Combat Colin's 30th Anniversary week

I hope you'll forgive me some self-indulgence (well, it is my blog after all) but today marks 30 years since my first Combat Colin strip appeared in print. It began in Marvel UK's Action Force No.5, published on March 28th 1987 (cover dated 4th April).

The first published strip.

At that time I'd been working full time in the comics industry for just three years, and was contributing strips to IPC's Oink! regularly as well as doing Robo-Capers for Marvel's Transformers. I was still relatively new in the business but keeping busy. 

The editor of Action Force, Richard Starkings, invited me to come up with an idea for a new humour strip for the comic. It needed to have some sort of militaristic angle to match the comic's theme, and my initial sketches (never submitted) had the character as a kid. I quickly dismissed that idea as it seemed too much like a Whizzer and Chips type strip. Eventually, I settled on the big gormless-looking character you're familiar with, except he was called Dimbo (a kind of spoof of the Rambo movie character). 

Marvel liked the idea, but the editors felt that the name Dimbo wasn't right and would date too quickly, as soon as the Rambo movies were out of the zeitgeist. They were quite correct, and I'm eternally grateful to Marvel UK editor Steve White who suggested the name Combat Colin as an alternative. (Steve himself became the inspiration for Colin's sidekick Semi-Automatic Steve, a name suggested by Richard Starkings.)

Richard commissioned me to produce Combat Colin as half-page strips and we were all set. 

The first few Combat Colin strips were self-contained gags, usually about Colin being an out-of-place mercenary type who lived with his parents. Gradually, I developed the character and his motivation and Colin and Steve became the local heroes fighting fantastic and bizarre threats to Wallytown. The strip became episodic, and I was allowed to develop the stories into short serials of two to six weeks. (This had always been an ambition of mine, inspired by the strips I grew up reading such as The Cloak and Eagle-Eye, Junior Spy.) Quite often though, they were just daft self-contained pages, which were equally fun to do. 

Action Force ran to just 50 issues, then merged into Transformers. Luckily, Combat Colin transferred over too, replacing my Robo-Capers strip. It would remain a fixture of the comic until the final issue in 1992.

I had a great time doing the Combat Colin strip, and the editors basically let me do what I wanted (within reason of course). The strips became increasingly bizarre and surreal at times (but still understandable enough for the target audience I hope) and I had a fantastic time on the strip. Colin even interacted with other Marvel characters on a few occasions...

The end of the Transformers comic meant the end of Combat Colin's time as a Marvel character, but I asked for the rights and was over the moon when Marvel's Paul Neary agreed, returning all rights to me. (In writing. I still have the letter.)

Since then, Combat Colin has returned sporadically, first in the three-issue Yampy Tales comic I self-published in 1996. (In case you didn't know, "yampy" is a Midlands term for crazy.)

...then in two specials I published in 1997 and 2000...

He's also appeared as a guest star in the new Brickman series I did for Elephantmen, published in the USA by Image Comics, which I later collected in the Brickman Returns comic I published in 2015...

Brand new Combat Colin stories have appeared in some issues of the digital comic Aces Weekly, and, time willing, I'll be doing more this year. Check out volumes 1, 8, 16, and 21 to read the new adventures.
http://www.acesweekly.co.uk/shop

What's next for the character? Well, starting this year I'm launching a Combat Colin comic, reprinting the old material right from the start in a series of issues. I'd hoped the first issue would be out now but I've been so busy on mainstream comics work it'll be out later, in May or June. I'll post more information soon of course.

Combat Colin still proves a popular request for sketches at conventions and it's a pleasure to now meet the readers who read it when they were kids in the 1980s. My thanks to everyone who has read the strip over the years, and special thanks to Richard Starkings for commissioning me to do it in the first place. Of all the strips I've worked on, Combat Colin remains my favourite gig.