A great time at the Enniskillen Comic Fest

Batwoman (Joanne Alexander) and some bloke who looks like a darts player.

The Enniskillen Comic Fest was fantastic! My thanks to Paul Trimble and his dedicated team for their warm hospitality over the weekened. Myself and the other guests were well looked after from the moment we arrived in Northern Ireland to the time we left. 

With my traveling companions Laura Howell, Hunt Emerson, Steve Yeowel, Matt Brooker, and Phil Winslade we arrived at Belfast International airport on Thursday evening to be greeted by festival organizer Paul Trimble and his daughter Laura. Then we met up with other guests Jenika Ioffreda, Alan and Sue Grant, Clint Langley, and Pete Doherty, and were transported to Enniskillen in a hen night party bus. Which was a first for me I must say. Thankfully we all resisted any urge to do any pole dancing. 

The Comic Fest was very much an event for the community and on Friday Laura Howell, Davy Francis, and myself were taken to a local primary school to give a talk and presentation about the basics of creating a comic page. Afterwards we did some fast sketching various Beano characters for the children. The class was very attentive and well behaved; a credit to their school. On Friday night all the guests were taken out for a slap-up feed and a few drinks at the nearby Wetherspoons.  

Saturday was the day of the festival and there was a busy number of attendees. My thanks to all who stopped by my table for a sketch, comic, or just to chat. It was great to finally meet Andy Boal (one of the admins of the Comics UK forum) and meet many others I'd only previously 'met' online. Nice to meet new friends too, including cosplayers who are genuine comics fans and homegrown creators such as Katie O'Kane. It was brilliant to meet up again with my old Oink! pal Davy Francis. A perfect way to end Oink's 30th anniversary week. (Yes, it's been 30 years since Oink! was launched. See my tribute here:

http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/oink-30-piggin-years.html )

On Saturday night, with the successful festival over, we were again all taken out for a meal, and ended the evening at a nearby hotel to relax with a few drinks.

On mid-day on Sunday it was back aboard the party bus for the trip to the airport and an early night when I arrived home. All in all, a truly memorable and enjoyable weekend. Thanks again to the organizers, fans, and fellow guests for making it such a blast. 

Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/Enniskillen-Comic-Fest-1030761763641321/

My only regret is I didn't take more photos, but here are the few I did. You'll find other pics online by other guests, which I'll link to later. 

It's Davy Francis!

Beano / Regular Show comic artist Laura Howell!

Cosplayers!

Iron Man!

Movie blockbusters collide! Iron Man v Batman!

Cosplayer Joanne Alexander as Marshal Law!

...and a few more pics courtesy of Davy Francis...

Beano night out with Hunt Emerson and Laura Howell.

Busy times!

I know some of you are anxious to know when I'll be covering more old UK comics but I'm afraid I haven't a lot of spare time at present. As you know (unless you don't read the sidebar) writing and drawing comics is my full time job and in addition to that I'm also attending a lot of conventions this year. This doesn't leave me much spare time for researching and scanning old comics at present but this blog will get back on track soon, even if it's only one post of that nature every now and then. Meanwhile, I'll continue updating it with brief news items and hopefully throw in the occasional look at vintage comics when I have time. 

Today I sent off my Daft Dimension contribution to Doctor Who Magazine No.500. I'm not going to reveal anything about my strip until it's published on May 26th other than to say I had a ball with it and it's the daftest Daft Dimension yet! DWM 500 will consist of not one but two 116 page magazines, boxed with various goodies. And the content... you'll be amazed. Spoilers! 

This weekend I'm in Northern Ireland for the Enniskillen Comic Fest along with my Beano pals Laura Howell and Hunt Emerson, plus other top guests such as Glenn Fabry, Phil Winslade, Steve Yeowell and more! Looking forward to meeting readers who haven't been able to get over for cons in England. In a couple of weeks I'll be in Manchester for the Film and Comic Con, then it's Lancaster Comics Day, and events in Macclesfield, Shrewsbury, London, Bristol, Birmingham... 

I'll be back soon so be good! In the meantime, check out Down the Tubes for all the latest news about the British comics industry...
http://downthetubes.net/

Here comes STRAX!

Panini's junior Doctor Who title Doctor Who Adventures adds a new comics page this month with the arrival of humour strip The Adventures of Strax and the Time Shark featuring the Sontaran from recent seasons of the Doctor Who TV series. The full pager is written and drawn by Grant Perkins, who also contributes a two page puzzle spread Strax's Holiday Snaps.

Plus the magazine also features the regular nine-page 12th Doctor strip of course and the three page prose story, plus various features, pin-ups and puzzles. To find out more, see the report on Down the Tubes at this link:
http://downthetubes.net/?p=30906

More info about Grant Perkins' work at his website:
https://www.patreon.com/thegrantperkins?ty=h

Doctor Who Adventures No.14, in the shops now!

Lenny the Lettuce returns!

Mighty Marc Jackson has launched a Patreon page with all kinds of goodies. Here's the info from the man himself... 

"I’ve just launched a Patreon page, where I’m offering subscribers the chance to check out comics from my ‘vault’ such as Dawgtective (from last year’s Beano run) Cosmic Cliff, Betty Spaghetti, Duckless previews from Aces Weekly, KA-PUNCH! from Comic Heroes Magazine and all-new comics like Susie Prunes and RO-BERT, all for just $1 a month!

I have slightly higher subscription amounts of $2 per month, which get you all of the above plus 2 pages a week of my latest self-published comic BIONIC BATTLE RABBIT!

For $5 a month you get all that PLUS a brand new LENNY THE LETTUCE comic too! Lenny appeared in the BEANO two years ago and I’ve slightly reworked his look and fleshed out more of a world for him to live in too. The story will be heavily influenced by cartoons like Ren and Stimpy and SpongeBob, good all-ages, goofy comics for everyone!

Finally for $15 a month you get everything plus a comic posted out to you every month, starting with BIONIC BATTLE RABBIT, then the collected Lenny the Lettuce story and so on!

This is a great way to help fund my self-published comics output and receive comics every month!"

Here’s the link

https://www.patreon.com/marcmakecomics

OINK! 30 piggin' years!

I've been so busy recently I'd forgotten it was the 30th anniversary of Oink! comic last Tuesday! I'm still busy, so I'm afraid this tribute will be brief but I felt I had to celebrate it somehow as not only is Oink! fondly remembered by so many readers but it was such an important comic for my comics career. 

Oink! arrived in newsagents on Saturday 26th April 1986 in the form of a full size 32 page preview issue bagged with that week's issues of Whizzer and Chips, Buster, and Eagle and Tiger. The comic had been in the planning stages for two years and most of the content of the preview issue was from the dummy issue. 

Whizzer and Chips cover by Tom Paterson.

Here's a few pages from the Oink! Preview Issue. I haven't time to scan them so I've just taken photos for now. I'll replace them with scans at a later date. Click on images to see them at full size.

Page 2 by Ian Jackson.

Cowpat County by Davy Francis.

BURP! by Banx.

Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins by Tony Husband.

The Revenge Squad by Tom Paterson.

Street Hogs by Malcolm Douglas.

Back page of the OINK! preview issue, by Tony Husband.

Oink! was unique. A wilder comic by mostly new creators that broke away from the rigid formula of other IPC titles. The contents were never set in stone; although it retained a few regular characters it also featured loads of one-off strips and short run strips. The remit was to keep it fresh, and most importantly, funny! Readers who were kids back then have confirmed that it certainly succeeded on that score. (There's even an Oink! Blog dedicated to the comic. An essential read for every pig-pal: http://the-oink-blog.blogspot.co.uk/)

Oink! ran for 68 issues over two and a half years before merging into Buster. Maybe it would have lasted longer if WH Smith hadn't meddled by shifting it away from other comics because they felt it was unsuitable for children. (Bear in mind this was before there was an older-readers comics section in Smiths, so Oink! was shoved into different places every week, beside magazines devoted to nursing, caravans, or whatever.) 

Oink! was a joy to work for. We had so much freedom on the comic (within reason of course) and for those of us who were relatively new to the industry then it gave us the opportunity to develop and experiment. A couple of years ago, on my other blog, I explained my involvement with the comic so I'm cutting and pasting that here....

One day in 1984, while visiting Bob Paynter, the Group Editor of the IPC humour comics, up at Kings Reach Tower on London's South Bank, he told me of a new comic that was in development. This was to be something different, more anarchic and unpredictable than Whizzer and Chips, Whoopee, and the rest. It was the brainchild of cartoonists and writers based in Manchester and although they'd already presented Bob with a rough dummy issue, Bob wanted to bring in more artists for variety. 

The comic was then called Rrassp! as I recall, although it would soon evolve into Oink! as the project got under way. Bob Paynter told me he saw the venture as an ideal opportunity for people who were either stylistically different to IPC's usual look, or were keen to become comic artists and not yet ready for the company's other publications. IPC were going to invest in a dummy issue of the new comic, and would be putting a lot of money into a launch if it went ahead. Therefore Bob didn't want any time wasters, and was only inviting people who were genuinely interested in drawing for them. I was already producing cartoons for Marvel UK and had 'ghosted' a lot of children's books for Mike Higgs, so this was a great opportunity to do something for IPC, who were the main British comics publisher at the time.

Bob asked me if I had any ideas that might be suitable. I mentioned a "dim skinhead bully character" I'd been developing, which he seemed to like. (Bullies are always useful in slapstick strips.) "Perhaps his dad could be pushing him to be a bully to follow the family tradition, to inherit his boots" suggested Bob. I liked that twist to it, and, filled with enthusiasm, went home to develop it further.

The name 'Tom Thug - What a Mug' came to my mind because I knew IPC liked puns on existing concepts and it sounded a bit like Tom Thumb. Here's my initial rough sketches of the character from 30 years ago that no one has seen before. Brand new characters often take a while to get right and Tom looked more like Frankenstein's monster in this concept than a school bully!

Anyway, after a few more sketches, I eventually gave Tom a rounder look and something I felt comfortable submitting. The routine was that Bob only wanted to see the strip in a pencil stage at this point, and if it was good enough he'd ask for it to be completed. Here's the actual artwork I sent him... 

Bob liked the idea but sent me a rewritten script for a new version. Initially I was a little disappointed that some of the energy seemed to have been taken out of it, but in retrospect Bob's rewrite was a much tighter script and was a better build-up to the punchline. Here's the new version, scanned from my original art...

That's the version which appeared in the 'dummy' issue and was printed in the Oink! Preview issue that was bagged with several IPC titles. Yes, it took about 18 months or more for IPC to do their market research, tweak the comic, and finally give it the green light!

Tom Thug became one of Oink's regulars from the outset, with me on scripts and art every issue (with some rewritten by the editor, the late Mark Rogers). When Oink! merged into Buster in late 1988, Tom Thug had proved popular enough to transfer over, and then became one of Buster's most popular strips.

I will always remember Oink! with fondness, not only for the opportunities it gave me, but because it was such a great comic! I used to look forward to seeing what everyone else had done that week and we were all having such a good time on it. The editors Tony Husband, Patrick Gallagher, and the late Mark Rodgers were great to work for and creative people in their own right. Happy 30th anniversary Oink! You were piggin' brilliant!

OINK! No.1, published May 3rd 1986.