Back to School

Looking at "Fast Forward" magazine the other week reminded me that I spent five years at Grange Hill school, drawing, colouring, lettering and eventually even writing a two-page weekly strip. The stories were not crackerjack affairs of espionage and drama (although I did try that a couple of times!) they were generally rather mundane (dull is the word I'm struggling, unavoidably, to avoid) tales of missing books, new pupils, grumpy teachers and stray dogs, but I would always try to enliven proceedings somehow. In this example from 17 years ago,  I particularly like the big picture showing proceedings from inside the washing machine, looking through the distortion of the big glass door.
Not that I know what the world looks like from inside a washing machine, but it's comics.


NOW IT CAN BE TOLD DEPARTMENT 1: 
Despite doing it for over 5 years, and earning good money from it which can't be ignored, I eventually began to hate drawing this strip. Sometimes I had to sit in front of a VCR watching Grange Hill episodes (they even sometimes sent me an uncut full days shooting- retake after retake- except George A Cooper who was an absolute pro and brilliant!) to get the likenesses. If I ever hear that chirpy Grange Hill theme tune, my stomach flips and I break out in a sweat. To be honest, it wasn't really my kind of thing, but in those days, I used to draw anything and everything, I hadn't realized I should be concerntrating on funnies. For a long time I thought I'd be drawing it forever, but in summer 1994 Phil Redmond and the BBC had a disagreement about the show and this strip was cancelled in the midst of the discussions. A year later, the magazine was cancelled. A few years later, Grange Hill was cancelled. So, there you go.

From the Archive

1993 and I'd been drawing 'Baywatch' for 37 weeks (according to the numbers at the bottom of the page!). I would continue to do so for another 26 weeks or so. This was written by Nick Pemberton, who had written for stage and TV (certainly 'Brookside'), and would later write 'Hadrian's Heroes' for me, and drawn (and coloured) by me. At that time I used dip pen, W&N black ink and Pantone pens to colour (the original health-draining ones!) I did my own lettering as well, can't recall anything about how I did it, except it was done on overlay. The title logo took HOURS to get right.

My Favourite Editors Part 1- Alan Fennell

I've always had the good fortune to have a dream job- I mean, drawing comics all day- come on, what could be better?! But a real high spot came in 1991 when I read that Fleetway were starting a new Thunderbirds comic and that none other than Alan Fennell was to be editor! I knew he'd not only been editor and writer at TV Comic and then TV21, but had written a large percentage of the Stingray, Thunderbirds and Fireball XL5 TV shows too, and had gone on to start Look-In! Wasting no time I bluffed my way into Fleetway's then-HQ at Mornington Crescent and asked to speak to him. Alan was a great character (sadly he died early, and on his birthday in 2001) and knew what he wanted. After all, he'd discovered Mike Noble! Luckily, I did a few things for him over the next couple of years and we met up quite often. Two phone calls from him are preserved on my old cassette answerphone- the first: "Nigel- just opened your first page- what the hell are you playing at? This is like ...Popeye. I mean, I love you like a brother, but this is very poor" and the second: "Nigel- just opened your two cover images- the artwork is.......[long pause]......outstanding. Very good. Nice work". Anyone who knew Alan will hear his cheerful London manner in those words! I trawled the internet but couldn't find a photo of him- so I've posted these two, one from 1970, the other from the time I knew him, 1992.

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).