c.1981/82 | age 13? There’s an odd mix of drawing ability this one. Panel 2—the closeup on Ben—shows an ability beyond my young years. So why is the bottom one so badly done? Puzzling indeed. Panel 2 actually reminds me somehow, of Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula comics.

Practicalities

Once again, as in so many (!) instances with the comic—the positioning of speech/thought balloons is shown to be critically important. Read the two middle panels and see if they make sense? It’s a case of being so close to what you’re creating that you lose sight of whether it’s actually intelligible to others. It wasn’t meant for public consumption but as a kid you like to make-believe it is.

Speaking of which, it was even a great thrill to take a finished comic, flatten it out, open up the stapler (courtesy of dad’s work) and bang the staples through it with the heel of my hand. Then I’d pull the comic and staples out of the bedroom floor and bend the staples in with my thumbnail. I chipped my thumbnails many times doing that.

I actually made a comic page for my Between * Wars webcomic this year, showing that very thing!

Even more exciting still – was when one of my dad’s Work Study magazines carried an ad for colour copying. WHAT? Colour? It probably cost about £1.00 a copy, but the idea was thrilling: to colour copy one’s own home-made comic, put staples in it and have it look like a real comic from the newsagent!

I suppose girls would play house, and I’d play ‘Independent Comics Publisher’.

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