CREEPY CREATIONS WILL MAKE YOU A GOGGLE-EYED GOON...

Images copyright REBELLION

My CREEPY CREATIONS volume arrived today, but unfortunately it was slightly damaged, making it necessary for me to resort to some digital manipulation in order to present a pristine cover image.  Never mind, those nice folks at REBELLION are going to send me a replacement copy, but in the meantime here's my own contribution to the annals of comics history - The GOGGLE-EYED GOON Of GLOUCESTER.

The top of the page credits have been redone all through the book

I remember drawing this while lying on my grandparents' living-room carpet the day after buying SHIVER & SHAKE #1, and posting it off the very next morning.  (The drawing, not the carpet.)  Twenty weeks later it appeared on the back page and, scoff all you will, that really is my actual drawing (or an enlarged tracing), which KEN REID 'slicked up' no end with his meticulous inking style.  The reason I'm certain he never completely redrew it is because there were quite a few aspects that I was unhappy with in my version which are still all-too-obvious in the published page.  Ken would surely have fixed those imperfections had he started from scratch.

The wings are far more ornately rendered than I would have drawn them, and there's a bit more detailing in the forehead creases and one or two other places, but trust me on this - the finished result can be regarded as nothing less than a Robson/Reid collaboration.  Obviously I can only conclude that Ken regarded my drawing as being of a high enough standard to work over, simply giving it a more professionally inked finish, but he left what I regarded as my mistakes intact.

It would be interesting to know if he did the same thing with other submissions, or did he completely redraw and improve them?  Unfortunately there's no way for me to judge, but if one of your entries ever saw print, perhaps you remember if it was different in any way from your original drawing?  If so, let me and your fellow Criv-ites know.

One other thing about ol' Goony;  there was some kind of art competition in a UK comic (perhaps a MARVEL one) a couple or so years later, and someone had copied my drawing and submitted it, which I saw when thumbnails of the entries were published in the winners and runners-up results.  If he got a prize for it, it really belongs to me - so if he sees this, he should send it to me at once (whatever it was), the robbing b@st@rd!

Interestingly, out of all 72 entries (the first seven were 'in-house'), there was only one other contribution from Scotland after mine - number 39's 'The Flying Haggis From Hamilton' by Iain Crosbie.  (Other creations had Scottish locations, but were sent from elsewhere.)

Anyway, if you're a Ken Reid fan, or were one of the winners of the Creepy Creations comp back in the day (or both), then this book is definitely for you.  Rush out and buy it from your local comics shop, or better yet, order it from the TREASURY Of BRITISH COMICS site today!  £17.99.

Incidentally, the internal colour images come from printed copies of the comics, but they look great, no doubt having been 'tidied up' in some computer-magical way.  If only the QUEEN Of The SEAS and DARE-A-DARE DAVY pages in one of the recent Ken Reid ODHAMS volumes (by another publisher) had been presented in the same manner, then the book would've been as good as it could be, not the 'settle-for-second-best' edition that it actually was.  (Not that it was bad, but it could've and should've been better.)