A taste of Thrill Power! (Prog 483)

Nearly forgot!

Why is Colonel Gadaffi keeping so quiet these days, anyway?

United Kingdom Comic Art Convention 1986 - the fruits of fanboy pesterings!

Cheers guys! More of these beauties from the '87 con. . .

Some Kind of Woeful

A change of schools in September 1985 and a year of 'A Level' art resulted in but one artistic achievement, if it could be called that: the sincerest congratulations of the Head Tutor for having concealed a hoard of nothing to show for nearly nine months' attendance.

It was a relief to be chucked-out for subterfuge; sheer laziness, lack of interest, ideas, enthusiasm, flexibility, respect and so forth but ultimately because there were so few flashes of talent. In fairness, the tutors tried everything to get me motivated in the coursework through calligraphy, line and wash colourwork and even a sci-fi element to the pottery chores but all I could really think of was endless empty panels and unhoned sequential storytelling skills.

(The other 3 students were much more positive and adaptable; among them the distinctly talented John Kent who became a commercial illustrator and whose portfolio indeed includes a fully painted cover of 'Judge Anderson' for The Best of 2000ad monthly # 114:

http://www.2000ad.org/functions/cover.php?Comic=reprints&choice=BO2K114 )

Whereas I still can't paint and looking back on getting the boot from those art classes; there was no rapid return to the pencils & inks again - for some reason 1986 just didn't agree with me at all!

Apart from an inspirational trip to the UKCAC in September which provided the chance to meet some legendary '2000ad droids' and obtain a few great sketches!

Maybe it was a New Year's resolution (or just fleeing from further exam revision) but during the early months of 1987 the pages started to get churned-out faster (if by no means better) than those that would have been required for 'A Level' coursework. I was just glad that a third of the panels seemed almost passable and at least one per page stood out for favourable reasons.

Guess which one's are gonna be posted!

Meanwhile, just to keep everything in proportion; here's what the kindly pros are capable of delivering with not a lot of effort. . .

'Quick on the Draw'

And what a fateful misnomer that turned out to be!

The title, in fact the whole strip was taken from a stylish series which originally appeared in IPC's 'Speed' comic during 1980.

So it was supposed to be a sequel but the script limped along from one lame cliche to the next and if I'm completely honest; it donated several new ones of its own to a genre that had already been exorcised by 'Blazing saddles'!

Yet it was a delight to be given an opportunity to produce a 5-page comic strip within the syllabus of my final year at 'O Level' art. I'll always be grateful to our tutor, Mr. Brown, for whatever administrative strings he was able to pull that enabled such a trashy artform to be presented to traditional examiners; even if the end results could easily have reinforced the prejudice of the period towards what is today known as the 'ninth art' and all the rest of it.

There were eventually 6, A2 pages comprising 96 panels of which these 3 are about all that should ever be let loose upon the world again. The work as a whole was a delusional attempt at disguising incompetent draughtsmanship with a less conspicuous form of ineptitude and enough layers of ink and coloured pencil to imply at least a passing resemblance to the very worst work in print.

That's probably what the editor of 'Victor' made of the first 5 pages when I submitted them for an appraisal in the summer of 1985. However his advice was superbly practical yet so devoid of encouragement that it got me to put some genuine effort into the last page.

(There was a hiatus of over a year while I was faffing about at 'A Level' art and the story was put out of its misery in December 1986.)

I began the strip in September 1984 and for all its endless shortcomings the project was a truly wonderful escape from the intense drudgery of 5th Form education. I'll always look back on it fondly but I'll never look at it again!

Reflections (and retro-dabblings)

I've just begun a 3-page comic strip for the first time in ages, after pondering the point of it all in the absence of traditional forms of motivation.

It seems that cash, kudos, career or sheer competitiveness are the main reasons for embarking on just about anything these days. The basic interest or amusement value and sense of accomplishment to be derived from producing artistic material to the best of an individual's capability, tends, in itself, to peak and ebb over the years.

For whatever reason, I just haven't been able to muster a grain of enthusiasm for drawing in recent years. And it's not for lack of leverage (or at least attempting to trick my brain into being motivated) but somehow the desire to turn a blank page into anything else just hasn't seemed worth an evening or ten. I'd sooner learn Spanish, ju-jitsu or the synths but haven't; so time to discard or develop something already underway.

Eventually, I was tidying and stumbled upon a page that I began in 2001 which put the buzz back in my fingertips! It opens with a panoramic shot of the cafe from 'Friends' which is where the strip is set with a Chandler-centred script that may even ape the ultra-humour of Matthew Perry's character with an element of success, in the modest era that it'll take to complete the actual artwork.

It may be a while before preview panels start to appear on my main blog 'Artistic dabblings' so in the meantime; here's a selection of the least embarrassing unpublished stuff (well it's all 'unpublished', I suppose but by that I mean the truly unpublishable but artistically salvageable, in one way or another) that I've otherwise hidden away since the 1980's.

So while the 'Breakfast Club' were imparting the type of harrowing proverb that provides the title of this somewhat shabby showcase; here's what it was all trudging towards in my school lunchbreaks circa 1985. . .