PSYCHO GRAN is back!

The latest edition of Aces Weekly, the all-new digital anthology comic produced in the UK and available to the world, features the long-awaited return of Psycho Gran, a character who first appeared in Oink! comic back in 1986.

As with the original strips, this 2012 revival of Psycho Gran is written and drawn by the strip's creator David Leach. I asked David to pen a few words about the return of Britain's hardest granny and he kindly obliged in his inimitable manner.

Over to you, David....


She's glad to be back, she'd be banging around in my psyche for the last couple of years being a nuisance so it was either start drawing her again or go postal.

That said, it's nice to have her back in my noggins, she sees the world in a funny light and it always makes me laugh when I think up something for her to do.

I was very pleased to discover I hadn't forgotten how to draw her, but I did take the time to revamp her costume, get her out of all black and introduce some much needed colour to her ensemble, likewise i found it exciting to try and expand her universe, giving her Archie the dog was fun and he's opening up avenues to explore story wise, although you don't see him in the Aces Weekly strip.

I don't know if it's an age thing, but a lot more of the stories I'm coming up with for her explore her sexuality in a way I find rather surprising.

David Leach at the KAPOW! comics convention

Also, for a while and in particular the strip in Aces Weekly I was finding it hard to come up with satisfying endings and then it occurred to me I was making a mistake and trying to make her nice! When I realised that she was just 'psycho'  it made coming up with stories easier. For a while I considered giving her a grand-daughter as a sidekick of sorts, a Tuesday Addams so to speak, but I couldn't make it work. I've also considered giving her a strange butler and a large gothic house to live in but that didn't feel right either, I haven't given up on any of that yet.

For the Aces story, I had the idea almost straight away, but it originally ended with the man's scream blowing out the windows, the street's window, all the windows of a skyscrapper until you pull back to see an astronaut floating in space attached to the international space station. The windows on that shatter and finally his visor shatters, all the time the reader would keep pulling back. And that was the story. I also set it on a bus.

Along the way I decided to relocate it to a quiet carriage of a train, which made more sense. For a long time the ending was going to be as above until I realised the ending I finally came up with. I wanted the reader to think she was doing something nice for people.

The only other thing I changed was with his ears, I'd drawn a picture that made me laugh out loud, that of the boy with his gonads hanging out of his ears, after they've popped out his earplugs but I dropped this on advice from Bambos. I regret that now, I think it would be just as funny with him looking up silently screaming with his balls hanging from his ears.

Beyond that, I've just finished the first issue of a proposed 4 book mini series of Psycho Gran and am about to start work on issue 2! And I'm illustrating a book about murderers, which after Psycho Gran is very therapeutic.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

As it's an online comic it's never too late to subscribe to Aces Weekly so you won't miss out on any issues. Sign up now to catch up with the five published issues so far: http://www.acesweekly.co.uk