Sunday, 27 July 2025
People Ask Me Odd Questions
To answer the question: no, I was not "the drunken Fleetway editor who knocked over a pile of artwork and dozed off for the rest of the day"
I was NEVER an editor at Fleetway. I know the editor and the second editor who was involved after a 2 hour pub lunchbreak as this happened on the day I was meeting Gil Page.
For everyone's information I do not touch alcohol and would certainly never drink on a business trip. But have no fears as the two legends have totally rebooted their past now so none of that happened.😊
Saturday, 26 July 2025
Thursday, 24 July 2025
Small and Compact or MORE Pages??
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The original Return of the Gods: Twilight of the Super Heroes series ran in 6 issues of Adventure vol. 2. I then looked at it and expanded and then re-lettered 97 pages to over 300. It's what I do.
Yesterday I found a folder with the original Looking Glass series that featured all of the ole IPC/Fleetway characters that was to appear in Valiant They Were. 57 pages. Now, after talking to Gil Page at Fleetway and two of the board members (before they lost interest) it was planned to serialise the series in a Fleetway comic (Buster was the title put forward) and so I re-lettered and re-drew and added pages until the final count was 111 pages.
I just had to stop myself doing something similar again. I don't think I have the amount of time needed for what I am doing/planning already but another huge book? Oh no!
A Little Bit Of This And A Smattering of That
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By 0315 hrs I had finished tidying up books for August -I am going to wait and see what difference re-scheduling different titles will make. Cover designs are always the big problem since I do not consider myself a cover artist. You know, the ones who do nothing but draw covers? It means there are very few "Slam! Bash!" fight scenes on covers -it means I have to get imaginative.
I also had to clean up some original art from the 1980s to use as paper over time gets off colour and the washes used might not reproduce well today -years ago a printer would check and make adjustments but these days no human eyes set sight on a book while it is being printed -or finished.
I was then reminded of a piece I wrote about British comics -the, uh, "industry"- a few years back and how accurate it was. Thank you. After that I went through a box and found artwork -nothing major but stuff I thought was lost. I can at least confirm that all of those first issues of art for various comics were burnt a few years back.
I also found a couple of stapled mock ups. These are proposed comics that are photocopied pages along with a cover to show an editor or publisher what the contents would look like. It reminded me of how much time and money I had spent promoting certain artists and writers who then turned out to be playing comic creators.
That's life.
Today...I'm hoping my eyes last!
Wednesday, 23 July 2025
Black Tower: Streamline 2 The Dr Rose Agenda
Ben R Dilworth writer/artist
24 pages
A4
Black and white
£8.00 UK
https://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper/streamline-2/paperback/product-yvyd549.html?page=1&pageSize=4
Keenan King aka Streamline of Earth Parallel 669 meets agent Grimes of MI5 in Westminster Abbey for a briefing. A briefing that seems to indicate that the man who helped King and gave him his powers, Dr. Rose, has mass produced the formula used on him.
If the man who helped give him the powers of Streamline has turned rogue for money or other reasons he has to be stopped.
An army of Streamlines would be unstoppable and a threat to not just the UK but the world.
Cinebook Ltd: Yoko Tsuno 20 - The Gate of Souls
Author: Roger Leloup
Age: 8 years and up
Size: 21.7 x 28.7 cm
Number of pages: 48 colour pages
£8.99 incl VAT
ISBN: 9781800441606
https://www.cinebook.co.uk/yoko-tsuno-gate-souls-p-4578.html
Yoko and her friends – both Earthlings and Vineans – are back among the stars, cruising near the mysterious Ultima and its atemporal mists. Long ago, refugees fleeing their home world Vinea were lost in them. Their souls are said to still haunt this now sacred place, and an ancient law prohibits Vineans from entering. But when a probe coming from Ultima zooms past her ship, Yoko doesn’t hesitate to disregard the interdiction – after all, she’s not Vinean, is she?!
When I first got Yoko Tsuno sent to me I didn't think it was going to be that impressive -and it was a kiddy book. That shows how wrong you can be. Tsuno does follow a trend that you see in creators' work. For instance John Creasy (who created The Baron, Gideon of the Yard, etc) started out in the 1930s with his Department Z and later Dr Palfrey books all firmly based in the world of spies or crime but then evolved into ecological themes and even science fiction style stories (The Unbegotten). Tsuno started as an adventurer and slowly jumped into science fiction and we now have her travelling through space.
I love the art style from the characters to the craft and scenes and the use of colour is superb and adds so much more to the story. And these are good stories with great pacing and I can see why so many adult readers get this series.
If you are thinking about getting the series for younger readers then there is nothing to stop them enjoying things -no over the top violence or unsuitable panels/pages just pure fun and adventure. With 20 albums in this series so far kids are not going to get quickly bored (and I do know that there are kids out there reading).
Power Women -The Sensation That Never Was
The first issue of Power Women was eventually drawn by David Gray and I believe those pages are now gone. A publisher (I think Aircell) was very interested but after receiving first issue art I heard no more which created problems for myself and annoyed the publisher -this is why I insist any series drawn for submission has to be completed first because once committed to a project and soliciting it to a publisher you HAVE to guarantee you are not wasting time.
An American artist then set to work -character sketches and, I was told some actual comic pages. and the story was a "shocker" back in 1990/1991 but today would seem a bit tame. Again, the artist used an undecipherable signature and never put name or details on the reverse of artwork. At the time a company was very interested and it had links to an animation studio though my main concern was to get the comic completed.
I never heard from the artist again and he never responded to emails or letters. Here, though, are the surviving sketches.
