KEVIN became
the current
owner of the greatcoat some time ago. A student who rented the attic room
in John and Jo's house, he's studying history and politics, taking a free ninth
in Modern Art at University but recently moved into the house next door with
Alex after its owner (who turned out to be the Greatcoat) sold it to John and
Jo. He
Kevin seems jaded, if not bemused, by current student ways and seeks to rediscover
what pre-Thatcher students got up to, like his parents. Unfortunately the
only thing that can tell him is the Greatcoat, and his ideas of life are
weird...
THE GREATCOAT claims to be the reincarnation of a
fifteenth century doublet and hose. It has certainly had a long life,
surviving the Napoleonic War (greatcoats kept a trooper warm when he
had static duty), the American Civil War, the First World War, and
behaving with some distinction as an Air Raid Patrol greatcoat in the
Second World War*.
That's a lot of wars, which might explain why, when he acheived sentience
(and the reasons for that vary depending on what story it can remember),
its politics have a distinctly radical streak ill-placed in today's squeaky-clean
New Labour Britain. Not that the greatcoat cares what Tony Blair thinks about
him, of course.
Since its adventures in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Greatcoat was
left on a coat stand in the attic room for a number of years. It became extremely
bored and a new owner was a welcome relief. It still has extra-dimensional
pockets and can time travel to any point in its past, particularly after
having beer spilt on it.
We know that the greatcoat has a brother in the RAF and we have met his hippy
owner from the 1960s.
* Although never seen in the strip, when John bought the Greatcoat it still
sported ARP Warden emblems. He removed them after being mistaken, on more
than one occasion, for a traffic warden in Morecambe. That kind of thing
happens in Morecambe.
ALEX is
Kevin's girlfriend. She thinks the greatcoat is amazing and is totally
unfazed by gorillas leaping from its pockets, alien invasion and other
weirdness. He parents taught her to be broad-minded.
JOHN found
the greatcoat in an Oxfam shop in the late 1980s and engaged in a series
of strange adventures involving aliens, two-headed nuclear power workers
and the Easter Bunny. Not necessarily in that order. It's not surprising
he's given up wearing the thing.
John now works for a local council and is the leak for everything at the
council to the local media, but the council administration are either too
stupid to work it out, even though he has a Greenpeace poster in his cube,
or they don't care.
JO (John's
partner) is known to have worn the greatcoat at least once, and brooks
no shenanigans from the garment. A former theatre student, she now
runs a small health foodshop in Florin Street, Lancaster, England.
You haven't found Florin Street yet? What are you accusing us of,
a thinly-veiled allusion to Lancaster's existing counter culture?
We deny it completely.
DENNIS
THE CAT You really want to know about Dennis the Cat? Keep
reading the strip. John has kept cats so long he can no longer smell.
It happens.
So, what happened to the aliens? Are there still two-headed people in Heysham?
Anything's possible.
• Read the latest strip on ROK Comics: Go
• Read the Greatcoat Archive: Go
• Nick Miller is available for work. E-mail him
or call +44 (0)1524 68107
MORE ABOUT GREATCOATS ON THE WEB
Napoleonic Greatcoats
• The
War of 1812 Web Site: British Army Officer greatcoats
Robert Henderson reveals that "With regards
to the appearance of the officer's privately-purchased greatcoat, specific
regulations were established in British North America in 1800 by the meticulous
Duke of Kent, then Commander of the forces in Canada, calling for: 'The Great
Coats of Officers are invariably to be made of blue cloth double-breasted with
regimental buttons and edged throughout with the colour of the lappel of the
regiment, those excepted whose lappels are blue and the edging of whose Great
Coats will therefore be scarlet.' Gosh.
American
Civil
War Greatcoats
• Calapooia
Traders
This US company specialises in making custom-tailored clothing for the living
historians and reenactors of the 18th century.The clothing they make is based
upon original garments, with our patterns based upon examinations, descriptions,
photographs, and original drawings of those garments.
• AzRA
Historical Resources
US 19th century civilian greatcoats
• US
Confederate Greatcoats from the Quatermasters Store
• The
Greatcoat - Why you should have one
As advised by the 47th Virginia Company
Second World War Greatcoats
• Wehrmacht
Greatcoats
They may have been fascists, but they dressed nicely. Yeah, right.
• Soviet
Greatcoats
How to wear one with impunity
• Buy your own
military surplus GreatCoat
Available from ADV Militaria
Action Man Greatcoats
• Greatcoats:
an Action Man accessory
It does shrink in the wash, you know.
Literate Greatcoats
• The
Revolt of the Clothes: a poem by Terry Jones
Led, of course, by a greatcoat
The Really
Heavy Greatcoat Elsewhere on the Web
• On
ComicSpace
• Online
Comics
• On Drunk Duck
• On Web Comics Nation
• Comics
Database
• On
ComixPedia
• Wikipedia
Entry
