About the artist
A professional member of ISCA.
"[Tommy] was polite, entertaining, professional and his pictures created a great talking point. He was a lovely chap!"
"... superb and had everybody raving... Once again thanks for a perfect performance."
Comments courtesy of the Neil Drover Agency
Tommy Sommerville (pen name Somme) was born in the Gorbals. He’s turned his hand to quite a few things over the years, but was drawing from an early age and today works full-time as a professional cartoonist, specialising in caricature. He and his wife Margaret have a son, Christopher (a talented cartoonist himself), and they recently welcomed a third generation of Sommerville scribblers in the shape of baby Callan.
A qualified print designer & lithographer, Tommy ran his own Glasgow printing business for over twenty years whilst harbouring an obvious passion for all things cartoon-related. This led him to become a founding contributor and editor of Electric Soup, part of the “black & white boom” of indie comics in the late eighties and early nineties. Electric Soup featured a motley collection of strips, each with a uniquely Scottish (or, more accurately, Glaswegian) flavour. Tommy’s tales of Rocky McBlaw and Helmetman appeared among many others alongside the undoubted stars of the show, Dave Alexander's MacBam Brothers and Frank Quitely’s The Greens. The comic was picked up by John Brown (publisher of the legendary Viz title, among others) and distributed across the UK. Despite healthy sales Electric Soup ended with its seventeenth issue in 1993, something of a victim of its own success. Cracks had begun to appear in the creative team and Tommy decided to walk away, little realising that John Brown would do the same. However the original artists and writers reunited for a one-off, tenth anniversary special in 2000 and at least one superstar emerged from the ashes; Frank Quitely went on to work with Scottish comics writers Alan Grant, Mark Millar and Grant Morrison on such projects as Batman: The Scottish Connection, The Authority and All-Star Superman.
Tommy’s next comics work was in the 1994 self-published title Hoof Hearted, dedicated to legendary Glaswegian cartoonist Bud Neill and featuring a foreword by MAD Magazine’s Sergio Aragonés and back-up strips from Tommy’s compadrés Davy Francis and Danny Cardle. In the comic, Tommy’s Electric Soup character Rocky McBlaw listens to a tall tale told by his grandfather, a cowboy adventure with a distinct Glasgow twang. The story is as much inspired by Neill’s Lobey Dosser as Tommy’s own father, who penned a cowboy novel himself.
All the Scottish writers and artists mentioned above became members of the Scottish Cartoonists & Comics Artists Members (SCCAM) Club, which itself was borne out of Tommy’s work (along with Ranald MacColl and Yves Cotinat) to establish an international cartoon festival in Stirling and cartoon museum in Glasgow. The SCCAM Club opened in 1995 and was based in the basement bar of the Blackfriars pub in the Merchant City area of Glasgow. Tommy spearheaded the club along with Ranald, and later Martin Conaghan. More note-worthy members were influences on Tommy’s cartooning such Roger Kettle & Andrew Christine (A Man Called Horace, Beau Peep), Malky McCormick (The Big Yin) and Bill Ritchie (creator of Baby Crocket, Tommy’s childhood favourite!).
During Tommy’s stint as club organiser SCCAM produced their own comic and a book in aid of Partick Thistle FC as well as sending work as far off as Zagreb, Croatia and St.Just-le-Martel, France. For young, up-and-coming members of the club, these represented their first tastes of publishing and exhibition. Best of all where the SCCAM party nights that invariably featured special guests: personal favourites like Hunt Emerson, Martin Honeysett, Bob Godfrey, Steve McGarry, Gilbert Shelton, and Jim Woodring were just some of the cartoon legends who crossed SCCAM’s doorstep. Most famously of all, the late, great Will Eisner (creator of The Spirit and father of modern graphic novels) was inaugurated as SCCAM President during a meeting that was televised on BBC Scotland.
Tommy stepped down from SCCAM in 2000, just as he dissolved his printing partnership and joined the Scottish Cartoon Art Studio. Although he was also involved in a second bid to start a cartoon festival in Scotland (the Glasgow plans would, like Stirling before them, fall foul of inter-departmental politics in the city council), Tommy was ready to spend a bit less time “banging the drum” for cartoons in general and concentrate on developing his own career. Highlights in the earliest years with the Studio included designing artwork for the BBC Scotland television series Hoots!; producing caricatures for the likes of Prince Charles and Simpsons creator Matt Groening; and collaborating with editor of The Dandy Morris Heggie on a revised, post-modern version of Korky the Cat.
As a boy, Tommy had been switched on to caricaturing by the on-screen drawings of STV’s Emilio Coia. Inspiration struck again when he travelled to the Salon International du Dessin de Presse d’Humour et de la Caricature as part of a Studio delegation in 2001. There he got his first taste of Jean-Claude Morschoisne, Jean Mulatier and Patrice Ricord's non-satirical, keenly observed caricatures. His imagination was set ablaze and on returning to Scotland started work on a collection of caricatures of Scottish comedians. The first piece was an over-sized drawing of Rikki Fulton (see the Home Page Gallery), completed in collaboration with colourist Jim Dee. By the time Fulton passed away in 2004, Tommy’s project had expanded; every member of the Studio team was involved, he was de facto editor, and rather than just comedians they were drawing famous faces from every walk of Scottish life. Beyond doubt the Studio’s most high-profile project to date, Fizzers has proven to be the most ambitious effort ever to raise the profile of the caricature art form in Scotland. Fizzers launched in 2006 with a simultaneous book and exhibition. Fizzers: Famous Scottish Faces Caricatured was published- and can be bought online from- Mercat Press Ltd. Fizzers: the Alternative Portrait Gallery was shown at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and received some 15,000 visitors over its three months there. In the end Tommy contributed over forty caricatures to the show, seventeen of which can be seen in Mercat’s book. The next major exhibition, Fizzers: Well Kent Scottish Faces, ran at the People's Palace and Winter Gardens in Glasgow throughout the summer of 2009, included several brand new caricatures never before seen elsewhere, and attracted just under 82,000 visitors.
Today Tommy is kept busy through the Studio, hard at work on further Fizzers plans as well as one or two super-secret projects. With this website he hopes to build a virtual scrapbook, so browse the galleries for photographs from the old days of the ‘Soup and SCCAM and unseen comicbook and caricature artwork.
Fizzers ® and © Scottish Cartoon Art Studio