Tales of Christmas Past

As promised, here are a bunch of my old festive stories from over the years. I've been working in comics professionally since 1983 and I always try to do at least one Christmas story every year if I have the opportunity. I didn't have time to dig out one for each year but here's a selection that I hope you'll enjoy! 

Script, art, lettering and colouring by me unless otherwise noted. 

As always, click on the images to enlarge them.

Showing them in chronological order, let's start with 1987 and the Pete and his Pimple strip from Oink!

  

Also from 1987 it's the first Christmas Combat Colin story from Action Force comic. Colours by Steve White...

 

Next, it's The Vampire Brats from Buster, Christmas 1989. 

 

From that same year, but a different publisher, it's Combat Colin from The Transformers comic for Christmas 1989. (Colouring by the Marvel UK staff.)

 

A year later and it's Christmas with Tom Thug from the festive 1990 issue of Buster...

 

When Buster went all-reprint in 1996 I found work on another Fleetway comic, Sonic the Comic, as a writer for several years on their comedy-adventure strips. There were some great artists who illustrated my scripts on that comic. This Christmas story from 1996 is written by me, with fantastic art by Andy Pritchett and a nice lettering job by Gordon Robson...

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Moving forward a few years now, and over the ocean to an American comic, here's the festive Brickman episode from Image Comics' Elephantmen for Christmas 2005...

I did a lot of work for Toxic magazine as we moved into a new Century. Team Toxic was my regular strip for the mag for 16 years! Here's the one for the Christmas 2006 issue. Script and art by me, colouring by Lorna Miller, lettering by Egmont staff... 

 

I hadn't realised until now how often I'd had my characters helping Santa deliver presents! It's a standard theme of course, to have the hero "save" Christmas from adversity, and one that I think kids like to see. 

Working on The Dandy was a dream come true, and it was great to design a new character for them, based on their brief. This is the Postman Prat episode for the Christmas 2011 issue. Script by David Mason, everything else by me...

Working for Beano is another mighty privilege. I've done lots for them over the past several years and one of my favourite commissions was taking over the Rasher strip for five or six series. This is the episode from the Christmas 2012 issue. Lettering by the Beano designers...

 

Finally, more up to date, my current regular strip is The Daft Dimension that appears in Doctor Who Magazine every month. Here's the strip that was in the Christmas 2019 issue...

That concludes this trawl through my comic selection box. I hope the strips raised a smile or two in these grim times and that you all have a Happy Christmas wherever you may be.