Saturday 9 March 2013

Make Mine Marvel!


Several years ago Panini UK were reprinting Chris Giarruso's Mini Marvels strips in their licensed Marvel comics. They eventually ran out of them so in 2006 they asked me if I could provide brand new ones, script and art for their new Rampage comic.

I was asked to keep to Chris' style to a certain extent, so the characters were more compact than I'd otherwise draw them. Even so, I really enjoyed doing the strip and it was refreshing to draw in a slightly different style.



Rampage eventually folded but a couple of years later, in 2008, I was asked to provide a second series for Panini's Spectacular Spider-Man comic. Panini's staff had coloured the strip when it was in Rampage (and a great job they did) but I was asked to colour the new series, which I enjoyed immensely. 



Here's a handful of my Mini Marvels strips. Firstly the rough pencils which I sent editors for approval, then the finished artwork prior to it being lettered by Panini.



Unfortunately, Disney (Marvel's owners) no longer allow outside companies to generate new artwork on the comics they license from Marvel but it was great while it lasted! 

3 comments:

Peter Gray said...

They are very funny!!

love the knitting one...the happiness on Aunt May's face..

Harry Rickard said...

I remember reading these when I used to buy Marvel Rampage (this being before it decided to cut down on the Marvel comic content and begin becoming more of a magazine), still, I can remember Mini Marvels so well and loved the series (and enjoyed it when it moved over to Spectacular Spider-Man! (I remember making my own comic strips of them as well based on your style!) Simon Williams and Lew Stringer in one comic, what a brilliant comic that was!

I'd love to see you post more of these!

Lew Stringer said...

Unfortunately the rest of the colour ones are on a memory stick that no longer works, along with a ton of other pages that I've lost forever. I have all the comics in physical form though, so I may scan some of those at some point. Obviously I can't post them all as Marvel have the rights, so anything beyond reasonable review or sample purposes wouldn't be wise.

Those Mini-Marvels also appeared in The Astonishing Spider-Man collected editions, one a month on the letters pages, after they'd been printed in Rampage and Spectacular.