The End of Brickman

Created in 1979 and having appeared irregularly over the last 31 years in various publications, the final Brickman strip appears today! Above is the page from the final episode, with most of it blacked out to avoid spoilers.

The two-page conclusion to Brickman's adventures appears as a back-up strip in the much-delayed issue 24 of Elephantmen, out now from Image Comics. Regular readers will know that I've been drawing an all-new Brickman Returns strip for most issues of Elephantmen for the past few years. The strip appears in full colour and occasionally co-starred Combat Colin, my character from the 1980s Marvel UK Transformers comics.

And now, the series is coming to and end, but although it's being dropped the Elephantmen comic itself will continue.

I'm grateful to Elephantmen creator/editor Richard Starkings for giving Brickman some exposure in the USA. He also put his money into publishing the Brickman Begins book in 2005 (a compilation of all Brickman strips up to that date). Unfortunately U.S. comics fandom is notoriously indifferent to humour comics, especially anything too "cartoony", despite the style being popular with the general public in the UK, with comics such as Viz and The Beano outselling most U.S. comics by a wide margin.


Elephantmen No.24, featuring the all-new FINAL episode of Brickman (And an excellent Elephantmen strip too of course) is available today from comics specialist stores in the USA and UK (and other countries too no doubt).
http://www.hipflask.com/issues/elephantmen24/


What will be the final fate of Brickman? Will the Gormless Guardian of Guffon City ever return? Will there even be a Guffon City for him to return to after this finalé? And didn't Brickman die several issues ago anyway? Buy the comic and find out!

I've revived Brickman several times over the past three decades but perhaps now it's time to finally conclude the strip. After 30 years, I have no plans to produce any more new Brickman stories but my intention is to collect all 20 pages of the Brickman strips from Elephantmen into a comic I hope to self-publish sometime this year. Stay tuned for more info on the one-shot compilation comic Brickman Returns in the months to come.


Meanwhile, if you're interested in the earlier adventures of Brickman, copies of the 152 page digest softback Brickman Begins can be bought from my website here: http://www.lewstringer.com/page8.htm