You saw a couple of the very early Combat Colin gag strips yesterday, now let's move forward a couple of years to 1989 where the strip had developed into the kind of comedy-action serial that I always wanted to do... and the humour had become even dafter.
Here's a four part story from The Transformers comic that I'll be running over this and the following three days. Part 1 is from Transformers No.238, dated October 7th 1989.
I wish there was a comic or magazine around that would accommodate me to do this kind of stuff today. Not that I don't enjoy the work I do of course. All comic creation is fun, but I believe today's kids, with their enthusiasm for cartoon action computer games and plot development in soaps, would really take to comedy-action strips.
Click on the image to enlarge it for legibility. Part 2 tomorrow!
8 comments:
I agree...you were starting to do this in the last days of the printed Dandy...the character Newt would easily work as serial..
Nigel P brought us the spy story in The Beano...Dangerous Dan I wish that would come back...it was getting interesting...also The Banana Bunch by Nigel was great on going story...lets hope it comes back..
Of course Super School would be brilliant for this!!!!!
I remember the Gunge! I always loved the longer serials of Combat Colin, especially towards the end of the comic, some huge stories there that were so completely random! Of course, I was also a fan of your completely different Robo Capers too. A few years ago I was able to complete my TF collection and both were great accompaniments. When Action Force folded whose decision was it to bring Colin over?
Thanks Phil. The decision to move Colin to TF would have been Richard Starkings' I believe. Rich was senior editor by then and he was very helpful to my career at that time as he understood where my humour came from, being a fan of the Odhams comics himself.
Thanks Peter. I'd have liked to have developed Super School in that direction but The Beano's strength is in it's self-contained gag strips, whic has worked well for them for many decades of course (and us equally as fun to do). The thing with Combat Colin is that it was in an adventure comic, so giving it a little bit more grit and depth didn't seem out of place. Sadly these days, licenced comics such as Transformers, Turtles, etc don't feature any strips not connected with the franchise, which is a shame for the readers and contributors.
I think most of the comics I collected as a kid you were involved with to some degree! Oink (obviously!), Transformers, Real Ghostbusters... your work was a very staple part of my comics diet!
Strip magazine would be the perfect place for Colin. It's exactly that sort of action comic with space for humor strips. They do seem to be having a lot of trouble getting their second issue into shops though. Here's to hoping that they manage to fix their printing / distributing problems.
Yes, Strip was a possibility, but at present the digital comic Aces Weekly is where new Combat Colin strips will appear. I did a new three pager for issue 1, vol.1, and hopefully there'll be another in vol.6.
That's good to hear, Phil. They were great days.
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