Thanks folks for the uploads, the comments and the realisatio that my memory was NOT playing tricks on me…

Wow, those few extra Es were all that was needed to invoke the theme song, flashy art and the homicidal despair of trying to get it out of my head again.

Ease off on the Es. All drugs lead to “homicidal despair” – or so the meedja tells me.

Ulysee e ee ees

Wow, those few extra Es were all that was needed to invoke the theme song, flashy art and the homicidal despair of trying to get it out of my head again. This post is like a distress signal from a haunted, malevolent frigate.

It was infinite. Numkulls in Numskulls in Numskulls ad infinitum – or at least to the limit of printing resolution.

I’m sure if you’d subjected the pages to examination by an electron microscope you’d have seen ever tinier (quark-like) Numskulls disappearing away to the boundaries of the infinite. The closing monologue in The Incredible Shrinking Man comes to mind.

I’ll ask around. Someone, somewhere may have that strip.

Seriously, that comic strip changed the way I thought about and saw the world around me. I wish I had a copy.

Yes, they did. There was a strip showing exactly that. It made a great impression on me as a child and I can clearly remember it over thirty years later.

Oh to have a copy of that story in my greedy hands…

Did they merely suggest that our Numskulls had their own Numskulls, or did they also hint at the mind-boggling possibility of infinite Numskullery? If the latter, then the strip really needs to be the subject of some serious scholarly attention!

Yes, they did. There was a strip showing exactly that. It made a great impression on me as a child and I can clearly remember it over thirty years later.

Just in case there are any Ulysses-related gaps in your memory…have a listen:

http://themes.kitjunkie.org/Themes/Ulysses_31.wav

My favourite bit has always been the frantic “bringing-peace-and-justice-to-alllll!” which is ham-fistedly wedged into the tune. Possibly a result of unsatisfactory translation.

Speaking of unsatisfactory – No-No (the nail-eating robot) was a wildly irritating sidekick…straight out of the Jar Jar mould.

It is an illness of mine that I am unable to forget theme tunes from the telly of my youth (could do Ulyssees-ees verbatim now) but have no memory of the OUAT melody.

Ulysses 31, together with a faded cloth bound book of Greek myths in Dundrum library were largely responsible for my choice of degree subject.

The other comics – which I also loved – were in hindsight no more than propaganda vehicles, but that didn’t stop us hoovering them up. The likes of the Victor and the Hotspur would be considered quite offensive today by the likes of myself, though I couldn’t get enough of them at the time.

I think it hadn’t much to do with the quality of the publications. It probably had more to do with the drabness of Irish life at the time, when anything colourful was a welcome relief. In fact, we were a kind of Albania behind our cultural wall, with our censorship boards and our Legion of Mary apparatchiks.

What do you reckon?

Anyone remember the name of that French cartoon from our youth (well, mine – RTE only upbringing) that featured a Numskullesque cast of characters whizzing about the human body being all educational while simultaneously fighting infection?

I remember it well. It was called Il était une fois… la vie, or to we non-French speakers, Once Upon a Time…Life. Funnily enough not directed by Sergio Leone…

Episode 18 – “The lymphatic system” – must have had the kids legging it home from school to watch.

“Oh boy! The lymphatic system! Can’t wait!”

Bob’s right. They’re “The Numskulls“. Click on the cross-section pic for proof.

Something I forgot to mention is that they all slept in hammocks (if I remember correctly). That – coupled with the round ‘walls’ and intercom system – lent “Our Man’s” head a submarine-like air.

Now I think of it, the ‘tubes’ (or whatever they are) inside Ma Kelly’s Telly sleep in hammocks too. See here.

Something very exciting and exotic about hammocks. They definitely appealed to me as a kid.

Oh and the similarity between Jimmy Sommerville and Jimmy Quick is entirely deliberate apparently.