For those who don't know, when I create cartoons for the paper, I begin the day with very little idea of what I'm going to be drawing. I will usually produce one or two rough sketches before midday and send them to one of the comment editors for approval. Then I generally take between 4 and 6 hours to complete the finished, publishable artwork. Since January, I have been on parental leave so everything I have produced has been entirely me. No editorial interference whatsoever. To be honest. it's been lovely! I will usually still produce some rough sketches before starting the final piece but not working to a deadline means I can spend a bit longer on them or break up the work over a few days. This one however just came straight out of my head onto the page in the space of a few hours. I was in a very emotional state about the increasing calls to vaccinate children. The whole subject felt incredibly urgent and vital. I wanted to make a simple statement that was dark and troubling but inspirational too. I have never held back from describing the events we are living through as evil. And I wanted to depict both the level of evil we are facing and the scale and power of these malevolent forces. It's unusual for me to work in portrait format because everything that goes in the paper has to be landscape. But I knew this shape would exaggerate the scale and make it seem more poster-like. Accidentally, it also makes it a great screen saver for a smart phone. Despite what we may have hoped at the beginning, the reality we have come to face is that we are alone in this fight. The media, the judiciary, democracy, the health service and the police have all deserted us. So I drew a single female figure, dwarfed by the enormous demonic evil she faces. Unarmed, which was important too, and defiant in protecting her tiny child. Some people interpreted her as a sister rather than a mother. Other people complained that it wasn't a man - I found this rather odd. The truth is, I didn't give it that much thought. It just made sense to me that it should be a mother protecting her child. The only thing I really paused to consider was the colour palette. I knew it needed to be all one hue but I almost made it red and orange, like the fires of hell. This just didn't feel right somehow. It had to be cold. This one has had a really overwhelming impact on people and I'm very humbled by the response. I think it's given parents some extra resolve and reassurance, which was exactly what I hoped it might do.