The Forbidden Planet International Blog

The Adventures Of Kaz And Luke

by Luke Paton

Self Published

In the big world of the small press there’s room for everyone. You don’t need anything but the ability to write and draw and the passion to get your book out there, get it published, get it seen. But Luke Paton has taken this one stage further with The Adventures Of Luke And Kez, because he’s even willing to get his book out there without the ability to draw. This is not a dig at Luke, Luke can’t draw, knows he can’t draw, but has a story to tell and wants to share it. So he’s come up with a perfect solution; write it all down and illustrate it with simple stick figure drawings. Matt Feazell did it many years ago with Cynicalman and Luke’s carrying it on here. The fact it’s just stick figures doesn’t make a difference here, all you need to do is accept it and move on, read the words, use the crude drawings as visual reference and clues and just get into the story, enjoy the gags and you’ll find that you can do without detailed art.

(Originally presented newspaper strip 4 in a row style as a webcomic, these printed versions go the old Peanuts route of 4 panels on a smaller than A5 page. From Kez + Luke by Luke Paton.)

Is it autobiographical? Maybe. But it doesn’t matter. Luke may be Luke Paton. Kez may be Luke Paton’s long suffering girlfriend or might just be a fictional girlfriend for a fictional Luke. All you need to know is on the inside front cover of this collection or the about page of the webcomic; Luke is a shy bloke who relaxes best with Kez at home, where they’ll fall out over babies and marriage whilst she fills her time washing and cleaning and wondering why Luke never really wants to talk about babies or marriage.

(Luke’s reaction to babies is exactly the same. From Kez + Luke by Luke Paton.)

The key to Kez & Luke is that it’s funny observational comedy about two people in love and trying to make a relationship work. The stick figures are actually really rather well done and Paton manages to get a surprising amount of physical comedy and expression from very few lines to make Kez & Luke interesting, funny and most of all very true.

Luke Paton’s The Adventures Of Kez + Luke is available as either a real physical print comic or webcomic from Luke Paton’s website. Luke is also the writer of Zombie Nation, the comic strip drawn by Laura Howell for the Toxic Presents… Crazy Comics (review here).

Richard Bruton.