East Ayrshire Leisure Trust are now the guardians of the late Scottish cartoonist Malky McCormick‘s original art, including an archive of his collaborations with comedian Billy Connolly on the newspaper strip “The Big Yin”, published between 1973 and 1977.
“Malky McCormick’s huge personal archive has been handed over to East Ayrshire Leisure,” the organisation announced last week. “His daughter Jane handed the archive over to The Dick Institute.
“Malky’s family gave a lot of thought to how best to commemorate Malky and his legacy. Fragile cartoons will be digitised by the museums team at Dick Institute and a public engagement project is planned around the donation.”
Archivists Ruby Davidson and Jestein Gibson have started work on the archive, much of which will be digitised.
The Dick Institute, in Kilmarnock, has been described as Scotland’s finest municipal gallery, featuring the largest exhibition spaces in Scotland south of Glasgow, offering a carefully selected programme of displays.
Born in 1943 in Glasgow, Donald Malcolm McCormick aka Malky McCormick, who died in 2019, aged 76, began entertaining audiences with his unique illustrations and caricatures as a teenager.
His first cartoon was published when he was thirteen. “I just walked into the local newspaper editor’s office and said ‘Here’s a cartoon’, he later recalled, ‘and it was published in the [Glasgow] Mercury and Advertiser’.
“The thrill I got from seeing that cartoon published in the paper was brilliant and it really inspired me.”
Initially working in commercial art, from 1965 he worked as an artist on comics and magazines for DC Thomson in Dundee, mainly “ghosting” artists such as Dudley D. Watkins’ on “Biffo the Bear” in The Beano and Allan Morley on “Nero and Zero” in The Wizard, before joining Scottish Television as a graphic artist and designer in 1968.
His work was published in newspapers across Scotland and the rest of the UK, for papers including The Daily Record, Kilmarnock Standard, The Evening Times, The Sun, Daily Express, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph and New Statesman, as well as many sporting magazines and advertising companies.
In the 1970s he was a member of the five-piece skiffle group, The Vindscreen Vipers, later renamed The Flying Dugz Brothers, playing the banjo, at this point then meeting fellow musician and banjo player Billy Connolly, who had performed with another band, The Humblebums, before becoming better known as a comedian.
In the 1990s, Malky was also resident cartoonist on ITV’s daytime version of the US quiz show Win, Lose or Draw for, the show initially compered by Danny Baker, followed by Shane Ritchie and Bob Mills.
A lifelong Kilmarnock FC fan, he is arguably best known for his depictions of Scottish football personalities. His caricatures of every Scotland manager since the 1970s are on display in the entrance foyer of the Scottish football museum at Hampden in Glasgow.
Malky was also a key player in organising the National Cartoon Festival in Ayr, which began in 1998, running until 2002l. It featured the work of cartoonists from across the globe, including Australia, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy and the United States, and included exhibitions organised by the Cartoon Arts Trust.
He continued to work as an artist at the beginning of the 21st century, and was a popular after-dinner speaker, incorporating humorous in-situ sketches of his audience.
He also published a couple of books of his cartoons and produced comic postcards.
“The Big Yin”
In 1975, with his friend and fellow banjo player Billy Connolly, he devised and wrote the hugely successful cartoon strip “The Big Yin” his time at the Scottish Daily News, a short-lived workers’ co-operative, planting the seed for his most famous cartoon strip.
“I was trying to think of a name for the strip we were working on together,” Malky later recalled.
“At the time, Billy was doing a routine called The Crucifixion, based on the idea that The Last Supper took place in the Glasgow Gallowgate, not Galilee. In the piece, Billy referred to Jesus as The Big Yin and I was listening to that one day and I thought, ‘Aye, that’s a good name.’ So, in the cartoon, Billy became The Big Yin and I became his sidekick, Wee Man.”
“I had known Billy for a few years through the folk clubs and we promised each other we would do this strip together,” he told BBC Radio Scotland in 1981.
The BBC notes the collaboration sparked interest from other newspapers, including the Glasgow-based Sunday Mail.
“It was a colour tabloid with a much bigger audience so a much better vehicle for the Big Yin strip,” cartoonist recalled. “It was the big break for me, no question about it.”
The first strip was published in 1975 and Malky and Billy began to map out a future for their creations.
They’d meet on a Monday, either at Billy’s home in Drymen or Malky’s home in Ayrshire, Billy Connolly recalls.
“It was a strange affair to explain to people, doing a strip cartoon in two different towns,” Malky said.
The strip was topical and very successful, a compilation album, Bring on The Big Yin, published in 1977, selling 40,000 copies.
“We were always getting in trouble and we did [the Big Yin] to get away with stuff,” Billy Connolly told the BBC last week. “We could blame this non-existent person, who looked like me and behaved like me, but wisnae me… we could say wild, wild things… we broke a lot of ground. We pushed art.
“People don’t look at cartoons as art. But it is art – and it’s very important.”
When Billy and Malky fell out over the strip’s political direction – Billy a Labour supporter, Malky, SNP – Malky created the character Wheech McGee – with his magic wellies – to replace the Big Yin strip.
Memories of Malky
Malky died in 2019, aged 76, a victim of vascular dementia, although he continued to enjoy drawing despite his diagnosis, and the death of his wife, Ann. They had been married for 40 years. He ended his days in care home, survived by his daughter, Jane, and sons Sean and Dominic.
“As a young lad in the 1980s, Malky McCormick – along with my dear old Dad – was my artistic hero,” caricaturist Edd Travers noted in 2019, paying tribute on his passing,” who still has a cartoon gave him as a youngster on his studio wall. “I was always mad keen on drawing cartoons and when I grew up I knew I wanted to be just like Malky.
“His artwork was everywhere back in the day – he was enormously successful with a crisp, clean, bold style that was totally unique and all his own. His caricatures were second to none. He would cram his cartoon panels with all manner of funny wee Glesga men, wuman, dugs, graffiti, rhymes and more often than not, Lord Lucan could also be spotted peeping out from somewhere! Absolutely brilliant stuff. No one could touch Malky McCormick.”
“A really nice guy, with a very distinctive style,” Tara Togs artist Stref said of Malky in his passing in 2019. “I met him when I was 17, and still have two letters of encouragement, that he wrote me.”
“I met him a couple of times and he was a true gent,” recalled artist Alex Ronald. “His art style was unique and amazing.”
A Lasting Legacy
The fate of Malky’s extensive library has been preying in the minds of his family since his death in 2019, the BBC reported.
“It was something which kept me and my brothers up at night,” says his daughter and acclaimed endurance swimmer, Jane McCormick.
“The media of newspaper is not there anymore and it would have been a shame for it to drift away and him and his legacy not to be remembered.”
Malky’s work will now be used to encourage even more young people to take up their pencils, just as he encouraged others, such as Ed Travers, during his lifetime.
“We’ve spoken to a lot of people in our local area who were inspired by his work and went on to become comic book artists themselves,” says archivist Ruby Davidson.
• The Dicky Institute is online as part of the East Ayrshire Leisure Trust website
Its exhibitions welcome more than 130,000 visitors each year, and 4700 people take part in one or more of their many events and workshops which accompany the programme. Schools and groups are welcome by appointment, and a full and varied engagement programme is ongoing throughout the year
Further Reading
• BBC News: The Big Yin and Malky: Rare Billy Connolly comic finds new home
Tributes and Other Items
Profiles…
• Lambiek Profile: Malky McCormick
• The University of Kent: Malcolm McCormick
• 2013 photo by Ian Mclean of Malky McCormick in his studio
Books…
• McCormick So Far (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
• Bring on The Big Yin (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
Tributes…
• The Scottish Record, 15th April 2019: Legendary Scottish cartoonist Malky McCormick dies aged 76
• Daily Record, 1st May 2019: Malky McCormick’s daughter pays tribute to her late father – Jane McCormick shares some of her fondest memories of her dad
• Adam’s Nostalgic Memories: Game Show Memories – Win, Lose Or Draw
- About the Author
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: British Comics, Comic Art, Comics, Creating Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News, Exhibitions, Other Worlds
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