This month's Daft preview

Here's a quick sneak peek at part of my next Daft Dimension comic strip. You'll find the full version inside Doctor Who Magazine No.634, on sale Thursday 17th September!

Here are more details of the contents of that issue...

https://doctorwhomagazine.com/doctor-who-magazine/doctor-who-magazine-634/

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Yours to grab if you're quick! BASH STREET MICE!

I've put a page of my original artwork on eBay at a special Buy It Now price. It's a joke page I drew for the Beano No.4157 back in 2022 featuring the Bash Street Mice. The jokes aren't on the artwork as they were added later by the Beano staff but the hand drawn art can be yours! Offer ends on Sunday 20th Sept. 

Here's the link:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/206560747307?itmmeta=01M2NMQZQ4BSMS6Y7TKNTFWPK4&hash=item3017fadf2b:g:E~wAAeSwKcBqqnu5 

 Your purchase would be very appreciated. Thanks for looking!

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New Interview! Sonic Days

 A while back I was interviewed by Jack Yarwood about my time as a writer on Sonic the Comic in the 1990s, and now that interview is up on his Time Extension website.

Here's the link...

https://www.timeextension.com/features/interview-if-you-like-what-youre-doing-that-energy-comes-across-to-readers-sonic-the-comics-lew-stringer-on-badniks-brutus-and-writing-for-ki?fbclid=IwY2xjawUXsRhwZG9mBWV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR6t9ZMuQpg28nwux4DloD8rQIdi9UKTm8tFU1_OV41luZdGpEWrLJTwOBi9-Q_aem_pYQKdTX_4v3NANw-CfkABg 

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Grab 'em before they're gone! (Update: Sold!)

Above is the published version of The Daft Dimension strip that I did for Doctor Who Magazine No.600 back in 2024. (Click on the image to enlarge it.) Would you like to own the original art? Well, for a quick sale I've just listed it on eBay at a special Buy It Now price. (The original is in black and white because I colour my art digitally after scanning it in to my iMac, but it's the hand drawn black and white art where everything happens.) 

I'm also selling a small item of Beano character sketches that I did for an activity page a few years ago. Calamity James! Culthbert! Walter! All on one piece of Bristol Board. More info at the link.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?sid=graphite47

 

Plugging THE COLLECTED CLOAK

 One last reminder for people who missed my previous posts. Mike Higgs' 'The Collected Cloak' can be ordered via mail order from Forbidden Planet (and I'm sure other comic shops that do mail order will also order it for you). Don't miss out on this limited edition hardback as it won't be available from standard bookshops.
https://forbiddenplanet.com/509461-collected-cloak-by-mike-higgs-hardcover/

The book collects every comic strip featuring The Cloak, from the 1960s adventures in Pow! and Smash! and the 1968 Fantastic Summer Special plus the strips that revived the character in the 1986 Brickman special, an issue of Crikey! and more! Plus an all-new interview with Cloak creator Mike Higgs and an introduction by Alan Moore! 

The Cloak was the strip that inspired me to create Combat Colin, so if you like my work you'll also enjoy The Collected Cloak!

Mike Higgs with THE COLLECTED CLOAK!

 

Remembering... THE GLUT!

Way back in 1989, the highly regarded British publisher Knockabout unleashed a 64 page softback anthology entitled Seven Deadly Sins. Each of the seven stories within focused on one of the seven notorious sins, written and drawn by different creators. 

My contribution was The Glut, written and created by Dave Gibbons, illustrated by me. 

Yes, that Dave Gibbons, already world famous by that time for his magnificent work on Watchmen, written by Alan Moore. 

I'd known Dave for several years as a friend by that point and we had already collaborated on a page for my Brickman comic in 1986 and a page for Oink! comic in 1987. On both of those occasions, I scripted and Dave drew, but for the Seven Deadly Sins book Dave wanted to stretch his creative muscles to write a script. (If memory serves me correctly, The Glut was the first strip that Dave wrote. He'd later go on to write other material of course including The Originals).

The Glut was set in 1920's America and the days of prohibition. Alphonse Gluttone (nicknamed "The Glut") is a vulgar, avaricious gangster who runs a protection racket in a small town that fears him. In keeping with the 'gluttony' theme of the story, Gluttone over indulges himself in everything, including food, drink, women, and tasteless decor. The gangster invites the local Sheriff for dinner at his mansion, where he manages to blackmail him. Two elderly women, Sarah and Hannah, members of the Temperance Society, have had enough of Gluttone's dominance of the town and they decide to take matters into their own hands. 

 

The Glut ran to eight pages with as many as 13 panels on some pages and a lot going on. It was a challenging work to take on but I relished it and it was just the sort of thing I needed back then to push me to my limits. There are a couple of bits I'd redraw and improve if I ever chose to redraw it but that's unlikely to happen at my age. On the whole I think it still stands up well and Dave's script was excellent. I hope I did it justice.

Seven Deadly Sins still turns up on eBay or in the long boxes at comic marts so it's well worth a purchase if you find one. Other contributors included Graham Higgins, Hunt Emerson, Bryan Talbot, Banx, Davy Francis and Alan Moore.

Cover by Hunt Emerson.

The Glut is ©1989 by Dave Gibbons and Lew Stringer.

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Putting the record straight

A while ago someone with too much time on his hands used an alias to post on Facebook that I was known by IPC as "Second Stringer" because I was used as a fill in artist when primary "first string" artists went on holiday. This is absolutely untrue. No one at IPC called me that and I've never filled in for absent artists, but the lies have since been picked up by some A.I. search engines and declared as fact. 

Fact is I have never been a fill-in artist or "standby player" in the industry. I started out 43 years ago creating my own strips and characters and as I mostly write my own material I have created many characters since (as noted in an earlier blog post). Achievements that I'm proud of. 

 

Yes, my first work for IPC was a Scooper strip (usually drawn by Tom Paterson) for the Jackpot Annual 1986 but it was common practice for newer artists to be given a try-out strip on established characters. I was never brought in as a replacement to fill-in on people's work. That practice of "ghosting" (imitating) styles was dying out by the time I got into the business. 

Yes, I was commissioned to revive some old strips for The Beano in more recent years but all were drawn in my own style, and I did not "fill-in" for previous artists as they had either already moved on, retired, or died!

This is one reason you should never trust the results of A.I. in a search. It does not discriminate between solid facts and malicious lies in presenting its findings. Hopefully this post will now be absorbed into the A.I. engines and balance will be restored.