tedosaurus

Hot on the heels of the introduction to my first comedy character Apeth, here’s its companion piece, about a creature called Tedosaurus. It’s not quite as richly detailed as the previous story so we don’t get a clear idea of who or what Tedosaurus actually is, but I expect he’s exactly what he sounds like - a cross between a teddy bear and a dinosaur. Rather than a cross between a dinosaur and Ted Kennedy, a rabbit in a stegosaurus costume or any other random meanings the name might have picked up in its few appearances on the internet. And I’m 99% certain that, of all of them, mine would make the best TV show. The format’s copied from Apeth, so we get a brief introduction in proper English followed by an origin story in the character’s own words. Just like Apeth, Tedosaurus has his own voice/way of speaking/spelling, but the gimmick isn’t quite as strong here. Instead of the wild mis-spelling, we get a random letter R inserted at or near the beginning of words (usually after the first letter). It doesn’t read very well, but it does at least convey a sense of how I expected him to sound. Like normal English, but growled.

< Apeth

Clarke Hall Old Houses Fairburn v Burton Salmon The Forgotten World String Orchestra Sheet Lightning Grezelda the Witch Bonfire Night Metropolitan Police Christmas 1979 Great Space Battles Luddenden The Hat’s Adventure Sleeping Beauty What I Do On Monday Waen Shepherd 2 Waen Shepherd in: Green Squids Ward’s 7: Move of the Galaxy Ward’s 7: Alpha Centauri Ward’s 7: Escape to Mother Ship Ward’s 7: Death Planet Blake’s 7 Ward’s 7: The Hunt The Flame in the Desert The Fugitive British Skiing Events Ward’s 7: Rescue Fiends of the Eastern Front Black Hawk Profile Apeth (from Outer Space!) Tedosaurus (from Prehistoric Time!) A Walk in Our Village The Mountain Called Tyrannosaurus Rex Florence Nightingale War of the Worlds The Micronauts in: Supersilver

TERM 2 The birth of the 1980s - Blake’s 7, Blondie and battles in space

Tedosaurus (from Prehistoric Time!)

A Walk in Our Village >

Ward’s 7 John Ward and his band of rebels fight the evil Federation

Tuesday February 26th, 1980

A Translation (in case you need one) ROWRRR! I am Tedosaurus! I will tell you my story. I was sitting down with my friend when we saw a little caveman. He hit my toe! I hit the sky. And I broke the Time Barrier! I landed in 1977. I decided I’d go back through the Time Barrier again. But I couldn’t! I tried and tried again but I couldn’t. So I got together a gang called The Nutty Gang. Here we are!

It’s not as dark or interesting as Apeth either - just some vague stuff about him time travelling from the past to 1977 after being hit on the toe by a caveman, after which he somehow has the wherewithal to form some kind of superhero gang, populated by characters who, by and large, remained just names. I probably meant to carry on writing an origin story for all six of them (there are five on this page, but six in Apeth’s list), but as was often the case, by the next day I’d moved on to something else. I never wrote about Tedosaurus again. I guess he just wasn’t very interesting. I did draw him once again towards the end of my time in Fairburn (note: he is orange), but that’s still a long way off. Oh and then there’s the song… Colin Watson & The Early Birds I hesitate to point this out - fearing that I might actually destroy its magic - but I once wrote a very stupid song called Me and You, a Monkey, a Teddy, a Deaf Kid and a Shoe. Not based on this story as such, but inspired by the picture at the bottom of the page. I had an idea to write something in the style of The Beach Boys and it just came into my head when I saw it. Then I performed it at a comedy club - adding a dopey Brian Wilson-esque persona to give it a framework - and it briefly took on a life of its own. It was always a surprise to me - I’d written it in a moment of madness and never expected anyone to understand it, so it was weird that live audiences went for it. But of all the things I’ve done in my life, it ended up being one of the least disliked. I never released it as a single or anything (though I probably should have done) but I did do it on the radio once or twice and you can hear my original demo on YouTube. Update! While reading through a few back issues of 2000 AD, I stumbled across this instalment of bumbling cartoon super-idiot Captain Klep, in Prog 152, published a couple of weeks prior to writing Tedosaurus. Already quite a monumental influence on me thanks to The Blood of Satanus and Fiends of the Eastern Front (they both begin in this specific edition), it turns out Prog 152 inspired Tedosaurus too. This particular strip sees the eponymous hero “breaking the time barrier” (a phrase I don’t think I’ve used anywhere else) to wind up in the prehistoric age of the dinosaurs. This definitely makes Prog 152 the single most influential (and therefore most valuable) edition of 2000 AD for me. Wrestle it from my grasp if you dare!

Fiends of the Eastern Front Vampires, paraphrased from 2000 AD