Nigel Parkinson, Cartoonist

Nigel Parkinson, Cartoonist
Me at a Comic Con

Friday 17 September 2010

Don't Call Us



Sometimes things don't quite work out. That's life.
Languishing in my vault of abundant rejects, "not-quites" and "didn't make its" is this page from a project I somehow became part of around 1996 but I have no recollection at all how and why I got involved; Hadrian's Heroes had already been originated but I commissioned Nick Pemberton to write this new story (it was re-coloured by "H.H." recently, as I'd lost my original hand-coloured version). It was for a new comic put together by the late Derek Lord, one of the original Eagle team from 1950, which he intended to call 'Eureka'. He called it "an Eagle for the 90s". Despite a fair amount of interest, and a long period of preparation, it was not to be.
Looking at it now, it reminds me of Asterix the Gaul (not surprising, as it's a similar premise- Hadrian was the first Roman Emperor to take an interest in England after Julius Caeser, and instigated the construction of his famous wall to keep out the Caledonians) but the real progenitor was Wham!s General Nitt and his Barmy Army by Leo Baxendale, whose crowded mad style I was trying to emulate (ie steal).

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