Friday, 12 July 2019

ROBO CAPERS! The Early Strips

As it's unlikely Marvel will ever reprint my Robo-Capers strips I thought I'd show a few here. 

 Back in 1985, after a few successes with selling strips to Marvel UK I pitched a new one to Sheila Cranna, the editor of The Transformers fortnightly comic. I'd previously worked for Sheila when she was editor of the Spider-Man Comic, where I'd created Captain Wally and Snail-Man strips.  I had no interest in drawing the Autobots of The Transformers franchise but I thought a comedy strip about robots might be a good fit. Thankfully, Sheila thought so too, and Robo Capers began in Transformers No.15, cover dated 6th to 19th April 1985. It would run until issue 152. 

 Here are the first 10 strips from Transformers No.15 to issue 24 (10th/23rd August 1985). Click on each strip to see it larger.










Where ROBO CAPERS began. TRANSFORMERS No.15. Cover by Mike Collins.
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9 comments:

  1. Peter Gray14 July 2019 at 00:17

    love your comic strips...have you done one for a time for a newspaper before?

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  2. Lew Stringer14 July 2019 at 10:43

    I did Norma Snockers for the Sunday Sport 30 years ago but the least said about that the better.

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  3. The Earlster14 July 2019 at 15:19

    I loved Robo Capers! I really wish this could be collected (would go nicely with my Combat Colin collection 1-3). It was great how it become an ongoing series and remember being gutted when it finished!

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  4. Peter Gray14 July 2019 at 19:43

    ooo...her misses!... :)

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  5. Lew Stringer15 July 2019 at 11:41

    I must admit I wasn't too concerned when Robo Capers ended. I felt I'd run out of steam with it after so many gags (140 weeks or so). No doubt I could have found a new angle, new direction, to continue it if necessary though. I was pleased that Combat Colin could continue into The Transformers as that still had lots of potential (and still does today).

    A few years back I kind of revived Robo Capers... or the concept at least... with a mini-strip called 'Rubbish Robots' for The Beano. It was only a six week series, but involved an evil alien robot and his plans to invade Earth with, of course, robots that proved to be useless. More info here:
    https://lewstringercomics.blogspot.com/2013/10/look-to-skies-rubbish-robots-are-coming.html 

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  6. The Earlster18 July 2019 at 21:14

    I've never seen that before, thanks Lew! I must admit as much as I was disappointed to see the end of Robo Capers Combat Colin became an all time classic and is part of my youth. Forget GI Joe, everyone knows Transformers backup strip was Combat Colin!

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  7. Lew Stringer19 July 2019 at 10:23

    Thanks. One of the nice things about comic cons is that I've met a lot of people who have told me how much they enjoyed Combat Colin back in the 1980s/90s.

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  8. Marasmusine25 September 2019 at 15:10

    I used to love Robo Capers. My favourite was the robot that could transform into a lamp-post but had trouble with dogs (I think it was in colour by then).

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  9. Lew Stringer26 September 2019 at 18:34

    Thanks. Yes, I think that was a colour one. I'll be showing more of them soon.

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