I've recently been paginating the next issue of Combat Colin (No.6) and working out the full contents. It'll reprint the remaining stories from The Transformers from the early 1990s plus some strips that followed. It'll have at least 44 pages including covers, possibly 48 depending on the length of back up features. It's still early days so, as yet, there's no firm publication date. Hopefully sometime this summer.
Most contents of previous issues have been scanned from the original art that Marvel UK let me have back after they had published it. However, most of the later pages of original art were missing from the Marvel art cabinet when I went to collect them, which means I'll have to scan directly from the comics themselves. As the comics were in full colour this means those pages will reproduce in greyscale. (This also happened with some pages in issue 5, you may have noticed.)
What happened to my original artwork from those later issues? Misplaced? Thrown away by accident? Who knows? It's been over 30 years so they're long gone.
Anyway, here's a sneak peek at the story that will lead off issue 6, the first page of One of Our Gigglies Is Missing! Ironic that the rest of that story is also missing! as I said though, I'll scan the missing pages from the comics and I'll do my best to make them look good for the new printing.
If you need to catch up with issues 3 to 5 you'll find them in my shop at this link:
https://ko-fi.com/lewstringer/shop
©2025 Lew Stringer
7 comments:
Wonderful - looking forward to this already. I'll have to dig out 1 to 5 before I return to work and have a re-read.
The "Twin Pekes" joke made me smile - I like references that tie a comic to a time and place. And speaking of that, the Giggly Sisters seem to have a 1980's style to them in this 1990's strip - which makes sense as they were probably dressing from their Kays Catalogue rather than being zeitgeist fashion slaves.
Yeah, who knows what happens to old comic art. An industry that doesn't value it's own history. Must be literally millions of lost pages in the last 90 years and lots of horror stories - some apochryphal, some sadly true. Marvel hanging onto Kirby's pages and "losing " most when eventually forced to return them to him; Julius Schwarz giving away art in the letters pages, British publishers putting pages on the floor to protect the carpets during the winter, and - my favourite - Steve Ditko wiping his brushes on old Spider-Man pages while he was focusing on Mister A.
Was there much Colin between the end of Transformers and the start of Aces Weekly? I know he was a guest in a Brickman series that was a backup in a US comic.
Hi Tony, There's a 10 or 12 page story I self published, and some pages from other fan publications, so it'll fill the comic out nicely. Colin's guest appearance in Brickman won't be reprinted as it was part of a 20 page Brickman story (which I'll republish sometime, all being well). The Aces Weekly material is more suited to a horizontal comic so that will appear in a colour special (hopefully) later this year or next.
Sounds good. Always nice to know there’s more Colin on the horizon, however near or far. A lot of my favourite characters have had years between series (Blackhawk, Nexus, Flesh in 2000AD ) and then they turn up out of the blue looking not a day older. Being a comic fan, one learns to be patient.
I thought you had retired and was too ill to work?
I've said several times now that I'm semi-retired and still doing some work. Not sure why that's hard for some people to understand.
Prickly response. I only fuckjnv asked.
That's you banned.
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