Savage Pencil was one of the new talents introduced by Escape magazine in the UK. He is part of the punk generation in comics. With his appearances in Escape and various other magazines, he quickly became one of the leading names in British underground comix. His jagged and spontaneous style accurately captured the spirit of punk. His most famous work, 'Red Hot Jazz', has inspired many fellow underground artists.
In 1990 the U.S. avant-garde band The Residents released the album 'Freak Show' (1990), which spawned a 1992 comic book adaptation, 'The Residents' Freak Show' (Dark Horse Comics), in which Kyle Baker, Brian Bolland, John Bolton, Charles Burns, Matt Howarth, Dave McKean, Pore No Graphics and Richard Sala all visualized one of the songs into a comic strip. Les Dorscheid provided colouring. Burns illustrated the book cover, while Savage Pencil illustrated 'Mumbling Midget' . A limited hard-cover special was made too, sold with a 13-minute CD titled 'Blowoff', inspired by songs from 'Freak Show'. Two years later a CD-rom followed, 'Freak Show', with a cover illustrated by Richard Sala. In 1995 The Residents released another CD-rom, 'Bad Day on the Midway' (1995). The project was originally proposed as a TV series script in collaboration with David Lynch, but eventually these plans fell through. The CD-rom features visual designs by cartoonists like Leigh Barbier, Steve Cerio, Ronald M. Davis, Georganne Deen, Poe Dismuke, Bill Domonokos, Doug Fraser, Peter Kuper, Dave McKean, Pore No Graphics, Jonathon Rosen and Richard Sala - who visualized the song 'Oscar's Story'. A companion book was released the same year, followed by a soundtrack album the next year and a novel in 2012. Another cartoonist who once made a comic book about the Residents is Adam Weller.
