Artist's Wives

We're all familiar with strips including an artist self-portrait - always good fun although some depictions are more accurate than others, I suspect. Irmantas did a good series of posts on this subject a while back.

A subset of this category is the 'artist-and-wife self portrait'. Here's Mr and Mrs (Bob) Hill appearing in a Krazy Gang story from Whizzer and Chips, 15 September 1984.

Whereas in some artist self portrait stories the relationship between the character and their illustrator is quite relaxed, it would appear that Bob is undergoing some sort of breakdown as he clearly didn't expect to encounter the gang in 'real life'. I like the panel where Bob flees in terror, while the gang look on in surprise and Mrs Hill is shown to be up to her elbows in domestic chores. The bottle on the table would appear to be significant but the meaning of 'KG' eludes me.

UPDATE: The answer to the KG riddle has been supplied by Peter and Andy in the comments below (kicks self for missing it - ooyah!).

There's further fun to be had with the 'Merry Christmas, Dear' on the toolbox, reinforcing the fact that life in the Hill household is less than idyllic from the female perspective (wonder if Bob wrote the script himself?). By the end of the strip, Bob appears to have surrendered to his psychotic delusion and is settled in the Krazy Gang's world.

The only other husband and wife comic portraits of which I'm aware are those featuring Terry and Shiela Bave, covered by Irmantas here. However if anyone knows of any others, please get in touch.

No doubt you spotted the raid perpetrated on the above strip by a Jim Watson version of Bloggs from the Store Wars strip. Good job Bob didn't see that, I don't know what it would have done to him.

UPDATE 2: Peter has sent a link to a Krazy Gang strip which opens another category, 'stories containing caricatures of real people but who are they?'.