Multiple discovery

Of total nonsense

Hello Februarkies!

There’s a concept called “multiple discovery”, which is a hypothesis that many scientific discoveries and inventions are made independently and more or less simultaneously by multiple scientists and inventors.

Notable examples include the 17th-century independent formulation of calculus by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the 18th-century discovery of oxygen by Scheele, Priestley and Lavoisier, and the theory of evolution of species, independently advanced in the 19th century by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace - and those are just off the top of my head. (JUST KIDDING they are of course from a Wikipedia smash and grab!)

Well, I can attest to the soundness of this concept, as it has happened to me in my own life!!! When the show The Queen’s Gambit appeared on Netflix it more or less coincided with my own, much stupider idea for a comic about a chess grandmaster - KASPARFROG!

I was going through files this morning and found it. I feel like this might be another entire comic based off a bad pun. I’m not sure this one even rises to the level of pun, it’s so shit. But re-reading these pages, I remember what it was I was interested in. Maybe I’ll try it again - The Queen’s Gambit was a hit, no doubt people are now crying out for a much much dumber piece of media in the same vein?!

Anyway it’s often quite nice to go through old sketchbooks and ideas. Out of the ashes of drivel about neurotic chess grandmaster frogs perhaps will rise a new, much better idea? I’ve posted below with new, up-to-date annotations for the modern, 2025-style mind!

It’s a real comic CHECKMATE, is it not?

Here are a couple of pages from this month, trying to find characters for yet another Edwardian-set idea, which so far hasn’t got much further than this.

Thank you for reading!