GIMME FIVE! - John Higgins

Time for another and next up we have artist John Higgins.
His first published work was back in the mid seventies and got his first gig with Tharg on 2000 AD Prog 43 in 1977. He started as a fully fledged Art Droid in 1981, along with working with Marvel UK.
Well known for his colouring work on Watchmen and The Killing Joke, been prolific on the American titles, now a writer as well as artist, just lately with Razorjack.
He's also much respected for his Judge Dredd tales through the years, giving a heroic, square-jawed Joe. And its been a real thrill to see him back with the fella the last few weeks.

1. WHAT COMICS DID YOU READ WHEN YOU WERE A NIPPER?
Any that the money from my milk round would buy, with probably a Crunchie choc bar thrown in, nip down the shops with my 2/6, see what I could get.
2. AND THE FAVOURITE ONE OF THOSE?
Probably Valient, but usually any that had an SF cover. Valient seemed to figure most in my mind.
3. FAVOURITE CHARACTER?
I probably brought too many different comics to be consistent with my fan affections, but the Steel Claw and the Spider was always a good read. When I found the right comic, you had to get to the newsagent early or your favorite comic would have gone...
4. FAVOURITE ARTIST?
Always Brian Lewis whenever I saw him, but he was too versatile and tended to be all over the place doing a million different strips. But always loved Dudley Watkins.
5. IF "THEY" BROUGHT IT BACK, WHAT STRIP WOULD YOU LIKE MOST TO WORK ON?
I suppose Dan Dare, even though he was a mainly 50's hero, he did come back a couple of times in the 60's and 70's, some of which I did work on in the 70's, but very frustrating as the stories I worked on were trying to update him. He should be kept in the "Biggles" retro futuristic style, story line and art I reckon.

Returning to Hellman - Action 4 Sept '76

With Rufus mentioning Hellman, it got me thinking i should have another read of the fella.
So, dug out a copy with him on the cover - where he seems to be modelled on Kirk Douglas - and took a look.
Oh dear, we're in the period where the art had gone downhill somewhat. No idea here who did it, he's okay with tanks and faces but when it comes down to action its VERY odd - this shot of Hellman running is downright peculiar.
Its a great tale though, with him having no choice but fight alongside his hated SS enemies until the end where, in true Action style, we have him lobbing grenades stuck down his boots, doing a roll then standing to attention in front of a Russian tank, hoping they choose to run him down rather than shooting him. Which they luckily do - and cop for the mine he was standing right in front of.
Other things of note this issue is the fantastic art by Belardinelli on Green's Grudge War, where his superb renditions of scenery are on show.
Dredger has a nasty bit of sadism as he's stabbed through the hand by a bad guy to prove he's dead. Which he isn't. Just real hard.
And, again, we have art slipping in Hookjaw. Only the outrageous use of red really stops it being quite painful compared to the stunning art Sola was producing only a few issues before.
"AIEEEE!" WATCH:
A veritable "Aieeee!"-fest this time:
A "Aaaaeeee!" from a guy sliding into Hookjaws, er, jaws.
A Russian "Batushka-Aieeee!" in Hellman, followed by a one E too many "Aieeeee!" from a shot SS then two more exactly the same from the inside of two Russian tanks and a final "Aieee!-Grenades!"

GIMME FIVE! - Rufus Dayglo

Thought i'd start an infrequent little feature, where i ask creators *ahem* of a certain age, five questions about what floated their boats comic-wise as they were growing up.
First up is artist Rufus Dayglo, who rose up through the ranks from the animation industry, through working on feature films, pop promos, storyboarding and commercials then on to 2000AD and now Tank Girl.
All along he's been a passionate fan of British comic art, his collection and knowledge of which is second to none. So, a logical first choice for such a quiz.
Over to you Rufus.


1. WHAT COMICS DID YOU READ WHEN YOU WERE A NIPPER?
2000AD, Starlord, Action, Battle Picture Weekly and Battle Picture Library - any of the IPC WAR digests!! I was obsessed with killer animals, Sci Fi, and WW2.... Nothing has changed much it would appear! IPC defined my childhood.
2. AND THE FAVOURITE ONE OF THOSE?
Argh... 2000AD... No, no, Action, no wait a minute, Battle... Ah bollox... It's like choosing your favourite food... Each of these books introduced me to key creators, and story ideas I still treasure, and draw upon for my own work.
3.FAVOURITE CHARACTER?
2000AD - Flesh, Action - Hookjaw, Battle - The Sarge, Digests - Sgt Ironside
4.FAVOURITE ARTIST?
Ramon Sola for making animals so much bloody fun (literally), Carlos Ezquerra for making me draw squiggly lines around the outside of everything, and Mick McMahon, for his ever evolving style (which taught me to always look, always try and take a chance)... and Victor De La Fuente for the most beautifully rendered digest war books EVER! (Oh to have an ounce of his skill as a draughtsman...)
5. IF "THEY" BROUGHT IT BACK, WHAT STRIP WOULD YOU LIKE MOST TO WORK ON?
Hookjaw... I love that bloody shark... Or Hellman of Hammer Force would be fun. I'd love to draw war comics.

Wham! 145 and the genius of Ken Reid

Not often i dip me toe into the comedy titles, but let's have a go eh?
A really good issue this, having just the classic Lee/Kirby FF reprint as the American contingent and nice tales form the likes of The Tiddlers, General Nitt, George's Germs etc.
They pale a bit when it comes to Eagle Eye Junior Spy, who i always remember going up against the brilliant Grimly Fiendish. Not here though, this time the bad guy is "Adolf Twitler", who our hero is trying to stop bomb London with his "Atomic Dandruff". Lovely, lovely stuff and here we have Eagle Eye booted off the wing of a plane, deciding to read his copy of Smash! before he dies, then finding how to make a parachute from paper just in time. Love it.
The others pale a lot more when you get a classic Frankie Stein, with jaw-droppingly awesome art by Ken Reid. I mean, just LOOK at that detail. Said it before and i'll say it again - someone PLEASE collect these together and get it out there for folk to enjoy again or discover for the first time.

New Poll

Sticking to the Blogs remit of '68 to '78 and not including any comedy titles, who floats your boat from this lot?

Who's your favourite British boys comic character of the 60's/70's?
	Janus Stark
	Adam Eterno
	The Steel Claw
	Black Max
	Robot Archie
	Cursitor Doom
	Judge Dredd
	Dan Dare
	Dredger
	Hellman
	Tim Kelly
	Mytek The Mighty
	Hookjaw
	Old One Eye
	Joe Darkie
	Charley Bourne
	Major Easy
	Dolmann
	D Day Dawson
	The Spider
	M.A.C.H. 1
	Steel Commando
	Johhny Alpha
	Hammerstien
	Ro-Jaws
	General Jumbo
	Johnny Red
pollcode.com free polls

Got me an original Janus Stark

Well, colour me chuffed 8)
After a Font Black Max page, my next Holy Grail piece of art would be a piece of Janus Stark by F Solano Lopez and now i finally have one. Not only that but a title page too.
Still stunned that i've got it, and it's a thrill to examine a piece of my childhood up close like this.
That brilliantly evocative title bar that i used to pour over when a nipper is on card and stuck on.
The page is A3 and it looks like Lopez used different types of marker pens for filling in the blacks and some of the thicker lines - the horses are much lighter than anything else.
There's been quite a bit of whiting out, especially on the young lad, who seems to have totally redrawn for some reason.
All the speech bubbles are pasted on and the brilliant sound effects ("clopptey thud" Hah!) are drawn straight onto the page.
The condition is very, very good (those speech bubbles that look like they're missing aren't - it's just the flash of the camera) and, like i say, am stunned and chuffed to bits to own it.
Made my year.

2000AD Prog 1

Thinking and comparing the new Flesh with the old, thought i'd go back to the very first Prog and have a read.
Still terrific stuff even now, with each tale hooking you in straight away. Their ability to have fantastic concepts that speed along with cracking dialogue, no preambles, and explanations kept to a minimum is something the modern version is lacking a tad.
Don't think i really liked Invasion that much, thinking Savage a poor relation to Dredger at that time, but did love the moody artwork, which had resonance in that the panels were filled with locations and folk we all knew (except Angela Rippon never looked this foxy).
Flesh i've already commented on and was responsible for my pocket money going on Airfix cowboys and their T-Rex kit to recreate scenes. Which was basically shoving decapitated figures into its gob.
Next up was Dan Dare. Now, knew of the original version but never read it as (A) think i was bit too young (B) think it was too expensive. So this was my first exposure to the fella. And i loved it. Not the character, who was just a blank really that reacted to situations. But it was those situations and, far far above them, Belardinelli's stunning artwork that made it for me.
I had already come across his art on Rat Pack etc over in Battle but here he was let loose and, boy, did he deliver. His Biogs are just jaw-droppingly awesome, topping his Artie Gruber and Slaine's warp spasm that came later.
M.A.C.H 1 was enjoyable really only because i wanted to be the Six Million Dollar Man so much at the time and Harlem Heroes at this point was just "nice art but - whatever" as i just saw it as yet another sports story bunged in that a lot of the titles seemed to do back then.
Other thing of note is Tharg's welcoming page, which is shoved in near the back and looks very cheap and nasty, what with its crappy typewritten message. Funny what he's become when back at the start the page looked as desposable and unneccesary as Flint's version over in Bullet.
"AIEEEE!" WATCH:
A cut-off "Aieee!" from a cut-off cowboy in the Crocs mouth in Flesh.

The New Flesh

Well, enjoyed that. Its a direct sequel to the very first Book and top marks to Pat Mills for having it read like its something from 1977.
As usual with Mr Mills, there's some neat ideas in there - the guy with dinosaur teeth implants and the T-Rex with his head stained with gore being the highlights in this first part.
Chuffed to see it is in B&W, so feels even more of a continuation, and James McKay does excellent dinosaurs (although i'd have loved to have seen him do the totally inaccurate 70's version of the T-Rex).
If i've a quible, and its a minor one, its that i wish he'd used a finer line for some of the inking.
But its early days yet.

Some new Flesh

SO looking forward to the Prog this Saturday as Flesh finally returns.
Was a massive fan when 2000AD first came out, with it and Dan Dare being my joint favourites for quite a while.
Enjoyed Flesh Book 2, mainly because of Belardinelli's stunning work, and the few other tales that followed, but none of them had the appeal of that first cowboys vs dinosaurs premise.
So really chuffed that Pat Mills is making this latest venture back in time as a direct sequel to the first book.
There's a lovely colour teaser shot from it in the latest Prog, which is lovely, but this B&W one posted up on the Tooth Forum far surpasses it, bringing back memories of the ultra-gore of the first episodes.
All fired up, thought i'd post here my Top Three Favourite Pages from way back then.

That's a nice surprise

So, go out to by the Daily Mirror - and its a never before reprinted Frank Bellamy tale!
Excellent stuff, although it does mean i've got to buy the paper every day now 8/
And will be collecting them together and glueing them into an A4 binder in case this is the only time they'll resurface

GREAT NEWS CHUMS!

Oh, happy day today - Garth returns in print in the Daily Mirror.
I've waxed lyrical before here about the fella and am chuffed to bits that he's returning in the actual paper rather than that Web only project a couple of years back. It looks like they'll be reprints, which raises the question: If they're stories that have never been collected before, will there be any sort of graphic novel collection? or should i start cutting them out and collecting them, like i did in the late 70's?

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/02/18/comic-hero-garth-returns-to-the-daily-mirror-115875-22930756/

A nice Ian Kennedy interview

A HUGELY, shamefully, overlooked artist, one who contributed so many fantastic combat images in the likes of Battle and Warlord, gets a nice interview via the link below.
As well as the above, i always admired his very clean, beautifully coloured work in Starlord of Timescape and, especially, Robusters. His Praying Mantis, along with all the other hardware in the strip, never were bettered, evoking strong parallels with Derek Meddings' modelwork on Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/Living/Arts-and-Literature/article/10785/at-home-with-legendary-comics-artist-ian-kennedy.html

This Is What We Want - Action #2

Ahhhhh, such a classic example of why this title is so fondly remembered, why it's a classic, and why it was SO much better than anything the American publishers were putting out at the time.
Its great enough to have rollicking romps from the likes of Dredger and Hellman - this beautiful Mike Dorey page is worth the price of admission alone - but we also get two of the most iconic panels ever from Hookjaw. This colour one i used to study for hours, revelling in its gory greatness.
"AIEEEE!" WATCH:
Oddly, despite all the ultra-violence on offer, just a pained "Aieee!" from a bad guy getting hot coals in his mush courtesy of Dredger.

Johnny Red - finished

Well, that was a treat of a read and no mistake.Been struck by how similiar it is to Charlies War, with the many instances of hideous cruelty depicted to the regular soldiers by the powers that be.
And also what Garth Ennis noted in the forward - Johnny's Hurricane don't 'arf get knocked about. Seems every other episode has it having a chunk blown off or being pranged yet again. Can't be much of it that's original by the end of the book.
Another thing to note is how Joe's realism in his art didn't just go into hardware, uniforms and battle scenes. Take a look at Johnny at the start, then 6 months later at the end of the book and there on his face is all that's endured, an adult and not a boy.
Stunning stuff.

Got me a Bat-Blog

Been having a sort out of my den and it occured to me that i've an awful lot of Batman stuff, along with 40-odd years of back issues.
So thought i might as well set up a Blog to have a ramble about it all:

http://outofthebatcave.blogspot.com/

Johnny Red - Not hanging around

Blimey, talk about hit the ground running.
First page of the first episode has only five panels. In the tiny amount of space we've found ourselves in the middle of a German attack on an Allied convoy, seen that the only Hurricane can't launch because its frozen to its launch rail, been introduced to Johnny Redburn, learn his nicknames "Red" and we get a flashback to how he's aboard rather than flying in the RAF.
In 5 panels.
Over the first 4 episodes, only 3 pages long, we get Johnny saving the convoy, fly off to find somehere to land, meet up with the Falcon's, fights with them and join them.
All in just 12 pages. Like i say, blimey.
Really miss this breakneck style of storytelling these days, where everything seems to either have a backstory you need to know to understand, or the tales told over multiple titles.
Know what i prefer.
Of note, of course, is Joe's STUNNING art with his trademark unique, gritty characters (Yakob's face especially so here) and brilliant action sequences already in place long before Charlies War.

Johnny Red: Falcon's First Flight

Very surprised to see this in FP today, what with the massive delay and all.
Its got £3.00 off but i would've snapped it up anyway as Titan have gone the quite excellent Charlies War route of hardback, actual size and very clear reproduction. The cover is a bit different to this, having credits for Tom Tully and Joe Colquhoun and Johhny's Hurricane has been zoomed in on a bit more, losing the clumsy looking part of a dialogue baloon.
Like Charlies, we have an intro - by Garth Ennis - and a factual piece to do with the time by Jeremy Briggs which, oddly, has frame blow-ups to illustrate the points rather than contemporary photos.
Only had a flick through since coming home, but everything else is going to have to be pushed to one side.

Getting Major Easy out of a scrape

Long term readers may remember me having a look at part one of an Easy tale in which, at the end, rather than threating to shoot the fella, the Nazi commander chose to tie him upside-down on the bonnet of his field car and drive him into a wall.
Typically barmy stuff - but how does he get out of it?
Taken a long time to get round to tracking down part two, but finally have it in me mitts.
And the resolutions just as offbeat - the Agent Easy's working with shoots the driver, making the car veer away from the wall and come to a stop. Easy asks the obvious: "You do realise the car might not have swerved?" To which the agent has the brilliant comeback: "Don't worry Major. If it hadn't, I'd have shot you before you hit the wall".
One panel that sums up why i love these tales so.
Interesting to see in this episode the rare instance of violence towards women as Easy knocks out the agent so she'll get on the plane. Its handled delicately, with his fist not anywhere near her face and actually looks redrawn - the hand, and especially the thumb, seem to have much thicker lines than the rest of the panel.
Also of note is Carlos's strangely attractive females. I can't quite put me finger on it why they appear odd. Thinking though that maybe the faces are a tad too long and the mouths are the same as the mens? Certainly distinctive though.