X+X-1 +X-2+X-3+x-4....that is a lot of X's!

 Yesterday I did not have the energy in me to start lettering the 128pp Green Skies V.3 Pt. 2 so I thought I might do some scanning but one look and I didn't want to fire up the old Mustek Pro.

Sit down and read something? Unfortunately I just cannot sit down and do the whole "relaxing" bit. It drives me nuts.

So I looked on one of the USB storage devices and there was a strip already scanned and cleaned that needed lettering for a Black Tower Super Heroes issue. Once I added the title to the strip that was it -I was gone!

If you have ever read a Black Tower comic you will have read of Professor Thaddeus Twatt -a rather eccentric character I created back in the late 1960s. He featured in the strips The Fearful Fate of Friggia and The Jungle Planet. By the way, the house in the page to the left looks quite good -far better than on the A3 page!

Anyway, I was reading through some old Gerald Swan annuals about three years ago and there are at least two nutty old professors who look like Twatt. Back in the 1960s I did not even know that Swan existed let alone seen any of the strips published in his comics. Even the Iron Boy looks a little like the character. As I was looking at the strips all sorts of idea ran through my head and they gelled pretty fast and it all fitted with Prof Twatt's background story that we got a glimpse of in The Jungle Planet.


Then there were the X Brothers.  Well, they are biomechanicals and some have featured along with other characters in the past -

X-10 for instance became far more “human” after a sojourn with other members of the Special Globe Guard to 1746 during which Count St Germaine placed a fragment of the Philosopher’s Stone within him (Black Tower Adventure Vol. 1 No. 54, 2003). Initially they had no idea that they were connected by mutual creator but the pieces fell together and the only mystery is really why he created and then abandoned them?

X to X-10 were created, again, in the late 1960s when most of us kids were into robots (yes, I was a kid at one point).

In this 9 pager the Xs are tracking down reports of "robot boys" around the world and one includes Tim -"The Iron Boy".  What does it all mean and what was Thaddeus Twatt up to and how could he have been creating biomechanicals back in the 1940s that are in some ways more advanced than those created in the 1960s and 1970s how old is he??

I threw all that together in text and three hours later (I had to cook something to eat) it was completed and I realised the project built on this 9 pager was going to be big but not 300 pages big so don't panic!

Lots of little things were added to the dialogue since there are no scripts. It was good to add "Robot Patel" the India based character I created for a certain company over there as well as Billy Amazo who has featured in Return of the Gods.

I am ashamed to admit it but...I had fun.

That was yesterday and today...something new I think.

Oh, just to let you know that the online store carries 141 books covering 14 pages -you can also find them listed with links on the Black Tower Comioc Shop News blog.

Stay happy. Stay safe.