Tom Thug will return!

I'm going to make sure that Tom Thug turns up in next year's Cor!! Buster Easter Special. In fact, John Freeman has written him into the script. It's only a cameo part, but he'll be part of a crowd scene in a few panels. (He also appeared briefly in this year's special, if you recall.)

Hopefully it'll eventually lead to Tom coming back in his own strip one day. After all, he was one of the most popular strips in Oink! and Buster from the late 1980s to the final Buster in 1999 and even took over the cover position on several occasions.  When I did the last one I counted up how many Tom Thug strips I'd drawn, and it was well over 400. 

People still ask me for a sketch of him at conventions, so the brainless bully is still fondly remembered. He was never a character to emulate of course. More of a catharsis for readers to see the bully get his just desserts every issue. Readers laughed with the other Buster characters, but Tom was designed to be laughed at. 

If you'd like to know how Tom Thug came to be, I wrote a blog post about it five years ago. Click on this link to read it...
https://lewstringercomics.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-origin-of-tom-thug.html