Page 1  2  3  4  5  6  Next    And I believe you'd previously worked on the popular newspaper strip Jeff Hawke in 1973? I had met the creator/writer Syd Jordan and we had become quite friendly; I loved the way he talked and his different take on life. Thanks to Syd I was asked to do a coloured SF strip for a Kenyan (I think it was) educational super comic - it was called 'Orbit' a sort of equivalent of 'Eagle' and I drew the frontispiece strip 'Space Safari' a sort of black Dan Dare. Syd sometimes wrote these stories for me to draw and that was quite a fun time for me. Jeff Hawke was Syd's real tour de force though; it was inventive and quirky. It stretched the mind and the characters were interesting sometimes amusing but always believable all within stories which were both exciting and thought provoking. On occasion I had given him story outlines for a couple of adventures and once I remember I stood in for him, drawing the strip for a week or two when he was away. A short while after a started drawing Garth the then-editor asked me to draw the life story of Elvis Presley as a daily strip to be run concurrently. This I did and opted to do up to 5 panels a day set within a squarish box frame thus enabling me to create some sort of varied layout within that square every day. That ran for only about 13 weeks and also at that time I did a Teach Yourself Tennis strip with Bjorn Borg which featured in the Daily Express and then a few years later I started working in the film industry. Working on both Garth and in films was quite hectic as sometimes I would be on locations abroad and had to find ways of sending artwork back to England for deadlines, plus drawing the strip before and at the end of a working day then of course drawing Garth all over the weekends when the rest of the unit would be resting. But I just revelled in it all! Odd though it may sound I just lived for Garth. He was the anchor in my working life. I grew into being with him and began to live and breathe what we would do together, the other worlds we inhabited. New stories would pop into my mind whilst I drew previous ones and he became almost an entity within me. He and I journeyed along happily for over 20 years until eventually Piers Morgan, a new editor on The Mirror - a new broom that wanted to be seen sweeping clean - axed the strip. In retrospect it was probably for the best - continuity strips were becoming dinosaurs. As I say Garth featured a large part in my working life and I miss him still. Presumably Frank Bellamy had been a big influence on you, so to step into his shoes must have been quite special? Of course Frank Bellamy was arguably the greatest English strip cartoonist of his generation. One only has to gasp at Fraser, his version of Dan Dare, Thunderbirds and the fabulous Heros the Spartan. There were many other influences ... Frank Hampson, Ron Embleton. John Burns, Gerry Haylock, J.Giraud (Moebius), Paul Gillon, Tacconi, Sergio Toppi and more and more ... Too many to name them all, I just know without them I could never have made it. I look up at them with admiration and awe. There was another perhaps ill-judged rival to Look-in, in the shape of Target in 1978, an attempt by Polystyle to produce another action/crime paper for older boys in the vein of TV Action. It has a few gems (a terrific Hazell by Harry North) and nicked other Look-in artists such as Arthur Ranson but the cheapo production values were absolutely atrocious. Did Hooper ask you to work on this at all? Your Cannon strips from TV Action ended up reprinted but I don't know of any new work you might have done. (Target lasted all of 19 issues.) No - Dennis Hooper never asked me to contribute to Target and I guess he had enough artists on call and he probably thought I was busy which indeed, fortunately, I was. One presumes Target was a fly on an elephant's hide as far as Look-in were concerned as they went from strength to strength. By March 1979 you were working on another colour strip, the fondly remembered swashbuckler 'Dick Turpin'. You really seemed to capture the quirky lightness of the character as played by established sitcom star Richard O'Sullivan. I liked the way you exaggerated Sir John Glutton, really selling the idea of him as a vainglorious, er, glutton! 'Dick Turpin' I found to be quite a challenge - a little alien to what I had been doing but an interesting departure nonetheless. I knuckled down and gave it my best shot and at the end was not unhappy with the result (not sure what the editor thought though!). Turpin was quite sporadically shown on UK TV and so didn't last too long in Look-in. In October 1979 you moved on immediately to a new strip. Luckily maybe, Dick Turpin was dropped in favour of American SF show 'Battlestar Galactica' and again I was teamed up with Angus (we hadn't really communicated much whilst doing Turpin). We had a great time on Galactica, both he and I just had a ball! However it never really showed much on British TV and so the strip was dropped.    Above: Dick Turpin encounters a ghostly highwayman   Above: dynamic space opera in Battlestar Galactica (1979-80) No, indeed, movie rights postponed Galactica's UK TV broadcasts for as much as a year which can't have helped its fortunes in Look-in, even thought it was a good strip in its own right. ITV's next big SF import had a primetime Saturday teatime network slot - 'Buck Rogers in the 25th Century'. And you kicked off this strip in October 1980, initially in black and white before moving into colour. It was this series that got me renewing my newsagents order for Look-in after a year or so of more fairweather buying (Star Wars Weekly and Doctor Who Weekly had been vying for my pocket money in 1978 and 1979!). Arthur Ranson later took Buck over and it became quite a moody piece but your version was probably truer to the on-screen version than his take - colourful, cute and full of action?    This was another super SF strip with fast action, a lightness of touch (supplied by Angus) and a rich and varied storyline. Again I just loved it, drawing with great pleasure and enjoyment. Like I said, Arthur Ranson took over after a relatively short run by you, drawing Buck from no. 19 1981 - as of this point you were gone from Look-in as a regular artist. By this time Colin Shelbourn, as editor, was having misgivings about my work, about the possible violence featured and in retrospect, I would guess, about the very publication itself. He started to criticise the likenesses of the main characters in the strip, much to my chagrin. But I accepted the concerns voiced and doubled my attempts to make the faces true to form. Despite my efforts his complaints became more frequent and worrying. We had quite a few conversations where I tried to understand exactly what it was that he objected to and what I was doing wrong. But having tried every which way to 'improve' what I was doing on the strip I was told that I was to be dropped and would no longer be required on the publication. After all this time and reconsidering the work I did then I cannot help but think that Colin felt I could not give the strip as much effort and consideration as he would have liked and expected. He did not like me drawing Garth at the same time, so I guess he thought my attentions were split and in any case I wouldn't starve if he got rid of me. I think his criticism was ill founded and motivated by attitudes not involved with the quality of the actual work. I felt that then and I feel that now ... SO THERE!!! After that Colin, and therefore Look-In, did not use me again. I know of only one further strip you drew for Look-in - a four-part Buck story in November 1981. I do not remember the four part Buck Rogers you refer to in Nov. 1981 - don't think it was me, for the above reasons. [I sent an example to Martin to attempt to clear this up - the page shown above - suggesting it was perhaps held over and later used as 'filler' - Al] Yep - definitely did it! Sorry, don't know when. As you suggest, it was probably shelved earlier in the year and dug out later. That's a big surprise, I must say. Colin maybe felt he wanted artists who were 100% committed to Look-in ... maybe as an Editor you worry that artists who are working elsewhere at the same time are going to play one end off against the other and leave you in the lurch? All the same, I'd always thought it had been your choice to go elsewhere. I was sorry not to see your work every week any more - I remember being delighted by the odd cameo like that great spread you did for TV Times when ITV premiered Star Wars in 1982 - I still have that issue kept from the time.     Page 1  2  3  4  5  6  Next