Woo-hoo

In honour of Doctor Who returning last night, just finished colouring my recent pic of Jenna Louise Coleman and Whoified it a bit. Really looking forward to the return of David Tennant (less so Billie Piper) though...

Fook You, Marvel and Other Random Ramblings

Guhr, after a week and a half of gallivanting, late nights, early mornings and a sweltering office, I finally gave up and nearly started crashing out at work today and left before midday. It's been a few hours and I've regained enough energy to jump online...

Last week, the first issue of the new Nova series arrived: i don't buy many monthlies at all but I tried #1 as I was intrigued by the new Nova (though Rich Rider will always be the only true Nova to me). Aside from another indulgence of Jeph Loeb's grieving process for his deceased son, I opened the comic to have the first three pages TOTALLY wasted. Page 1, a picture of a planet, pages two and three GIANT friggin' credits and still only 3 or 4 words! To make things worse, Guardians of the Galaxy #0.1 is almost shot for shot exactly the same! C'mon! we're PAYING for this, stop wasting customers' money, Marvel!

Anyway, last weekend I travelled away for a nice cup of tea or two but found myself waiting for an hour or two in a pub...knowing I'd be wiling the time away, here's the results of what I did in my new "facebook"...

I'd already pencilled a few faces so took the time to ink the black haired lady below (won't say who it is and hope she's recognisable): this was done as a tester for some Letraset markers I picked up recently so I coloured this when I get home and did a few final tweaks in Photoshop.

Think I'm finally happy with this Kristen Bell (inked a while back but only coloured recently) but of the Being Human cast, I think only Tom came off well. The last two pieces are both unfinished: a Hammer girl (Madeleine West?) and Jenna Louise Coleman, pencilled in the pub using the latest issue of SFX as reference...

Coming soon: Memory Lane Part 3...

Memory Lane Part 2: Pre-Collecting Part 2

So, previously I detailed comics from my formative early childhood but they were exclusively Marvel UK weeklies (I never bought the war titles or humour fare like the Beano, Dandy or Whizzer and Chips). However, I was exposed to a few US comics too, details of which were burned deep into my brain...

The first US comic I recall was when I was 4 or 5 and off school sick. I was sleeping in my mum’s bed when my dad came in (I think on his lunch break) and brought me a copy of Justice League of America. I still can’t picture the cover but remember the heroes’ heads along the top of the cover and seem to recall a scene with the Elongated Man catching a falling Atom in an alleyway. I’d love to peruse JLA issues from 1974-76 so pinpoint that issue.

 

  

My dad also bought me further comics sporadically: I remember being wowed by a Six Million Dollar Man comic (the issue above) and I still have no idea where this Charlton comic came from, I don’t know if they were distributed here. I also recall an issue of Plop, which I didn’t like because of the freaky cover and the title meaning “Poo”, and an issue of Jungle Action featuring the Black Panther with some excellent Billy Graham art. (I picked up this issue a few years ago, cover also below). Unable to read at this point, I had to just look at the art but the power of these issues was pretty strong: the first time I saw the Klu Klux Klan, I remembered them from the Jungle Action issue.

 

And I recall poring over the advert below: I knew Tarzan and Super Friends from TV but the many Shazam covers and the Flash reproduction somehow made those characters epic in my mind and they still feel like the most primal and perfect of superheroes to me.  The Ghosts cover chilled me though...

  

Those were the only issues my dad got me but somewhere along the way, I remember my granddad (Grampy) giving me a Batman treasury comic, the one below I think. This had many Golden Age reprints and (IIRC) featured the Scarecrow, Joker and Two-Face. The art looked like the Batman TV show title sequence but I remember being smitten by (what I know now to be) a classic Batman and Robin image by Infantino and Giella.

 

 

Those were really the only American comics I recall until 1979...

Something For The Weekend

All of a sudden, my schedule's filled up again so part 2 of Memory lane may take a while. In the mean time, here's two recent pics to pass the time...

Memory Lane Part 1: Pre-collecting Part 1

Recently, my employers relocated and let’s just say that travel’s a bitch. However, the route I now take goes past a newsagent near my nan’s house and that got me reminiscing about my earliest comic memories (as well as creating a new character, spygirl Memory Lane)...

This then is the first of maybe 5 or 6 posts charting my indoctrination into the world of comics...

My granddad was a talented painter (a skill I’ve never developed) and though he died when I was only 5, I still have vivid memories of him drawing for me all the time. He also made sure that every so often, a Marvel UK weekly made its way into my hands.

Though I was a fan of the Spider-Man cartoon, I only have a vague impression of any Spidey comics. My earliest memories are of the Hulk in Mighty World of Marvel, well before I could read. Though I finished primary school at the top of my class, I was a late starter and I distinctly getting off the bus to visit my nan and my mum buying me a copy of MWOM. Thanks to the internet and my memory of that cover, I know this was #237 in March 1977 (I would turn 6 5 months later) and at that stage, I could read “Hu” but not the “lk” part of Hulk. I remember hoping to finally being able to read the comic on my own but failing.

 

Previously, I had to rely on the art and though my timelines are mixed up, I still have definite memories of those comics. Being freaked out by cyborg apes in the Planet of the Apes strip and slumbering Lovecraftian creatures under the sea in Dr Strange. (I think that may have been in the Avengers weekly: my earliest Avengers memeory is being plonked outside Tesco for ten minutes, and my mum coming out with whatever she went in with and the 1976 Avengers Annual. Cor, I loved that hardback! Cover inlays featuring lots of great 70s licensing art of characters like the Vision and the Falcon among others and strips from Buscema’s great later 606s Avengers issues, introducing the Squadron Supreme with some freaky apocalyptic imagery of the Earth melting).

I remember seeing the Constrictor for the first time in MWOM, using his coils to strangle a victim: when I began buying my own US comics years later, I instantly recognised him when I picked up my first issue of Power Man and Iron Fist, where he was teamed with Sabretooth.  I recall the end of perhaps the Avengers/Defenders war (definitely something with Loki, Dormammu and that plunger-looking mystic weapon) and a Thor strip, again by Buscema, with a blind Loki sitting in a tree, really freaky looking stuff to a kid.

I also remember an inside front cover ad for The Superheroes, a comic featuring the Silver Surfer and the original X-men.  As well as a full figure shot of the Angel by Kirby, there was also a larger headshot of Cyclops looking directly at the reader. Something about the shared X-uniform created the notion that most superheroes wear similar outfits (the Fantastic Four cartoon of the time may have helped perpetuate that idea too) but Cyclops looked the coolest, burning a fascination with goggled heroes into my mind and when I began a comic fan in earnest, I was anxious to try and find out who that visored hero was. 

(When I eventually rediscovered Cyclops in Rampage along with the new X-Men, I was thrilled with the new visor, team members and the fact that Cyke was the boss: he was my favourite character pretty quickly, replacing early fave Vision).

I remember being blown away by the colourful launch of Captain Britain (and getting annoyed with the flimsy free gift!) and following Rampage whenever I could: Nova and Nighthawk (in the Defenders strip) were also early faves (while I recall Xemnu the Titan from Rampage, it's the issue with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants I really remember, culminating with the apparent suffocation of Unus the Untouchable in  the arms of a grieving Blob).

Star Wars was released in 1977 and I got the Annual that year, a much beloved collection of the adaptation and photo features but when the Marvel weekly launched in early 78, Luke Skywalker quickly replaces the Six Million Dollar Man as my favourite screen hero...

And that brings us on to part 2 (when i get around to it), my earliest exposure to the American comics....

Recent Putterings

Attached are various recent bits I've doodled, in between 3 pages of 5 page strip YSKIL: some of the above are works in progress, the bride was saved from a recent wedding invitation I did (I eliminated the groom, added the bride's right arm, changed her left hand, eliminated a hat and dropped most feature lines from the face), I shortened the legs on Clara Oswin and today I came up with the name Memory Lane for a 60s spy girl so now I want to draw her at some point. Coming soon, posts that led me to Memory's creation...