STEVE THE MIGHTY STEPS DOWN...

I see that STEVE MacMANUS, one of the better editors at IPC's YOUTH GROUP until the infamous ROBERT MAXWELL bought it over, stepped down last year from his position as Managing Editor at EGMONT, after a career spanning thirty-seven or so years in publishing.  (Yes, it's old news, but I've only just heard.  I wonder if he got my last Christmas card?)

Steve was the fellow who gave me my big break at a comic mart in the MOIR HALL at the MITCHELL THEATRE in Glasgow on October 20th, 1984.  (So blame him.)  I well remember my subsequent trips down to London to the IPC offices at KING'S REACH TOWER in Stamford Street, and sitting chatting to Steve one sunny lunchtime in the garden of a cheery wee pub just up the road from IRWIN HOUSE, where the Youth Group had been relocated to in preparation for the sale to Maxwell.  If I remember correctly, art assistant KEVIN BRIGHTON was also there.

I may have told this tale before, but Steve, Kevin, and myself were standing looking out of a window on the 26th floor of KRT one afternoon (previous to the one above) in 1986, when I asked him what 2000 A.D. might be called in the year 2000.  He did a good job of hiding his boredom at hearing a question he'd no doubt been asked hundreds of times before and said something like: "Well, that's fourteen years away, Gordon - we don't have to worry about it 'til then."  And, truth to tell, it seemed an eternity away at the time.

It's a scary thought to realise that 2000 is now twelve years ago, and that moment on the 26th floor of King's Reach Tower is a whopping twenty-six years in the past.  (Almost half my life away.)  I just can't get my head 'round it - it seems like only a week or two back.

Strangely enough, CRISIS, a 2000 A.D. spin-off, was printed in my home town in '88, and I remember Steve coming up to watch the first issues roll off the presses, and graciously allowing me to accompany him to share in the occasion.  This may have been the final time I saw Steve in person, as I stopped going down to London in December of '87, but I still spoke to him on the 'phone from time to time for a few years after that.  (Come to think of it, I saw him at a Glasgow comic mart in the early '90s.)

So, if it hadn't been for ol' Stevie Mac, I might never have had a career in comics for as long as I did.  (Fifteen years.)  Just think - he has to live with the guilt of inflicting me on the comics' world.

Here's to Steve, and let's hope he goes on to even greater things from here on in.

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Click here for my reminiscences of those early days.