Sunday 30 January 2022

Latest Art Auction is live! ORIGINAL pages of Tom Thug, Pete's Pimple, and the Sexist Daleks!

I've put a few more pages of my original art up for auction on eBay. This time there's the Pete and his Pimple page (update: now sold) that appeared in the first combined issue of Buster and Oink! in 1988...

The Tom Thug's Skooldayz page that appeared in the second issue of Buster and Oink! in 1988...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203811083090

 

A Pete and his Pimple mini puzzle strip that was published in Oink! No39 in 1987...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203811210515

 

...and the one and only appearance of the Sexist Daleks from The Daft Dimension strip that appeared in Doctor Who Magazine No.517 in 2017... 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203811901203

 

That Daleks strip is a particular favourite of mine, which is why it has a higher price that I'd usually list my Daft Dimensions for. 

You can see the full listings here:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/graphite47/m.html?item=203554298786

Auctions end next Sunday evening (February 6th). All bids and purchases gratefully appreciated. Good luck!


Saturday 29 January 2022

Ignore the trolls... except THIS one!


Derek the Troll
was one of the earliest characters I created for a professional publisher. He appeared back in 1985 in Games Workshop's Warlock magazine before transfering over to White Dwarf after Warlock folded. 

A few years ago I collected all of those 1980s Derek the Troll strips into a comic, and I still have a few left if any of you are interested.

The 32 page comic also includes the complete futuristic saga of Rock Solid, Space Hero, another early character of mine, from the pages of Harrier Comics' Swiftsure in the mid-1980s. (And followers of my ongoing Sgt.Shouty strip in The77 might have noticed that it's set ten years after the Rock Solid stories and there is a connection.)

If you haven't bought Derek the Troll yet you can grab one from my eBay listings at this link...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203681666160

While you're there, check out my other items such as the remaining issues of Combat Colin in stock...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/graphite47/m.html?item=203681666160

I'll be selling more original art on eBay soon too!

 

Thursday 27 January 2022

Ivy the Terrible (2014)

Sorry I haven't updated this blog for a few days. Busy doing my yearly accounts and drawing various things at the moment, all needed soon. I can't show any images from my current artwork yet so I thought I'd delve into my archives and show you a strip I did several years ago.

Back in 2014 The Beano commissioned me to draw a new series of Ivy the Terrible, the strip originally drawn by the late, great Robert Nixon.

This is one of my favourites, which I think was written by John Anderson, who's now the Beano editor! It appeared in Beano No.3757 dated 25th October 2014.

I'm currently writing/drawing a new mini-strip for Beano that starts in March. No, it's not Ivy, but it is another old favourite!  

 

Saturday 22 January 2022

SHOUT it out loud! The77 issue Seven is coming!

The Kickstarter for the next issue of popular indie comic The77 is now live! The 64 page full colour comic anthology features an array of talent including Paul Goodenough, Ian Stopforth, Dave Heeley, Andrw Sawyers, Hal Laren, Brendon Wright, Jo Heeley, Rupert Jones and more. 

PLUS there'll be a brand new Sgt.Shouty funventure from me, which will now have two pages!

There are various incentives for different pledge levels including original black and white sketches that I'll be drawing to order. You can choose from Sgt.Shouty, Doctor Plank, or King Bumface! 

The cover features the new strip, Black Dog Lane, by Ben McCloud and Kit Bodhi, inspired by Richard Corben's album sleeve art for Bat Out of Hell. The cover was revealed just a day before the news of Meat Loaf's passing.  

You can back The77 issue 7 by following this link...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/the77comic/the-77-seven 


 

Thursday 20 January 2022

Latest auction ends this Sunday. Original art for COMBAT COLIN, DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE and BRICKMAN up for bids

 

A reminder that my current art auction ends this Sunday evening, 23rd January!

Up for bids are one of the very earliest Combat Colin strips (the 9th one published) that originally appeared in Marvel's Action Force No.13 in 1987, a Daft Dimension strip from Doctor Who Magazine, and an all new Brickman drawing along with the complete Brickman saga in Brickman Begins! and Brickman Returns!

All bids appreciated. You'll find the listings and more info about each item here:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/graphite47/m.html?item=203554298786

Good luck!


Tuesday 18 January 2022

Merchandise site using my artwork without permission

 A company called Nyvane are selling mugs on their website featuring my artwork and characters. They're advertising Brickman, Combat Colin, and Seven Ages of Fan mug designs with promotiuonal images taken from the Redbubble account I closed yesterday.

These items are counterfeit. Nyvane do not have my permission to use my Intellectual Property.

As I've never had any dealings with Nyvane they don't even have my art files to use. I seriously doubt anyone would even receive the mugs if they bought them from that site. Each mug was made to order exclusively through Redbubble, and I know exactly how few sold, so it's not even as though Nyvane could buy a bulk order to resell. Seems like a scam to me!

Nyvane claim to be making the items in the USA, but the company is based in Viet Nam! 

If you need further evidence, the negative reviews on TrustPilot say it all:

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/nyvane.com

Please do not support piracy! 



Monday 17 January 2022

No More Merch

I've just closed my Redbubble online store.

As you may recall, I set it up three years ago to sell various merchandise. Combat Colin T-shirts and mugs, Derek the Troll coasters, Brickman badges, etc. Redbubble assured me I'd still own the I.P. so all was good.


It seemed ideal. I just upload the art and Redbubble handle the rest; they deal with orders, manufacture the goods and dispatch them to customers. Prices were a bit high (Redbubble set the prices) but these were Print On Demand so were very rare items. The downside was that Redbubble take a huge percentage, but that seemed fair considering they were doing all the work after I'd uploaded the art. 


Sales have been pitiful though. "You should do merchandise" people told me. I did, but most of those people didn't buy any. Do you know how much I earned from it over the past 12 months? £5.19.


Okay... I thought I'd leave it a while longer... but tonight, I received notification from Redbubble that they'd removed my 'Seven Ages of Fan' artwork because it was already "related to a brand". Bloody cheek! That artwork was something I created in 1998 (originally published in the UKCAC booklet that year), and, like all my work on Redbubble, was an original creation and my Intellectual Property.

That was the last straw. I've deactivated my account.

My thanks to the few of you who did buy mugs, T-shirts, stickers, caps, etc from my store. Hang onto them. They're now very rare! 

 

Update: I've just found a website of a U.S. company that has completely ripped off my mug designs without my permission. I'm not sure how they've acquired my art to use as I only uploaded those designs to Redbubble. If you see any websites manufacting Brickman, Derek the Troll, and Combat Colin merchandise it is 100% illegal. Action will be taken against them.

 

Original artwork for sale, plus the complete Brickman package!

I've put a few new items on eBay for an auction this week. Firstly there's a very early Combat Colin strip that features the very first appearance of the Combat Plane (and is also the second appearance of Colin's sidekick, Semi-Automatic Steve.) It was published in Action Force No.13, way back in 1987, and this is the original art for that episode...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203793509558

Secondly, there's one of my Daft Dimension strips from 2017. This one features the alternate Earth 10th Doctor plus Rose and a cameo by her parents. It appeared in Doctor Who Magazine No.518 and you can bid on my original artwork here...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203793500719

Lastly, something a bit different. Unread excellent-condition editions of Brickman Begins! (2005) and Brickman Returns! (2015) - therefore the complete Brickman saga - PLUS a brand new A5 size piece of Brickman original artwork all as one lot. You can bid on this package here...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203793488681

Bidding ends next Sunday (23rd January). Good luck! 


Saturday 15 January 2022

How Do You View?

How this blog is displayed on a phone.

I'm sometimes told that the images on my blog are "too small to read".  I found this baffling because I make sure the scans are large, at least as big as they were published in print in some cases, so that they look fine on screen. 

Then it occured to me that perhaps some people don't know how to enlarge images? Surely not, as that's one of the first things we discover about the Internet, right? You tap or click on a blog image and it'll be shown its full size. Sometimes there's an option to enlarge it even more.  

However... an increasing number of people today are only accessing the Internet via their phones, so of course the images are small. Tapping on them will enlarge them but then you'd have to move the image around to read each panel of a comics page.

When I started this blog I assumed everyone would be reading it from a desktop or laptop, so they'd see it as intended. Even an iPad or any other tablet will show the blog as it should be (below) but if you're viewing it on a phone (see pic at the top of this article) you'll see it differently (and won't see any of the sidebar listings for the archive or other links).

Viewed on an iPad.

It's a difficult one really. I appreciate mobile devices are what most people use now, so I wouldn't expect you to buy a desktop PC just to read comics blogs. The alternative would be for me to show each panel as a separate image that filled your phone screen, but that'd be too time consuming for me to set up and would be annoying for readers who are accessing the blog on a desktop or laptop.

For the most part I only tend to show preview panels of upcoming work anyway, so that suits all devices. It's only when I show full pages that makes it inconvenient for people looking at it on a phone.

Just curious though; how do you view this blog? Phone, laptop, tablet, smart TV, or desktop?  Please drop a comment below to give me an idea. Thanks.

 

Thursday 13 January 2022

Pete and his Pimple in Buster - in March 1988!

Buster issue dated 26th March 1988 featured a half page Pete and his Pimple strip I was commissioned to do, to promote Oink! comic, which makes this my first Buster strip.  Not only did they let a then-relative-newcomer like me loose in the pages of this fine, well established comic but I even got to co-star Buster himself in the story, - although as you can see, it didn't end well for him!

As most comic readers of the time know, the promotion sadly had little effect on Oink's falling sales (no thanks to WH Smith top-shelving it well away from other comics) and Oink! actually merged into Buster later that same year, bringing Pete and his Pimple into the comic on a regular basis.

Interestingly, although I was able to do a full on gross strip for the advert above, editor Allen Cummings didn't want any pimple pus bursts seen in the regular Pete and his Pimple strip when it became a fixture in Buster. I think it took the edge off the strip but I completely agreed with Allen's point as such gross humour was fine for Oink! but not suited to the tone of Buster

As it turned out, Pete only had a run of six months or so in Buster. Whilst Oink's older readers had voted it one of their favourites, Buster's younger audience didn't really go for it. (Well, what seven year old can relate to zits?)

On the other hand, Tom Thug, which had also transferred from Oink, shot up the Buster popularity charts, as you can see from this letter I received from the editor. I guess kids of all ages always like to see the bully become the butt of the jokes, and long may it be so. 

Sunday 9 January 2022

A Peek Into The Future

I can't really show you much yet but here's a very small teaser of The Dandy Annual 2023! It's part of a panel from one of my Postman Prat strips when it was in the pencil and ink stage.

All of the strips were completed last year because we work way in advance on the annuals! You'll be able to see the finished version when The Dandy Annual 2023 goes on sale around August 2022!  


Friday 7 January 2022

Tickets now available for LAWLESS COMIC CON

I'm looking forward to being a guest at the Lawless Comic Con in Bristol over the weekend of 28th and 29th May, all being well! As you can see it's a great guest list! Tickets are now available to buy from their website here:
https://lawlesscomiccon.co.uk/ 

 

Wednesday 5 January 2022

Last few issues of COMBAT COLIN No.4 available now! (UPDATE: Sorry, sold out already!)

I thought I'd sold them all but I've found a handful of Combat Colin No.4 at the bottom of a box. Excellent condition and unread. 

Published in 2019, it won the Comic Scene Award for Best Small Press / Independent Comic that year. 

Combat Colin No.4 has 32 pages (28 interior black and white plus four full colour cover pages) reprinting my Combat Colin strips from February 1990 to August 1990 that originally appeared in Marvel UK's Transformers comic. (Marvel returned the rights to the strip back to me a few years later.)

It also carries a new short article by me on TV Century 21, one of the comics that inspired me to create my own comics. Plus a brand new cover by me.

I've put five copies on eBay tonight and when they're gone, they're gone. I will do a second printing at some point, but not for a while yet.

You can see the listing here. Order now and I'll send it off first class post:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203782019607

 

UPDATE: Sorry, but they've all sold out straight away! I will do a second printing at some point but no plans right away.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

As for the delayed Combat Colin No.5.... I still can't promise when I'll get that out I'm afraid. Current finances don't allow me to spend money on a print run and I don't want to get into the complexities of a Kickstarter campaign. Plus I can't spare the time to do all the scanning required right now as I need to pursue mainstream comics work. Issue 5 will appear, but I don't know when. I'll notify everyone on this blog and my social media accounts as soon as there's any news!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••


Monday 3 January 2022

"Woke" or Natural Progression?

For something new in '22 I thought that as well as showing pages of my work I'd also write ocassional articles about the comics industry itself and how (or if) any changes or situations affect my place in it.

As you may have heard, about a month ago Spotty of The Bash Street Kids had a permanent name change to Scotty (as his full name is James Scott Cameron). The Beano script by Andy Fanton was handled really well and made sense in its context, with 'Spotty' being fed up having that nickname and a series of events that eventually led to the other kids accepting his real name. 

The precedent had been set several months earlier when 'Fatty' changed to 'Freddy'. These slight name changes made no difference to the storylines because Freddy still likes his food and Scotty's stories were very rarely about him having spots anyway. (Personally, I'd always assumed they were freckles. Ten year olds don't usually suffer from acne!) 

Typically the media got hold of these changes and did their usual thing to stir up people who hadn't read the Beano in decades. Cries of "too woke" and "snowflakes" were posted online by people who hadn't even seen the strips and whose lives wouldn't be affected in the slightest by children's comics. 

Let's face it; nicknames have always been pretty childish haven't they? Can we move on from name calling?

I should make it clear that although I freelance for the Beano, these opinions are entirely my own. I'm not on staff and I'm not representing Beano or D.C. Thomson. As it happens I can understand why the changes were made and they really aren't anything to get irate about. Society has always been in an ongoing state of change. Being "woke" merely means to be more mindful and aware of the feelings of others. It's a shame that some see that as a bad thing! 

Obviously whenever there are changes in society there will be some who'll take things to the extreme, but overall, such changes are well measured and beneficial. After all, it's not as though we all woke up and it suddenly wasn't 1970 anymore is it? The changes have been very gradual over many years and most of us have adapted over time because anything that makes this world a bit less cruel has to be a good thing, right?

As most of you know, I wasn't adverse to poking fun at "spotty" people myself, particularly in the pages of Oink! in the late 1980s with my creation Pete and his Pimple. However I made the situations so exaggerated, so ludicrously extreme, that hopefully it transcended simply making jokes about acne. I also tried to make Pete a sympathetic character so the readers shared his desire to rid himself of his giant zit. (I even invited readers to send in their ideas for a pimple cure in return for a prize, and used the best ones in the comic.) Would I create new Pete and his Pimple stories today if Rebellion asked? Yes! Although I'd play up the sympathetic angle even more and give his character more depth. Not that a new series is likely anytime soon, and in today's times perhaps it wouldn't be commissioned anyway.

There are a couple of characters from my past that I do regret now. One is Norma Snockers, a newspaper strip I did for the Sunday Sport back around 1989/90. If you've never heard of the paper then "downmarket" is the kindest description I could give it. They commissioned me to create a kind of modern day "Jane" strip but cruder, and I came up with Norma, a woman with massive boobs. To offset it just being jokes about breasts I made each episode a five panel limerick, and made sure that most times Norma won out against lecherous dirty old men and the like. Not that it really justifies it in hindsight. I did 69 weekly strips and then quit after problems with delayed payments and their refusal to return my artwork. I own the rights to the strip and could publish a collection if I wanted to, but I don't want to so it's not going to happen.

The other character I regret is Tranny Magnet that I did for Viz about 20 years ago. The saga of a man who is cursed to attract the unwanted attention of transexuals. It all seemed like a bit of fun back then, before any of us realised the anguish and mental stress that real transexuals go through and the courage they face in making the decision to change their gender. I can make excuses that I was ignorant, and it was a different time, but my drawings of transexuals were insulting, callous and cruel and I hang my head in shame. I think I did half a dozen or so altogether but you won't be seeing any more appearances of that character! 

I was a younger man when I created those characters and now, at 62, hopefully I'm more mindful of the targets I choose for comedy. It's never too late to change your outlook. Many of us laughed at the bigoted comedians in the 1970s but the point is we should be better than that now!  It's easy to say "It's only a bit of fun" when you're not the target. For example it's not difficult to avoid being a racist, unless you're really enjoying being a racist. For anyone who complains that "we can't say that now" I'd ask, "Why would you want to?"

"Political correctness" isn't a war on humour. We can still produce funny stuff without punching down at minorities and people who don't deserve to be ridiculed. In this day and age more of us should be using our humour to target the elities, the authority figures who'd do us down, not our fellow citizens. That's always been a tradition in humour comics too of course; for the underdog to get the better of the oppressor, and may that tradition not only continue but to thrive!

Saturday 1 January 2022

Looking ahead

There's not a lot I can show you for work I have coming up at the moment as it's still to be drawn but here's a little snippet of part of a panel from my next Daft Dimension strip. 

Seems appropriate for today because 1) The Daleks are back on tonight's New Year Doctor Who special on BBC One at 7pm, and 2) that Dalek looks like he's suffered the same two years as we all have. 

You can see the full version of the strip in Doctor Who Magazine No.573 when it goes on sale this coming Thursday, 6th January! 

https://www.panini.co.uk/shp_gbr_en/doctor-who-magazine-573-gbdrw573-uk02.html 

Happy New Year!

UPDATE: Here's the cover for the latest issue...