45 Year Flashback: AFTER IMAGE No.1

It's been 45 years this month since my first self-published comic was launched. Back in 1978 I had started to contribute a few articles and spot illustrations to fanzines and decided to publish my own. The result was After Image, which I have to admit was very crudely drawn as you can see. This was in the days before desktop publishing of course, so I drew the logo by hand and the typography was added a letter at a time with Letraset rub-down letters. No room for error! At the time I didn't know anyone in comics apart from a few penfriends so I wrote and drew the entire issue myself. Published in November 1978 with a January 1979 cover date.

Back then I still hadn't decided which direction to pursue with my artwork; whether to try and aim towards adventure comics or humour titles. Clearly, I wasn't much cop at drawing the human figure or possessing the skills required to draw realistically, and I felt more comfortable drawing humour strips, so that's the path I soon embarked on. 

I'd been creating my own little comics since I was seven years old, but they had just been mini comics drawn in biro and never actually printed or distributed, so the only people who ever saw them were my immediate family. After Image was the first time I'd had multiple copies printed for a public audience. (Even then, I only had 100 or so printed.)

Reactions were fairly kind as I recall, but obviously my work wasn't anywhere near professional standard back then. It'd be another five years before I sold my first work to Marvel UK in 1983.

After Image only ran for three issues, over 12 months, adding a few more contributors such as Graham Bleathman and Martin Forrest as I went along. I created other fanzines and stripzines afterwards such as Metamorph / Fantasy Express and my Brickman mini-comics. These days, although mainstream comics work is my priority, I still enjoy publishing my own comics when I can, with Fanzine Funnies being the most recent.

Anyway, without further ado, here's a few sample bits from that first issue of After Image of 45 years ago. Read it while I cringe with embarrassment....

All artwork Copyright © 1978, 2023, Lew Stringer

There are some "jokes" in the Arthur Average strip I definitely wouldn't use now. (The '70s were another time, and I was only 19, - but should have known better.) If you want to read the entire issue, it's available as a free PDF as part of David Hathaway-Price's online archive of old fanzines here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz-VsUjOG2SiUXZBVmJOcGpLTVE/view

This article is a revised version of a blog post I did for the 'zines 40th anniversary.

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What was... MONOCOMIX? (1978)

What was Monocomix? The short answer is it was something of mine I'd totally forgotten about until I found this cover artwork yesterday. 

Monocomix was going to be the title of my first self-published comic way back in Autumn 1978. (Titled Monocomix because it was all black and white.) Yes, it was crudely drawn but I had a lot to learn (and still do). Apparently it was going to be a one-off according to the "First (and Last) Issue" cover blurb I put on it. For reasons that escape me now I had a rethink at the last minute and came up with a new cover, and a new title, publishing it as After Image in late 1978. The contents remained the same. Only the cover was changed. 

Perhaps I felt that the name After Image was more suited to its status as a fanzine, because from issue 2 it featured more articles so it was not longer "comix"? After 44 years I can't remember, and I can't go back and ask my 19 year old self so perhaps we'll never know. Pity, because I kind of prefer the title Monocomix now. Perhaps I'll use it on something new one day.

Anyway, if you'd like to see what After Image was all about you can check out this old blog post here:

https://lewstringercomics.blogspot.com/2018/11/after-image-1978.html

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FANSCENE ends with two spectacular issues

 The final two issues of David Hathaway-Price's superb digital fanzine FANSCENE are available to download now. This time they focus on the old 'zine Fantasy Advertiser, with artwork, interviews, articles and memories from many of the people who were involved in comics fandom back then. (Including my recollections of when I was a regular contributor to FA with my Back to Blighty / Best of British artilcles.)

David has done an incredible job compiling these fanzines, which serve as an essential record of those bygone days for future generations. If you want to learn about (or recollect) those days (and presumably anyone interested in comics history will) then you can download the zines for free at this link...
https://davidprice5.wixsite.com/classicukcomicszines/fanscene

My first self-published comic (1978)

Here's the cover to After Image No.1, which was my first self-published comic waaay back in late 1978 (cover dated January 1979). I wasn't the first to self-publish a comic/ fanzine of course, not by a long chalk. UK comics fandom had started in the early to mid-1960s so I was a latecomer by 1978. 

Looking at it now, After Image was very raw, very crude in style, and certainly not professional standard, but it was a start. It helped get my work out there by selling the 'zine mail order (by advertising it in other fanzines) and to receive feedback. All good experience that gave me enough confidence to quit my dead-end job a year or so later and start looking for work in comics. (That took quite a while, but that's another story.) 

Quitting my old job was the best thing I ever did. The moral being; pursue your dreams! 

If you want to read the whole issue of After Image No.1 for free you'll find it archived on the excellent Classic U.K. Comics Zines website here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz-VsUjOG2SiUXZBVmJOcGpLTVE/view

The folly of youth. My first fanzine article.

I recently found an issue of Bem fanzine (No.23) from 1979 which featured the very first article I had published outside of my own fanzines. The subject was a history of Odhams' 'Power Comics', which may not surprise you as they've always been my favourite comics. The article was published in April 1979 so I'd have written it a month or two earlier when I was still 19. Ah, the folly of youth, - and unfortunately the article contains a few follies.

At the time I hadn't acquired a full set of Power Comics so I was using whatever issues I had kept from my childhood, plus relying on memory and assumptions. Not good enough. Here's where I went wrong:

1: Re: Wham! No.1. "Almost all the strips were drawn by Leo Baxendale". Not so, although Leo did contribute a lot for the issue.

2: "With issue 22, Smash! began to feature...Batman". Nope. Batman started in issue 20. (I'm betting that issue 22 had stuck in my mind because I'd remembered a pleasant summer's day in 1966 sitting on a park bench reading it so I must have made a typo.) As for my opinion that the Batman TV series was a "poor adaptation", ah, another folly of youth. I'd loved the show in 1966 but by the time I was 19 I was obviously trying to distance myself from it in that all-too-serious way that you do as a teenager. Now? It's my favourite version of Batman of all. 

3: I said that Wham! began reprinting The Fantastic Four before Smash! started reprinting the Hulk. Nope. Smash! was first, beginning the Hulk in Smash! No.16, and Wham! followed several weeks later with the FF. This is a very embarrassing mistake as I've often criticized others for the same blunder! I realize now that it was probably me who started that wonky ball rolling! Sorry folks!

4: "Pow and Fantastic merged". What? A stupidly bad assumption on my part. I'd stopped buying the comics for a while and when I started again it was Smash and Pow incorporating Fantastic so I'd assumed there had been a Pow and Fantastic merger beforehand. I didn't realise that Pow! had merged into Smash!, followed by Fantastic a few weeks later. 

5: Swots and Blots not being as outrageous when Leo Baxendale took over? Well, that may have been my opinion at the time but I don't know how I arrived at that. Leo's version of The Swots and the Blots was one of the saving graces of IPC's revamped Smash.

Apart from those idiotic goofs I think the article stands up ok. No one else was writing about those comics at the time so I was trying to balance things out a bit. I can only apologise for my 19 year old self getting a few things wrong. If it's any consolation I started losing my hair around that time, which seems a bit of harsh Karma for getting a few comic facts wrong but there you go.

Yes, the article was printed in bright green ink. 1970s fanzines. That's how they rolled. Some pages in green, some in blue, some in red. A few in black. To save your eyesight I've de-saturated the text and separated it into three columns for easier reading. I hope you enjoy it and will forgive the blunders! 

By the way, - that same issue also featured a little drawing of The Cloak that I'd done. It looks a bit crude now but here it is, 36 years later...

Rarities: My very early work

I thought I'd share a few scans of my very early comic art with you today. Well, I say "art". Some of these are embarrassingly bad, but here goes, starting with the image above of the sort of comics I used to draw when I was a young lad. 

I used to put together numerous comic strips like this about my family and my pets in the 1960s, fairly hastily scribbled out in biro. The only people I ever showed them to were my immediate family and my best pal (all of whom are sadly no longer with us). This particular one above was about how my Grandad used to take me a walk on Sunday mornings with the dogs. Happy days. I'd have drawn this in 1967/68 when I was eight years old. Influenced my Marvel Comics it was a tad more melodramatic than it needed to be.

I drew over 100 comics when I was growing up, usually 8 page efforts ranging from any size, depending what paper I could lay my hands on. This one, Captain Thunder, is from 1973 when I was 14. Terrible work, showing no idea of anatomy whatsoever. (The figure was a bad crib of a Gil Kane Warlock cover.) At this stage drawing was purely a hobby and I had no ambition to work in the industry professionally at the time, so basically I wasn't trying as hard as I should have been. 

I'd actually given up drawing by the time I'd left school. (I'd dropped art as a subject before then too.) Living in a small Midlands town seemed too remote for any hopes of drawing for comics. (I naively thought all artists were on staff, working in London or New York.) Besides, our comprehensive school's career teachers had encouraged us to either join the army or consider factory/shop work, so I went to work in an office at a local mining tools company. 

I never enjoyed the office work or the daily routine, and was looking for a way out after a few years. In 1976 I discovered comic fanzines, which gave me the inspiration to draw again. I started contributing to various 'zines, and creating my own. Here's the very first Brickman strip (when he was called Brick-Person) from my fanzine After Image No.3, published November 1979. An early attempt as inking with Rotring pens...

I quit my job in 1980 and decided to focus on finding a career in comics. At this stage I didn't know what kind of comics I'd like to do. I tried my hand at superhero stuff, but as this 1980 cover to Alec Chalmer's fanzine Mirage proves, I hadn't advanced a great deal since the days of Captain Thunder...

I preferred creating humour strips so I started developing a humour style that might be appropriate for UK comics. I still wasn't anywhere near ready, as this Dawg strip from Paul Duncan's 1982 stripzine Short Fuse demonstrates...

At this stage I was inking with a dip-pen and not mastering it at all. Here's another 1982 drawing; the cover to Dick Domar's fanzine The Owl's Effort Summer Special...

I think I was starting to find a style in 1982 that I could develop. Here's a Fandumb mini-strip I did for the fanzine Chain Reaction...

That same year I switched to using Rotring pens again and the change in style was immediate. I found them far easier to control than dip-pens (although over the years I've switched back and forth). Here's one of several Fandumb At Large pages I did for The Owl's Effort. Still not pro standard, but an improvement on what I'd done before. (I'm embarrassed at how cynical the humour is here, although I did include myself in a later edition.)

I sold my first professional cartoons in 1983, and later worked as an assistant to Mike Higgs which helped me develop my style considerably. Here's a 1984 stripzine I published, - Brickman on Toast. By this time I was inking with Tombow fibre-tip pens which were very similar to the UniPin pens I use today.

Finally, here's a drawing I did in 1988 that some of you may not have seen before, featuring Tom Thug and Pete and his Pimple. It was done for the Birmingham Comic Art Show booklet for that year. Inked with Rotring pens.

I hope you've enjoyed this trip through my archives. If my crude, clueless early drawings could eventually lead to paid work then anyone can do it. All you need is practise and imagination, so for anyone out there with hopes to become a professional artist: keep drawing, keep learning, and never give up!