'ON The SCENE' - With BATMAN & ROBIN...

Characters copyright respective owners

Back in 1966, the WARREN PUBLISHING COMPANY issued a mag called On The SCENE Presents SUPER HEROES.  It featured articles on BATMAN, The PHANTOM, SUPERMAN, FLASH GORDON ("I'll come quietly officer" - little joke there), CAPTAIN AMERICA, and CAPTAIN MARVEL.  It also had ex-clusive photos of the new BATMAN movie with ADAM WEST and BURT WARD, to boot.

I thought there might be some people out there in Bloggerland who'd be interested in seeing its contents, so - starting now - is the first in an occasional series, beginning with the opening article of the magazine.  Future posts will feature each article in sequence - and who knows?  I may even throw in some of the ad pages - they're worth a look all by themselves.  Click on any image to enlarge, then click again for optimum size.  And don't ever say I'm not good to you.

Click here to read Part Two - The PHANTOM!

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.

THE END OF THE WORLD...

Images copyright REBELLION

Not counting paid jobs I'd done since still at school, my very first 'big-time' professional freelance lettering job was for IPC MAGAZINES in 2000 A.D. - a strip called 'EXTRA! EXTRA!', which appeared in Prog 407, cover-dated March 2nd, 1985.  (It wasn't my first published IPC job however - that was a CAPTAIN KID - The PINT-SIZED PIRATE page in WHIZZER & CHIPS, which I lettered one night in the 2000 A.D. office before going home to my bedsit in Fratton, Portsmouth.)

The story was written by PETE MILLIGAN and the art drawn by the late JOSE CASANOVAS, who sadly died in 2009.  To be honest, I'm surprised it turned out as well as it did.  I didn't have the right 'patch-paper' so the lettering came out a little scratchy-looking and was also a tad too large.  I remember STEVE MacMANUS being quite pleased with it though, especially the newspaper headlines.

And thus began my full-time, fifteen year career working for the 'big boys' - not only IPC but also MARVEL COMICS (the British and American divisions).  Anyway, I thought that some of you might enjoy seeing where it all began.  (Is it just me, or does anyone else think that Casanovas' art is slightly reminiscent of RON TURNER's?)

   

I'd like to think that I improved over the coming months once I 'found' my style, but, all in all, it wasn't too bad a beginning for someone starting out in the world of comics.  Technology can be a wonderful thing, but I can't help but feel that some of the art has gone from lettering now that anyone with a keyboard and access to computer fonts can do what once used to lie only within the province of calligraphic artists.