Original script from SONIC THE COMIC plus more in this week's auction

I'm selling something different this week. My actual typed script for a Tails story that I wrote for Sonic the Comic No.149 way back in 1999. As you can see at the top, I faxed this seven page script to the editor, Deborah Tate, but this is the original script not her fax copy.

The script gives descriptions and dialogue for every panel that instructed the artist on what to draw. Characters involved in the story include Tails, Charmee Bee, Shortfuse and more. Most of my scripts were lost years ago in a computer crash before I backed them up so this is a unique collectors' item for fans of Sonic the Comic! 

Also up for auction this week:

My original art for a Daft Dimension comic strip I drew for Doctor Who Magazine No.526 in 1999...

...and a full colour Tom Thug page I drew for Buster dated October 27th 1990.

 

Bidding on all these items ends on the evening of Sunday 10th April. Here's the link...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?sid=graphite47 

 

Mervyn's Monsters!

What's this? I've always said that this blog is exclusively to promote my own work but here I am plugging a book by Leo Baxendale!? Well, Mervyn's Monsters gets a free pass because it contains a new introduction written by me.

 

Published by Irmantas Povilaika who did those two superb Ken Reid books several years ago, Mervyn's Monsters collects the full run of Leo Baxendale's comedy adventure serial that ran in Buster weekly in 1968. Similar in premise to Baxendale's Eagle-Eye, Junior Spy that he previously did for Wham!, the book involves a kid who works for the secret service, aided by his monsters in the fight against the villainous Mush, a bad guy in the Grimly Feendish mould. 

And of course it's very funny. Some of Leo's best work. 

Mervyn's Monsters is published with the permission of the copyright holders Rebellion and available in hardback (with an A4 print) or softback. The print run is limited, and only available to buy directly from Irmantas himself at this link:

https://www.kazoop-comics-shop.com/

Dandy advance preview

If you go over to Amazon you'll see that they have a few preview pages from The Dandy Annual 2027, just to whet your appetite before the book is published in August of this year. 

It includes page one of a two page Dinah Mo story I did. (There will be three two page Dinah Mo stories by me in the annual, my final work for D.C. Thomson). 

Here's the link:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dandy-Annual-2027-featuring-characters/dp/1917436440

Who could that possibly be satirizing?

I'm currently working on the Sgt. Shouty page for the next issue of The77. Here's a clip from the previous issue showing the un-named villain who was a threat to society. (He was dealt with shortly after.)

 

Doctor Who Magazine No.629

There's a new issue of Doctor Who Magazine in shops this Thursday, (issue No.629), so here's a clip from my Daft Dimension strip, and the cover to look out for! Click on the image to see it larger.

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Remember TOUGH GUY AND SCRUFFY?

Tough Guy was the vainest superhero in the world, super-powered but definitely not super smart! Aided by his far wiser assistant Scruffy, the characters were creations of mine that appeared in the short lived Triffik! weekly in 1992. 

A few years ago I compiled all the Tough Guy stories into a 32 page PDF comic that can be downloaded from my KoFi shop. Suitable for all ages, you can buy the comic from this link to download and read on your device:

https://ko-fi.com/s/fb5e501d04 

 

More recollections of OINK!

I'm thinking about Oink! a lot this week as it's 40 years since the comic was launched. It appeared at just the right time, as the 1980s were such a vibrant and refreshed environment for comics. We had Warrior, The Daredevils (featuring Captain Britain), Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, American Flagg, Knockabout, Escape, Charley's War in Battle, plus Marvel UK, numerous fanzines and more, and 2000AD at arguably its peak years. 

It puzzles me when I sometimes read comments saying that comics died in the mid-1980s because I know for a fact that the comics industry was really buzzing. (Quite often, those negative comments are from people who simply stopped buying comics when they left school in the Eighties.) 

Many of us back then would meet up regularly at London Comic Marts at Central Hall (and of course the nearby Westminster Arms pub) and there was a genuine excitement about the new projects that were forging ahead. People such as Dave Gibbons, Brian Bolland, Kevin O'Neill, Nick Landau, and more were the first wave of fans-turned-pro to enter the industry, and then those of us working for Marvel UK and Oink! were the next wave. (Of course there had been previous decades of many new creators joining the industry but by and large they hadn't come the route of fanzines and organised fandom, because it didn't really exist as such until the 1960s). 

Most of us who freelanced for Oink! (and also for Marvel UK and 2000AD) were around the same age, and perhaps too raw at the time for the long established comics, but we had ideas and developing styles to do something a little different. I'm not saying we knew better than our predecessors, just that we didn't want to comply to the same traditional formula, at least not at that young age. 

Anyway, I won't waffle on any further. It was a magical time in comics and I'm glad I was there. Oink! never set the world of comics alight like Watchmen or V for Vendetta did, but we worked hard and enjoyed what we did and I'm glad it's still fondly remembered 40 years on.