THE SID, SLIPPY, AND SHINER LETTERS...

Images copyright REBELLION

Believe it or not, one of the jobs I'm most proud of isn't one that turned out as well as I would've liked.  So let's get the 'excuses' out of the way first, shall we?

It was at the end of the day, I was tired, having been working since about 6.30 in the morning after a nearly nine hour trip down to London.  At this time, IPC's YOUTH GROUP had been relocated (in preparation for its sale to ROBERT MAXWELL) to IRWIN HOUSE, just down the road from KING'S REACH TOWER in Stamford Street.  (Staff still had access to the Tower though, to use the canteen and restaurant.  I spent time there at my desk on the 26th floor when I arrived in the mornings, until Irwin House opened its doors a couple of hours or so later.)

Anyway, it must have been well after 5 p.m. and most people had already left for home when BOB PAYNTER, the group editor of the humour department, came into the room where DOUG CHURCH worked.  Doug was the art editor, and I sometimes worked at the desk alongside his, though he'd finished for the day.  Bob had a couple of pages of artwork he needed lettering and I was only too happy to oblige.  They were the covers for WHIZZER & CHIPS - SID'S SNAKE and SHINER, two old pals from my childhood.

Trouble was, I really was dog-tired, and have to confess that the Sid's Snake page is not as good as I'd have liked.  The Shiner page is better, although someone later repositioned the pal's speech balloon in the second picture (as revealed by the slight wobble in the shape of its outline) to accommodate the jaggy-edged blurb just above it.  (I never did wobbly balloon lines.)  The lettering on the screen was added later - Bob had said it would be typeset (which it wasn't) so I hadn't done it.

However, to actually work on the 'cover star' characters of a comic I had bought and read when it first came out 17 years before (1969) was a real thrill for me (as was lettering SAMMY SHRINK in an earlier issue).  I was in my late-twenties when I lettered these two pages, so that first issue seemed almost a lifetime away, which it practically was.  (I had just turned 27 a few weeks earlier, so it was more than half my lifetime away - in fact, very nearly two-thirds.)

So, not my best work by any means, but still two pages I'm inordinately proud to be associated with.  That's why I thought I'd share them with you here.  Hope you like 'em, fellow Criv-ites.