Well, always foolish to make such a bold statement and turn it also into a question!
Yes, Black Tower DOES have Western heroes in reprint and original stories.
Also, the big clue is -if you look at the online store or Black Tower Comic Shop News- is the title and cover with a cowboy on -Hurricane Hurry for one.
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Not to mention Ben Dilworth's excellent Masked Marshal.
Next!
Thank you Davy77. Yes, I do recall your friend who came up to me at the Bath Comic Mart in the late 1980s and after looking through my work saying I must be an Alex Toth fan.
I was and am but to compare my work with Toth's -no no no no. It might have been comparing how I use solid black and white like Toth. Forgot to put him on the list for my last post!
Ahh. The 1980s when I still had hair, a full bushy beard and a bladder that could hold 30 gallons for 10 hours!😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
It's that type of post where if anyone comments it is usually to say what a bad choice(s) I have made. Well, you want to know about bad choices in life -I got into comics!! 😈
I was going to go through all my British comics (that is a lie because if I did that I would take a couple months to which you would need to add all the "oh, I haven't read that in a while!") and sort out which would have been my dream artists to work with. Back in the day Massimo Belardinelli was apparently interested (according to then Managing Editor at Fleetway, Gil Page) in Biog (if you knows you know) which was a science fiction-horror-action strip. As usual I handed in a script and a fully rough drawn out strip but then Egmont bought Fleetway so bye-bye.
Mike Western pencilled a Leopard From Lime Street illo which I inked but the artist apparently disappeared so Gil Page was talking to a Spanish artist to draw. Why it never appeared? Egmont.
John ("Coop") Cooper was interested in one strip but then he had an eye operation and.... if there was one British artist I would have given my left testicle to work with it was Coop.
There were a number of Spanish and Italian artists working for Bastei Verlag (Germany) I loved the work of but that never came to be as one I and an editor decided on to work on D-Gruppe (I say "I" but come on -the editor decides!) but...ahem....Egmont. Hans Rudi Wascher I would have been happy to lose another testicle over to work with (why this obsession with losing testicles???).
Well, I decided that I would just take the hits by selecting American artists and it is not a complete list just the ones that I grew up with and really inspired me.
First up -Paul Reinman. Yep, I know there are people hate him but I have no idea why it just seems that he never got the hype that other artists did even though he was in at the start of the "Marvel Age of Comics". I first noticed his work after buying Radio *Archie) comics from the eccentric lady at Bristol Book Centre on Gloucester Road in the 1970s. Reinman seemed to be involved as the main force in all the Archie action hero titles including my all time favourite The Mighty Crusaders.
I just like his style and it seemed to have a lot of fun exuding from it and if you can draw a comic that makes some still smile after 5 decades you are okay by me.
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Next up is another much maligned artist with a very long and illustrious career (including the original run of the Justice League of America) Mike Sekowsky.
Initially, as a youngster, I thought to art style looked different to other artists in comics -I was limited by being very young and without realising that there were many comic artists out there! I think I saw him first on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and then Justice League and he did what I think was some beautiful art on the de-powered Wonder Woman -detective and spy stuff he seemed to be made for! In the 1970s he drew The Brute for Atlas-Seaboard.
Give Sekowsky the right inker and you had pure delight -as proven by samples of his black and white art pages.
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You mention Sal then you have to get down on one knee and bow before the great "Big" John Buscema -and if the legend that is Tom Palmer is inking his work -don't faint!
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Yes, I know he was not keen on super hero comics well that is fine and dandy but he gifted us so much incredible art and introduced so many characters that filled young (and old) readers minds with fantastic memories.
All artwork and photographs are (c)2025 respective copyright holders
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One well known artist I worked with and thought that I could trust actually stole a comic project and sold it to a publisher -and the publisher KNEW it was my creation. Once the internet came in I found out and got paid but such a small amount that the arguing was not worth it.
The same publisher -against the signed contract we had- went ahead and sold foreign rights to two series that were eventually published in Spanish and French -which is how I found out. The publisher claimed (because nothing was on paper) that he had literally given the work away. Again, the money I got would not have paid a week's rent.
I found out that a signed contract means nothing in comics. I did a lot of work for independent comics in the US including international promotion.One company I promoted heavily in Europe and one day a friend in Germany said that it was a shame I could not attend a convention with the company. I had no idea what he was talking about until he explained the company had been following up on all my efforts and attended a couple conventions at which even the organisers asked where I was. The company's response when I asked what was going on? "Our company. None of your business" so I explained that in that case if they paid me for all the work I had done as promised I'd step back. The company's response was that I had no written contract so it was all "voluntary".
I put a couple projects together for Bastei Verlag in Germany but then silence. A little after that the same happened with Fleetway. The late Gil Page, Managing Editor of Fleetway told me what had happened in both cases: Egmont had purchased both companies and immediately ordered all projects in the works to be cancelled. Editors were told that they were not allowed to contact creators to let them know what was going on.
I was in touch with two Indian comic publishers and they wanted an Indian super hero comic and a one off at that of 48 pages to test the market. In both cases I kept each up to date but then one told me (after I completed the project) "Oh we've lost interest" -end of story. The other project completed the company wanted me to do a colour version so that their colourist knew what was what. 52 pages went off (b&w and the colour copy) and after a month I contacted the publisher and.... "We don't want the project. That editor has left" and that was the big "get lost".
Not a single kill fee for any of the projects.
I could go on and on but if you look at European (such as Lambiek), some American and Far East comic data bases you will find my biography. The UK -nothing. At one time I was listed on Wikipedia because of my Small Press publishing and promoting the medium as well as for my comics work. Then the entry vanished. The person who wrote both uploaded them again -removed. Apparently certain persons in British comics were behind that and although the person tried updating things again in 2024 -it was all deleted after two days.
A lot of people and companies outside the UK know me and use my knowledge (for free but I've stopped that now) but hiring me as a writer? Nah.
So now you know and let me tell you, despite millions of views over several blogs very few sales come from views. So I sit here and wonder whatever happened to my pension plans!
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Oh yes. Johnny Apollo is The Z Man. Who the what?! Well, as a callow youth, before I became the UKs greatest comics creator (there are people who will seriously quote me on that) I was watching a TV police show called Z Cars. I joked to someone that the cops must therefore be "Z Men". A while later my youthful genius mind thought "Z Man" would be a great character name.
I had an average super hero costume and then thought "If he is the Z Man he should have a Z on his chest" and so Johnny Apollo was created. He was a member of a socialite vigilante group which used technology and tricks of the period (1930s) to fight crime. A whole series was plotted out but then the artist decided (wait for it) that he was much better than I deserved and he was going to concentrate on getting into Marvel comics. Where is he now? Who knows -I can't even remember his name!
Anyway, officially, in print, the Z Man appeared in a late 1980s/early 1990s copy of Black Tower Adventure in part 7 of Once Upon A Time in which he, quite by accident, rescued the trapped sorcerer Sigismund Benfrigisund who had been trapped since Adventure 1 (1984) which meant fighting the three supernatural entities involved in that trapping -as detailed in the first published Kotar and Sabuta story The Deadly Dilemna of Sigismund Benfrigisund.
Unfortunately, I sold all the copies of the comic and the finished art ended up being caught in a fire. Luckily, I have the rough pages -I stopped doing rough pages a long time ago- so as usual no apologies for the quality. Outline figure on page three spanning four panels is Benfrigisund.
During part II of The Green Skies Johnny is talking to a Selenite Council member and explain how he was on an Eight Just Men mission in Germany when he boarded a secret German experimental rocket. Circumstances meant that the rocket took off but it had no controls and shot into space. Cutting a long story short the rocket smashed into Pluto and Johnny was found, mangled in the wreckage and a Plutonian life form found him and they did their best to "reconstruct" him. They did too good a job and Johnny found that he had super human abilities.
There are a lot -a LOT- of comic artists who will never show their early work. The only thing they want to show is recent, slick art. I know as I've interviewed more than a few. Me? Well, if you are going to show people there is some hope...
I have no pretensions. I was crap. I was crap because I made the mistake of trying to use Gillott nibs to draw. My hand problem meant that I put a ton of weight on pencils and on nibs...yow. But we all start somewhere and although this does not look great it is how I started and what is more unbelievable I sold a lot of copies (oh, those days).
Black Tower Presents 1, 1983 saw the first appearance of Elizabeth Flare, aka Mayfly. It was a cold night. A blizzard was blowing and a woman, almost dead, was found outside an old hospice by Sister Bernadette (who popped up as the hard core butt kicking nun in The Green Skies) . The sisters tried to save the woman's wife when she was found to be pregnant but failed -however, the baby survived. When the sisters buried the woman in the grounds they got to the doorway and looked back -a flare of light appeared above the grave. The sisters called the baby Elizabeth and added "Flare" as they viewed the grave flare as being some form of guidance.
Above: unfinished/unused rough for a Crime Busters UK story circa 1994.
Whereas a lot of the special kids stayed with Wulf due to their outward appearance Elizabeth left when she reached 20 years of age and found a new life in Cardiff, Wales where she became a room mate of Jill Claren.
Phil Horton drew a page of the second part of the story where Mayfly met The Cougar (see below).
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Mayfly has popped up regularly since the 1980s and there is more to come!
