Dear visitor,
I created this website to honor and document a
piece of Kuwait’s modern history. I came across the Last Wizr book in the 90s,
and even with the dawn of the age of the internet I struggled to find anything
out about the author, Keith Wells, the illustrator, McPeter McMahon or anything
related to the creation of WIZR.
Over the almost 10 years this blog has
been up, I have “met” many friendly people from around the world who shared books,
stories, pictures and information. Through the help of complete strangers, I
managed to acquire original copies of all three WIZR books.
And the greatest honor has been that
Keith Wells himself has written, and provided some information about the
creation of Wizr:
“In 1979 I'd been working in Kuwait as an English
teacher for a couple of years in which I got to know quite a few different
kinds of people and the general lifestyle of expatriates in Kuwait. The one
thing that everyone seemed to have in common, regardless of age, occupation or
background was a fear of driving...the accident rate was frighteningly high.. I
suppose the arrival of super fast roads and expensive cars meant that
unsophisticated drivers had very few limits. Many things I saw were quite
horrific. A brand new Mercedes cut in half on the Airport Road. I can only
imagine what sort of speed it takes to do that!
Wizr just seemed to be a perfect way of dissipating the tension and fear
that the traffic caused. After a couple of the stories appeared and proved
instantly popular, I met Peter McMahon at a party. Rather oddly, he had never
read any of the Wizr stories, but somebody introduced him to me as a potential
cartoonist. "So who is this Wizr character?" he asked. "He's the
young Kuwaiti with a brand new Transam with the eagle stencilled on the
bonnet." Peter nodded, pulled out a scrap of paper and scribbled away for
a few minutes then held up a perfect cartoon of Wizr leaning back on his
Transam with the eagle neatly transformed into a sort of demented chicken.
Brilliant.
We became friends from that moment on. Every week I
would take the latest story around to his flat on Friday afternoon and collect
his cartoon of the previous week's tale. He had an uncanny ability to visualise
exactly how I imagined the story. It really was a partnership... some of his
pictures have a life of their own beyond the stories. His drawing of Dozy
Salaam with his twin rubber stamps, "Perhaps" and "Perhaps Not"
is a real classic. The line of people waiting in the Traffic department ending
with a skeleton sat against the wall. We
each made the other laugh, one of the most wonderful gifts in my life. In the big scheme of things I'd like to think
that we kept a few people sane in those years. There was a lot happening, the
Iran Iraq war was audible even over the traffic noise during the day, a
continuing rumble of cannon fire. Laughter is the best defence against despair,
it defuses anger and neutralises fear.
After six months or so I was contacted by Tony
Jashanmal of the department store on Fahad Salem Street, and Bashir Qatib of
the Kuwait Bookshop who were prepared to help finance a book of the stories.
Peter and I jumped at the chance. He came up with the two cover pictures and a
bunch of thumbnail sketches which I used to design and layout the book which
was printed at the Arab Times. We launched the first book at the British
Embassy Garden Fete in November 1979 and were amazed when we sold 480 copies in
two hours!
We kept on working and within a year we had enough
stories and cartoons for a second book. But then on St Valentine's Day 1981,
Peter was murdered. I was heartbroken, but felt very strongly that the second
book had to go ahead so I put it together with some new drawings, some cutups
and odd scraps. The cover was a draft that Peter had done for a Wizr poster.”
(Received on
August 2, 2015)
Mr. Wells has also been featured on another blog, and his
interview can be read here.
If you have any additional information
or personal stories related to WIZR, please share them either by posting a
comment in the appropriate section, or by emailing me at bigis03@hotmail.com.