Monday 7 October 2013

Sick Squid!

Over the ten years I was writing/drawing Team Toxic for Toxic comic I really enjoyed creating new villains for the group to fight. The five Team Toxic characters themselves had been designed by the series' original artist John Rusby, (I took over drawing it with issue 15) but I visualized the majority of the baddies the Team battled over the years. 



Here's one example of the nefarious Sick Squid in conflict with the heroes, from Toxic No.38. This is from my original art before the colours (by the brillant Lorna Miller) and lettering were added. As you may have guessed from the sequence, the plot involves Doc Shock thinking he'd invented the toaster, being derided by the other team members, then redeeming himself by being the one to defeat Sick Squid. 

I really enjoyed doing this sort of fantastic comedy-adventure strip, and having two pages an issue gave me plenty of space to develop it and draw some dynamic panels. My old Team Toxic material is currently being reprinted in Toxic so if you've never seen it, take a look. Although, this being the UK, there are no reprint payments unfortunately. That's the downside of being a freelancer I'm afraid! 

1 comment:

Manic Man said...

It really is a shame that 1) UK rarely gives payments for repeats and 2) Toxic Mag like your work enough to keep it in print, but not enough to buy new strips. I would say that at lest it gives you more time to work on other projects, but I think as a freelancer, that isn't always the best thing ^_^;