Well, this one took long enough to finish, but finish it I have. Today I finally finished colouring and delivered the seven page strip Enigma Variations, which should appear in John Jackson & Brian Clarke's Spitfire Annual later this year. Following the success of last year's Space Elain it is, sadly once more, not a paying strip, done as a labour of love. But a reminder that I can still do full colour comic strips like I once did for a living back in the day, and it's another one that I'm quite proud of.
I've managed to get a wartime spy comedy romp into seven crammed pages, including my new character Enigma, Winston Churchill, and even The Balls Pond Banditti, a group of kids who first appeared in Larks comic in 1893. They are, I'm pretty sure, out of copyright now.
I began this strip back in September, at the time of the Meanwhile Festival in Coventry, when I also doodled the front cover while in conversation with John. I managed to get that drawn only a few weeks later, and got the script for Enigma scribbled out, but could I find the time to draw it?
I would dearly love to make money from the comic strips I'm able to write and draw now, as I'm pretty sure they knock spots off the stuff I was doing 30 years ago in Gas and The Damage, but sadly I'm unable to get paying gigs in The Beano at the moment, I've never beaten down the walls of the Phoenix comic, and I doubt I'm fresh and sexy enough for any of the publishers out there who are making comics that actually sell. My graphic novels do okay at conventions, when I sell them myself, so maybe that'll have to do for the time being.
Publishers out there, I'm still here, and this is the stuff I do. Just saying.
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