The History of Brickman!
It was 45 years ago this month, in November 1979, when I published the third issue of my fanzine After Image. It carried a mixture of strips and articles and on the back page of the slim 14 page publication was a new character I'd created... Brick-Person!
I had a "soft launch" for After Image No.3 at a local social club. Truth to tell it was just me handing out copies to my mates so they could read it in the bar. Here's a photo of that November night in 1979, back when I had a bit more hair and poor taste in shirts. (Please note I didn't have an afro. That's just a shadow caused by the flash!)
As it turned out, I decided that would be the final issue of After Image. Sales hadn't been great so I needed a rethink. Two years later in 1981 I launched a new fanzine, Metamorph No.1, and that contained the continuation of Brick-Person's cliffhanger where Loose Brayne's mum turns out to be Gnatwoman!
I still wasn't satisfied with the strip though, and I don't just mean my crude art style of the time (athough that made me cringe). With the third issue of the 'zine in 1982, now renamed Fantasy Express and a focus on British comics, Brick-Person became Brickman. He'd also gained a partner, Tina Trowel, AKA... er, Trowel!
Ever restless in those days, I ended Fantasy Express with issue 5 in 1983 to focus on working in comics professionally. Brickman had proven popular though so I decided to put him in his own mini-comics: Blimey! It's Brickman, Brickman on Toast, and the part-reprint The Early Brickman.
The conclusion of that Brickman story ( a 20 pager called The Brickmania Caper) saw Brickman quit and head off into the sunset... perhaps forever? Not quite. For the next few years I had Brickman or his alter-ego Loose Brayne make anonymous cameos in the various other comic strips I worked on, such as Loose Brayne being a stallholder at the fair in this Combat Colin strip from Marvel's Action Force No.6 in 1987...
The daft knight remained in limbo until 1996 when I created a brand new Brickman story for my new self-published comic Yampy Tales...
Brickman ran in Yampy Tales 2 and 3 (the final issue), concluding with him riding off into the sunset again. I'd intended that to be the end of the character, but he has a habit of returning!
In 1997 Chrissie Harper asked me to ink a photocopy of Jack Kirby's pencils of a Captain America illustration, replacing the Red Skull with Brickman! The page appeared in No.11 of Chrissie's Jack Kirby Quarterly...
In 2005, my old Marvel UK editor Richard Starkings, now a successful writer and lettering artist in America, offered to publish the entire Brickman saga in a 152 page digest size softback. Under his Active Images imprint, Brickman Begins appeared, bringing the stories to a new audience in the USA. Bonus pages included legends such as Tim Sale, Charlie Adlard, Hunt Emerson and Alan Davis depicting their versions of Brickman!
The book included a brand new four page prologue I created that could segue into the reprints...
At the end of that comic, Brickman retired again, and I thought that would be his swan song...
...but not just yet! Earlier this year I reprinted a couple of Brickman stories in Lew Stringer's Comic Sampler, an anthology of some of my "best bits" from comics over the years...
...and... I'm currently creating a brand new series of Brickman and Trowel mini-strips that will appear in a new British comic set to debut in 2025! It's all hush-hush for now but more news on that in a few months' time hopefully!
Brickman will return... again!
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