Tuesday 13 December 2022

They're back! TOUGH GUY AND SCRUFFY, the heroes you never knew you'd forgotten!

Way back in 1992 I'd created a superhero humour strip called Tough Guy and Scruffy for a new weekly anthology comic entitled Triffik! Sadly, traditional weeklies were on their way out and the comic folded after just 12 issues. Now however, for its 30th anniversary, I've collected my stories into a new digital comic and you can download it anywhere in the world today!

It's fair to say that most of you have probably never seen or heard of this strip before as Triffik's existence was so brief. Or perhaps you were amongst the readers who managed to catch it over those few weeks? Either way, I hope you enjoy the strips, which are intended for an all-ages audience. 

Incidentally, this is the comic that I was going to call Barmy Comix No.2 but then thought it'd be better just focusing on the characters as the comic's title.

Tough Guy and Scruffy No.1 is a 32 page digital comic including all 12 strips from 1992 plus extra features and a new festive back cover strip bringing our heroes into the present day. I have no plans to produce a print version so this comic is exclusively digital. 

You can view and download it from the following link and although the cover price is voluntary, times are very tough (pun intended) at present so may I ask you to please be kind enough to donate £3 to me by PayPal at lew.stringer@BTopenworld.com

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xOty4Q1HLooI6KVk9kmoVmodf5Pa7QTn/view?usp=sharing 

When you get to that site, click the download icon (shown on this screenshot) to download the comic to your desktop or device.


I hope you enjoy Tough Guy and Scruffy! Let me know what you think by posting a comment below.

 

 


6 comments:

Manic Man said...

well, You just got £6 cause, I brought a copy for friend and wanted to pay for that one too. No problem for something like this ^_^

Lew Stringer said...

Thanks Ryan. Much appreciated.

Manic Man said...

After having read the issue, really enjoyed it. nice little cameo from, without giving it away another one of your characters, though i debated for a bit if there was another one in the same story but.. mm don't think so.. shame about the lost stories.. happens far too often I think.. I don't remember seeing Triffik! in the shops but doesn't mean much.

nice to see you got a cover slot for a while. Looks like they went through 3 cover stars.. don't quite understand that 'newsforce' company name.. Looking into things, it was Innovative Communications set up by the Business Development Partnership and they.. kinda killed themselves.. claiming to have spent £1.6 mill to launch the comic with a very high print run (and claiming to expect to sell even more then they printed).. the final reported sales figures seam to have been pretty good but they kinda overhyped things and wanted way more then they got. Kinda a shame. Maybe if they were a bit more realistic, it might have lasted a bit more, but at the same time, if that promotion and stuff did help in getting to the sales figures they did, then.. well, always impossible to know how things could have gone.

looking on ebay.. a demo issue from 1989? called Triffik! and features Tough Guy but, a demo issue that much earlier is .. not unexpected but interesting.. but i don't fancy the price right now..

Unknown said...

Thanks Lew, Love your work! I have sent payment now :)

Lew Stringer said...

Received with thanks, Anon!

Hi Ryan, Newsforce was the name of the distributor as I recall. They reasoned that as they were distributing comics they'd make money if they produced their own. Sadly it didn't work as well as they hoped. Launching without any free gifts probably didn't help.

Yes, there was a demo issue. Different logo. I have that. The Tough Guy story in it was the same one that appears as the first story in my comic (which was used in the ongoing Triffik! No.3). There are a few strips that didn't make it into the regular comic. The best being 'Wayne Cool and The Corduroys', a comedy strip by Les Barton about a band. Perhaps they decided it'd be more suited to a music paper than a kids' comic.

Manic Man said...

interesting.. looks like Innovative Communications came up with it and published it with Newsforce (there are TONS of groups with that name but it seams to be the newsagent company, which is still going) distributed it.. which makes sense.. but there is soo little information on 'Innovative' to really figure much out about them.

I find some of the early Demos quite interesting because of what is used and what isn't in the end..