Swamp Tour

By Gary Clark
Publisher: Swamp Productions Pty Ltd
ISBN: 0958806241

I discovered Gary Clark's work a few months ago now and quickly signed up for a daily Swamp cartoon in my inbox. After a couple of weeks I was suitably engrossed to order a couple of collections too, the first of which is Swamp Tour.

To set the scene, this is a strip set predominantly, but not exclusively, in a Swamp, with a wide cast of characters ranging from the charming to the despicable.

There are a number of duck characters, most of which are involved in the comings and goings around the air traffic control tower, but there’s also a duck dad and son, police ducks, army ducks, motorcycling ducks, and then there’s Ding Duck – the duck that just can’t grasp flying.

Cheese and Chives are two rather grotty rats living the life of Riley amongst the festering junk dumped in the swamp, who also turn up as lab rats from time to time. Old Man Croc is toothless and somewhat ineffectual as a class-A predator and barely gets noticed when the Swamp Tour boat passes by, then there’s a friendship between a turtle and a snail, a frog and a toad, and the utterly friendless, but vicious, Bludgerigar. We also get flies, ants, dung beetles, and the recurring character of a dead floating rat.

This broad cast allows Gary to turn his humour towards a myriad of topics so one day it may be a gag about duck hunting and the next about trying to pass a flight theory test. When there are dozens of bored looking flies sat on some dung one of them questions, “Is this a bonding thing?”, while at the psychiatrist’s office a mosquito is explaining that “No matter where I am or who I’m with, sooner or later everyone finds me annoying!” as the psychiatrist can be seen reaching for the swat.

Gary’s a gifted cartoonist, and a great gag writer, and even manages to cram in his passion for flying into many of the strips. Incidentally, the dad and baby duck characters are based on himself and his son Scott.

And if you liked that: Plenty more collections of Gary’s work available. Visit www.swamp.com.au