THE COMICS THAT MEN LETTER LIVE AFTER THEM...

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I've now not worked in comics for longer than I worked in comics.  Wow!  A few people will regard that as just cause for dismissing my 15 year career as insignificant, and my place in the scheme of things as equally without note, but I think I had quite a presence back in the day in weekly and monthly magazines - especially for someone who was 'only a letterer' (as my small band of detractors are fond of describing me).

Fact is, no one in comics is ever 'only' anything.  Quite a few writers can also draw (and vice versa), and some letterers are involved in artistic areas outside of the world of comics.  But I digress.  The reason for this post is not to justify myself, but to express my amazement that li'l ol' me worked on some of the most famous British titles of the time.  EAGLE, TIGER, BUSTER, WOW!, WHIZZER & CHIPS, 2000 A.D., WHOOPEE, etc., to say nothing of characters from deceased comics that continued in other periodicals.

SAMMY SHRINK, for example, started in WHAM!, GUS GORILLA started in COR!!, and JOKER started in KNOCKOUT.  Because I was also a 're-size artist', I worked on the back catalogue of many old characters, adapting them from larger-sized pages to smaller ones for their reprint appearances in some of the IPC comics libraries.  This involved not just 'cutting & pasting', but actual drawing to facilitate a seamless fit of diversely shaped, rearranged panels.

I sometimes feel like pinching myself when I remember that I contributed to many comic characters of my youth, and that my name regularly appeared in the best-selling IPC weekly boys comic of the time.  I still get an enormous thrill at seeing my name in new reprint collections, and even in old comics in charity shops and jumble sales.  So my comics career may be no more (though I've been invited to return a few times), but the fruits of my labour lives on.

Hey, I'm happy with that!

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(Obviously I never worked on the specific issues featured in this post.  They are, it should go without saying, merely for 'decorative purposes'.)