TOKEN GESTURE... IT'S ALIVE!!!

Copies of my latest comic TOKEN GESTURE arrived at THE HOUSE OF HATCH from the printers yesterday and they look great! Certainly the most childish, immature and embarrassing comic I’ve ever done so obviously I’m pretty pleased about that. But don’t take my word for it! You can judge for yourself for just £6 incl p&p! Buy here Read more here

LOST IN SPACE 2: Commentary corollary 4 (of 5)

 

 

As well as drawing the Lemmy mask (see the commentary text in Lost In Space 2) in the splash page of The Recruitment Chronicle story in Time We Left 3, I also added another in joke which only a few friends of mine would’ve appreciated. The slightly obscured text in the picture on the wall above Steve’s head was taken from real life. It came from a picture of the Mekon’s impressively large head I’d drawn on a huge piece of cardboard with some 1984-inspired text “BIG MEKON IS WATCHING YOU”. 

 

BIG MEKON IS WATCHING YOU - artist reconstruction

 

I intended to post this oversized masterpiece to some friends of mine in Hull all of whom were well aware of, and suitably amused by, my then obsession with the evil genius back in the early 90s. My plan came asunder when I took the cardboard picture into Wellingborough High Street Post Office as the guy behind the counter absolutely refused to take my priceless work or art for reasons I don’t recall. What I do recall was he got pretty arsey about so it was clear there was no way Royal Mail were going to do the honours between Wellingborough and Hull.

I did manage to get Big Mekon to its intended audience as I hitch-hiked to Hull a few weeks later. All I remember about that particular adventure is the wind made hanging on to the cardboard image a bit of a challenge as stood roadside trying to cadge a lift. My friends in Hull were suitably amused when I turned up with my massive Mekon though, so we all lived happily ever after.

Next: "Charley says..."

1 March 2025 Addendum: I posted a bit about my giant Mekon picture on Facebook and it turns out one of the Hull recipients, Jason Drewitt, seems to know what happened to it "I’m pretty sure that I borrowed the original 'Big Mekon is watching you' and took it down to London and had it on stage when the little band Hunni I was in played at The Water Rats in Kings Cross as first support for Skunk Anansie"

 

LOST IN SPACE 2: Commentary corollary 3 (of 5)

 

COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT

 

Before I used The Mekon and The Freak Brothers in the second issue of Time We Left 2 in 1994 (Lost In Space 2 pages 6 to 10 and 14) I wrote to the copyright owners asking for permission to use the characters in my own little comic. I received formal responses from both Fleetway (the then copyright holder of The Mekon) and Knockabout Comics (the holder of the copyright for The Freak Brothers in the UK).

 

When it came to using all of the famous comic characters in for the interviews story in Time We Left 3, there was no way I was going to try and get permission as it involved about 50 characters in total. What I did do was cheekily add the proviso “No similarity between between any of the persons in this comic and anyone else is intended except for satirical purposes” to my own copyright statement as a workaround. I did credit the creatives behind each of the characters though.

 

 A few years later in 1999 I was at a party in London thrown by Bloomsbury (the publisher of my two stare-out books) and I ended up chatting with a member of the Bloomsbury staff. Our conversation turned to copyright and the ownership of artistic intellectual property and I mentioned I had written to a couple of publishers asking to use their characters for my second comic. The woman from Bloomsbury rolled her eyes and proceeded to tell me Bloomsbury receive loads of written requests of this nature and they were a right royal pain in the arse. She gave me an example of a recent request she had to deal with which came from a woman who was getting married and was seeking permission from Bloomsbury to reprint her favourite poem in her wedding service cards. The woman from Bloomsbury told me that all publishers hate these sort of requests as they all have to be dealt with and replied to formally, all of which takes time. She went on to say that publishers couldn’t care less about this sort of thing, they only care if their property is being blatantly plagiarised or if any serious money is being made from its use without permission. In the case of the wedding, I remember the woman from Bloomsbury saying “Just print the fucking thing!”.

NEXT: “Big Mekon is watching you”

 

TOKEN GESTURE

 Here's the cover to my new comic which is nearly finished.

 

 

LOST IN SPACE 2: Commentary corollary 2 (of 5)

 THE DUN COW

 

As well as changing the cover image for the second version of Time We Left 3 I also cut out seven pages from its first incarnation. These pages followed on from page two of The Recruitment Chronicle story and comprised Steve and Nigel the Octopus going round the pub asking random punters if they would like to star in a comic, namely Time We Left. All very meta and all very unfunny too unfortunately. I replaced this sequence with a few more comic character interview pages in the second version which were slightly more entertaining. Anyway, the pub in question was The Dun Cow, a real pub in Wellingborough which I used to frequent on occasion back in the early half of the 1990s. The centrefold of the first version of TWL 3 (above) was a drawing of Steve, Adam and Nigel The Octopus approaching the pub which I renamed for laughs. 

 

The real Dun Cow pub was an attractive building with plenty of character but it was demolished years ago. A rather uninspiring block of flats now stand in its place. That’s progress!

Next: “Copyright infringement”

 

LOST IN SPACE 2: Commentary corollary 1 (of 5)

MARCHEAN PRESS

 

 

The comic character interviews and fight scenes in the latter half of Lost In Space 2 originally saw print in my 1995 comic Time We Left 3. There were actually two versions TWL 3, the first of which had a black and white cover drawn by myself. The second version had a colour cover hand painted by my friend Adi Sellers (which was amended and reused for the cover to Lost In Space 1).  

 

 

The original artwork for the cover of the first version of TWL 3

TWL 1, 2 and the first version of issue 3 were originally printed at Marchean Press, a (now closed) printers in Wellingborough. When I took in the artwork for TWL 3 to Marchean Press I specifically asked for a white card cover for the 70 copies I was getting printed seeing as the wraparound cover was a space scene. When I returned to Marchean Press to collect the print run I was distinctly unamused when I discovered they had used this vile pink card for the cover instead of white card as requested. After I’d pointed this out, the printer guy started bullshiting me about how great the pink card cover looked which just pissed me off even more. I suspect the truth of the matter was they had a load of this shite pink card lying around and they just wanted to use it up. The printer guy made it clear it was a case of take-it-or-leave-it but after a bit of verbal argy bargy he said he’d knock off a tenner from the bill. I wasn’t in much of a position to argue really, I’d already paid the £20 deposit prior to the job plus he had all of my original artwork. I settled up and vowed never to step foot in Marchean Press again. Unfortunately, I was now saddled with 70 copies of my latest opus with garish and very crap-looking pink covers.

TWL 3 in pink

Some months later I landed a part-time job in the print room at at Wootton Hall, the Force Head Quarters of Northamptonshire Police in Northampton, meaning I was now able to print my comics myself (if you want a job doing properly…) The in-house copying prices were way lower than any of the local commercial printers too. The print room also had a great Canon colour copier meaning I could now afford to print decent colour covers on my comics. The first comic to get a colour cover was a new version of TWL 3 so into the bin went the horrible pink card cover first versions.

A couple of years later I bumped into the Marchean Press printer guy in Wellingborough town centre one Saturday morning. He stopped to tell me he had seen an article about me in the local paper The Evening Telegraph (see Reviews) about my stare-out comic being picked up for a comedy TV show. He was delighted to read that I had had some success with my cartoons and seemed genuinely pleased for me. Seeing as our final bit of business was a such a sour affair, this was actually pretty decent of him really.

Next: "The Dun Cow"