Rasher Returns

Dennis the Menace's pet pig Rasher returns for a new series of mini-strips in The Beano No.3719 which is on sale in shops today.

I'm very pleased to be drawing Dennis' porcine pal again. Rasher originally appeared in The Beano in 1979, gaining his own strip in 1984, drawn by David Sutherland. Over the years the series has been illustrated by top artists such as Steve Bright, Barrie Appleby, and Nigel Parkinson. So when the character returned as a mini-strip in 2012 I considered it an honour to be asked to be the new artist. 

I did 33 Rasher strips in my first run, then it underwent a title change to Watch-Hog for six further episodes. (I've also drawn four Rasher mini-strips for The Beano Annual 2015, on sale later this year.) The new series of Rasher should run until April or so. 

Another mini-strip I have in this issue is episode 4 (of 6) of Doctor Flu.

The Beano is published every Wednesday, priced £2 for 36 full colour pages.  

COMBAT COLIN returns in a brand new story!

Combat Colin, the bobble-hatted hero, (imagine if Nick Frost played a cross between Rambo and James Bond in a small English town) whose adventures ran in the pages of Marvel UK's Action Force and Transformers comics in the late 1980s returns to comics again this week in a brand new story.

The latest edition (Vol.8 No.7) of Aces Weekly, the successful digital comic anthology created by David Lloyd (artist of V for Vendetta), features an all-new full colour three page Combat Colin adventure that I created exclusively for the comic. 

The story begins where many British strips have ended, with a slap-up feed, (see preview above) but danger and daftness is just around the corner! Colin's co-stars Semi-Automatic Steve and The Giggly Sisters are also back... but so is Professor Madprof, the Mad Professor, one of the gang's oldest enemies!

This isn't the first time Combat Colin has returned since his exit from Marvel UK of course. As Marvel had returned the rights to me I reprinted some of his stories in self-published comics in the 1990s. Colin also guest starred in the Brickman series in Elephantmen comic a few years ago. He's also appeared in Aces Weekly before, in the very first issue back in 2012 (also a new story exclusive to the comic). 

David Lloyd has been asking me ever since if I'd contribute again, but with one thing and another I either didn't have the time or frame of mind to get back into combat mode, - until now. I thoroughly enjoyed indulging in my old comedy-action daftness again and I hope the readers will get a kick out of it too of course. My thanks to David for asking me to be part of Aces Weekly again.

What is Aces Weekly? Well, for all of you who have been glum because of the lack of new UK comics on the shelves, the Internet offers hope. Aces Weekly has now been running for eight volumes, each containing seven issues. Yes, a brand new comic that's now been around for 56 issues! Each issue features six stories from various creators who all own the rights to their material. They're mostly serials, but some (like Combat Colin) are complete self contained strips. Like the British weeklies of old, there's a variety of themes amongst the adventure and humour stories. 

Anyway, enough from me. Here's how David explained it himself on the website:

Aces Weekly is an exclusively digital comic art magazine featuring some of the world's finest creators of comic art!  The guy who brought you V FOR VENDETTA - David Lloyd - has gathered professionals from around the globe to bring you this revolutionary publishing project.  It appears every Monday with serials and short stories by some of the finest talent in comic art! 

ACES WEEKLY WAS VOTED TOP DIGITAL COMIC OF 2013 IN PIPEDREAM COMICS POLL OF THE BEST!  ALL AT ACES WEEKLY THANK PIPEDREAMCOMICS.CO.UK, AND ALL THE WONDERFUL PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR US, FOR THEIR SUPPORT AND ENCOURAGEMENT!

Just £6.99/$9.99/€7.99 for a SEVEN WEEK volume of some of the finest talent in comics storytelling.

AND BUY OUR BACK VOLUMES - all for just £6.99/$9.99/€7.99.

Keen to see more? Visit the Aces Weekly website to subscribe and start reading the comic right now! http://www.acesweekly.co.uk/home

  

The Day it Began...

...or close enough. Me, age 2, in 1961 in my grandad's back garden. (We lived with my grandad until I was four.) Starting to draw something. Dunno what. Still drawing, 53 years later.

I'm no longer left handed. That was "corrected" when I started school (it was just something they did back then). You'll be relieved to hear I no longer have the shorts either. Or the hair, come to that!

In this week's Beano...

...there's the final Celebs on a Sledge mini-strip from me. This was a fun series to do and I hope I'll have the opportunity to do more daft ideas for The Beano in the future. Next week this strip is replaced by a new run of Rasher so I'll show a preview of that next Wednesday all being well. 

Also in today's Beano from me is another Doctor Flu mini-strip. This brings us to the halfway point on this six week run. And The Doctor still has the flu! Here's a preview before the word balloon was added.

There's also a stack of other all-new strips by my cartooning contemporaries of course. The Beano is out now - 36 full colour pages for just £2. If you're a regular reader thanks for coming back. If you haven't read The Beano for a while - give it a try. 

For sale: Pimples, Thugs, Bugs Bunny, and a man with three buttocks

I've just uploaded a few new items on eBay for auction if you're interested. Original artwork including Tom Thug, Pete and his Pimple, plus a couple of different pages...

One is a huge A2 size double page spread I did for Know How! magazine. I was given free reign for those spreads and in this instance it's a battle with weird aliens on a distant planet. The spreads would be published in black and white for readers to colour. Most colouring spreads are a bit bland so I hope I managed to bring some humour to the ones I did.

The other unusual item is an A3 pencil sketch of several well known cartoon characters which I was commissioned to do for a Cartoon Network promotion in the UK. The license holders have the finished inked art I provided but this is my initial pencil version. It includes Scooby Doo, Bugs Bunny, Fred Flintstone, Droopy, Tom and Jerry, and others.

Add caption

If any items I've mentioned take your fancy, you can find my eBay page here:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/graphite47/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686

Rubbish Robots concludes

It's the final episode of Rubbish Robots in The Beano today as Captain Kog readies his robot army to invade the Earth! 

Also by me in this week's issue is the penultimate Celebs on a Sledge mini-strip and the second Doctor Flu episode. The Beano - in the shops now! All-new strips for only £2.

Mini-strips galore

Today's issue of The Beano (the first for 2014) features three mini-strips that I scripted and drew for the long-running weekly. 

There's the penultimate episode of Rubbish Robots (see pic above).

The fourth participant in Celebs on a Sledge...

...and the first (of six) episodes of Doctor Flu! 

There's also a bunch of returning classic characters from other artists too - plus the regulars. Not a single reprint! This is a great week to pick up The Beano if you haven't seen it for a while. For more info see my other blog:
http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/old-favourites-and-newcomer-in-first.html

Sonic Sample - in colour

Last year on this blog I posted about how I submitted artwork to Egmont's Sonic the Comic in its early days with the hope of becoming one of its artists. As it transpired they were looking for a different style but they did employ me as a scriptwriter on the comic for pretty much the duration of Sonic the Comic's several-year run. So that turned out fine.

Last August I showed one of the pages I'd submitted; a black and white page of Sonic being confronted by a monster. I sold that on eBay last year but this week I was sorting through more old artwork and I found the other page I'd submitted; a full colour page! 

I know some Sonic the Hedgehog fans might be interested in this so I've put it on eBay. When I drew this sample I had little idea of the direction the comic would go in so I made up my own villains basically. I thought I'd do an action scene with Sonic vs a flying creature before he was abducted by a spacecraft piloted by a weird robot.

I also found some of my old scripts such as the Sonic scripts for issues 146 and 147 - a complete two part story. The scripts include all the panel descriptions and dialogue that artist Richard Elson turned into fantastic artwork.

 

If you're interested head over to my eBay page where there are these and other items currently up for auction until next Sunday:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/graphite47/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686

New strips for the New Year

The New Year kicks off with a new issue of Toxic in the shops today, and it contains the first in a new series of Team Toxic adventures that I've done. As you may recall, Team Toxic went to reprint about ten months ago, but the editor recently commissioned me to produce new stories for the characters. The first one in the new series sees the Team encounter a new baddie, - Guffzilla, the living fart! 

Toxic No.231 is out now, priced £2.99.

2013 was a very bad year for me with the fairly sudden death of my mum. (Details in this earlier posting.) After being her carer for years (and part carer of my aunt before that) it's taken me a while to adjust, considering I saw or spoke to my mum almost every day of my life. She wasn't just my mum, she was my best friend too, and the last member of my family. So it's been quite an effort to get back on track but I'm getting there, thanks to the support of good friends. 

My mum, Summer 2012 outside her bungalow.

Of course, none of us know what the next 12 months will bring. We can only hope for good fortune and try to make the best of it. Work-wise, as well as the aforementioned strip for Toxic, I have a new mini-strip starting in The Beano next week; Doctor Flu. And those of you who are fans of Dennis the Menace's pet pig will hopefully be pleased to hear that I'm also doing a new series of Rasher mini-strips that will also appear in The Beano soon. Hopefully, you'll see the return of Combat Colin soon too, in the digital pages of Aces Weekly!

Beyond that? Not sure yet, but I have a few ideas. I'll also be selling more of my old pages from Oink!, Buster, Viz and the like, so stay tuned!

Best wishes to all readers for 2014 and as always, thanks for your interest and for visiting this blog.