Working on the classics

I've just sent off my first page for The Dandy Annual 2019, which features Keyhole Kate. (Yes, we work way in advance.) It's always a privilege to script and draw such a long-established character that dates right back to The Dandy No.1 in 1937. It's kind of a strange feeling too, illustrating a strip with such a legacy that millions of kids from over the past 80 years have been aware of.

On a personal level, I get a kick out of it because Keyhole Kate was my maternal grandmother's favourite comic strip. I never knew my grandma, who died years before I was born, but my mum often mentioned it. I don't know how grandma would have been aware of Keyhole Kate, but she was a regular reader of Thomson's text-story weekly Red Letter so perhaps she bought a Dandy occasionally too. 

Anyway, back to the present. I won't show you anything of the 2019 annual for a long time yet, but at the top of this post is a panel from one of the Keyhole Kate pages I did for The Dandy Annual 2018, to be published this July/August. 80 years on and still peeking through keyholes! Other strips I've done for this annual are Postman Prat and Kid Cops. You can pre-order the book here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dandy-Annual-2018-Annuals/dp/1845356446