Bart Dickon is a character created by artist and writer Borin Van Loon

Borin Van Loon

Borin Van Loon is a freelance illustrator . He is an author, collagist and surrealist painter and has worked for a wide variety of clients in editorial, publishing and promotion...

. Dickon, styled as 'The Ideologically-Sound Secret Agent', first appeared in comic strip form in the British publication 'Brain Damage' (later 'The Damage') in the late eighties. This surrealist collage comic strip was entitled 'A Severed Head' (named after an Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch

Dame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious...

 novel). This continued briefly in 'Talking Turkey', then as a regular feature in the rock/culture fanzine Sun Zoom Spark

Sun Zoom Spark

Sun Zoom Spark was a mid-1990s British music magazine. It took its name from a track on Captain Beefheart's LP, Clear Spot and covered alternative rock and britpop music. Its editorial staff was based in Galashiels, Scotland.- History :...

 (named incidentally after a Captain Beefheart

Captain Beefheart

Don Van Vliet January 15, 1941 December 17, 2010) was an American musician, singer-songwriter and artist best known by the stage name Captain Beefheart. His musical work was conducted with a rotating ensemble of musicians called The Magic Band, active between 1965 and 1982, with whom he recorded 12...

 song on the 'Clear Spot' album; references to Captain Beefheart lyrics occasionally appear in Bart Dickon stories).

Much of the material was reworked and extended for regular publication in The Chap

The Chap

The Chap is a British magazine published six times a year and related books edited by Gustav Temple, proposing a return to a dandified way of life, involving tweed, pipe smoking, brogues and finely pressed trousers. The magazine has featured such noted Chaps and Chapettes as Stephen Fry, Leslie...

 magazine in the late nineties. November 2005 saw the publication of the book 'The Bart Dickon Omnibus' which built upon this body of work, completed the 'A Severed Head' graphic novella and added a short story featuring Dickon and other strips.

The character (not to mention the physiognomy) of Bart Dickon is mercurial by dint of the creative approach applied to the stories. Imagery informs the twists and turns of each chapter as much as narrative. Inasmuch as Dickon spends the majority of the novella as a head separated from the rest of his body, much of the action is guided by his sidekick, Snowy. This nods in the direction of the original daily Dick Barton

Dick Barton

Dick Barton - Special Agent was a popular radio programme on the BBC Light Programme. Between 1946 to 1951 it aired at 6.45 each weekday evening and at its peak it had an audience of 15 million listeners. Despite popular belief, it was not actually the BBC's first daily serial...

 radio series on the BBC Light Programme from 1946-1951 (later in novels and a trio of low budget feature films), although the spelling of the original character, Snowey, has been changed - as has his gender from time to time. The original theme tune: 'The Devil's Galop' by Charles Williams is also alluded to in 'The Bart Dickon Omnibus' and is hummed by the protagonist. Drawing on mythology, Dickon is seduced by a succubus, dismembered and the constituent parts scattered to the winds. Snowy and her doppelgänger carry Bart's head through multiple realities to save the day.

The collage comic strip approach to story telling relies almost solely upon found images, serendipity in research and the use of a narrative to bind the images, speech and thought bubbles and text boxes together. The roots of collage comic-strip can be found in the sound-collage experiments of Ron Geesin

Ron Geesin

Ronald 'Ron' Geesin is a British musician and composer, noted for his quirky creations and novel applications of sound. He is probably best known as the orchestrator and organizer of Pink Floyd's "Atom Heart Mother" in 1970, after the band found themselves hopelessly deadlocked over how to...

, the animations of Monty Python

Monty Python

Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group who created their influential Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series...

 era Terry Gilliam

Terry Gilliam

Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...

, the surrealist novels of Max Ernst

Max Ernst

Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...

 (Une Semaine de Bonté

Une Semaine de Bonte

Une semaine de bonté is a graphic novel and artist's book by Max Ernst, first published in 1934. It comprises 182 images created by cutting up and re-organizing illustrations from Victorian encyclopedias and novels.-History:...

and 'La femme de 100 têtes), the agit-prop visuals of the Situationists and the satires of Biff.

Text-only stories and blogs about Bart Dickon and his chums also appear regularly on the World Wide Web.