downthetubes: When did you join D C Thomson?
Bill Graham: August 5th, 1963. I remember it like it was yesterday.
I was put on the staff of The Hornet on the
day the first issue went to press. At 5 o'clock the editor, Alex "Tosh" McIntosh,
took everyone for a pint -- except me, because I was only 17 and too young
to drink legally! I've more than made up for it.
downthetubes: What was DC Thomson like in the early 1960s?
Bill: It was
brilliant! DC Thomson published more than a dozen children's titles every week
and the combined sales ran into millions. And because of that we were probably
indulged to a fair extent by the management. They weren't too strict about
things like time-keeping and there was lot of fun in and out of the office.
|
The Hornet - Issue 423, cover dated 16 October
1971 |
| |
One of the reasons I decided to apply for a job in DC Thomson
was because a school friend had joined the firm the previous year. I met
him while still making up my mind what to do when I left school. This friend
suggested I apply to DC Thomson. "It's a great place," he said. "We just
sit around thinking up comic stories and flying paper aeroplanes out of the
window." I thought "that's
the place for me!" The friend was David Donaldson who, many years later,
became the managing editor.
The Hornet office was particularly sociable.
Apart from "Tosh", who remained somewhat aloof, we all got along really
well together, even though our ages raged from 17 to 30. In fact, our office
was known as the Hornet Sports And Social Club. Highlights that I can recall
were The Glencoe Airbed Race in 1969 in which we entered a team.. Then
there was the time when the chief sub emptied the contents of his pipe
into the waste paper basket and set it on fire. I then flooded the office
trying to put out the blaze.
I really enjoyed coming into work every morning
and I think that was true for most of the editorial staff in those days.
There were some real characters about too, like the late Ian
Gray who worked
on The Beano [Gray is credited with inventing
Dennis the Menace's canine chum Gnasher, among other things - Ed] and his
pal Dave Torrie who was on The Dandy. It wasn't known as the fun factory
for nothing. We were like a lot of big kids in a lot of ways. It was better
than having a proper job!
| "I heard many years later that
Bill Blain was really the man behind The
Dandy, but the credit seemed to go to R.D. Low who was the
managing editor and Albert Barnes, who was its first editor." |
But,
at the same time, there were a lot of talented people working for DC Thomson.
One guy who never seemed to get the credit I thought he deserved was Bill
Blain, who was the deputy managing editor. He was the man behind most of
our top boys' characters such as Wilson The Wonder Athlete, Braddock and
Bernard Briggs. He was brilliant at coming up with ideas for stories and
developing them with writers such as Gilbert Dalton. In fact, I heard many
years later that Bill was really the man behind The
Dandy, but the credit
seemed to go to R.D. Low who was the managing editor and Albert Barnes, who
was its first editor.
downthetubes: What comics or story papers if any did
you enjoy as a child?
Bill: I started
off reading The Beano, The
Dandy, The
Topper and The Beezer.
As I got older I stopped reading them and moved on to Rover, Wizard, Adventure and Hotspur. These were all text story papers. I also got Eagle. Apart
from the last, all were published by DC Thomson. By the way, this wasn't
my way of ingratiating myself with the company. I thought they were all published
in London! It wasn't till just before I joined the company that I found out
that they originated right here in Dundee.
downthetubes: Which DC Thomson titles did you work on and when?
|
Wizard, cover dated 1 September 1973 |
Bill: I was on Hornet from 1963
to 1969. Then I moved to our Glasgow office to work as a football writer
on The
Sunday Post and Weekly News. In the
summer of 1971 I was transferred to Newcastle to cover the North East for
the same two newspapers. But, by early 1972 I had had enough of sports
writing and I asked to come back to Dundee and I joined The
Wizard as a
sub. This was the picture-story version of The Wizard.
When Warlord was
launched in 1974 I was the chief sub-editor and I took over as editor about
18 months later. Then I edited Crunch, Buddy, Spike and Champ, between
1977 and 1985.
In 1986 I was appointed editor of the new Football
Picture Story Monthlies and soon after that I became editor of a
group of monthlies, which included Starblazer and Star
Romance.
Early in the 1980's DC Thomson had started syndicating
stories from our girls' papers like Bunty and Judy to
a group of publishers in Europe. These were all about girls and their ponies.
There was a big market for those types of stories there. These were stories
which had appeared as weekly serials/series and they were just cobbled
together into compete stories of 30-36 pages.
When I took over in the late 1980's I decided
that we should make them look as good as possible. That meant simple things,
like taking off the titles and the intro panels which had previously been
left on and rewriting the captions and balloons so that the stories flowed
more smoothly. But we began to run out of old stories so I suggested that
we produce new pony stories simply for publication abroad. In 1990, this
led to Egmont coming to us and asking if we could originate ideas, scripts
and artwork for a character called Wendy which they had come up with. Wendy is still running in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Holland and France.
In the early 1990's I also edited The
Hurricanes which
was based on the cartoon of the same name and the two Commando annuals.
At one time it felt like I was editing about half our output!
|
| "The second Commando annual
came on sale about the time of the shootings at Hungerford and a buyer
from WH Smith went on her personal anti-violence crusade, so they wouldn't
carry it." |
The Hurricanes wasn't
a bad comic but it ran for only about 20 issues. It should have been launched
to coincide with the start of the TV
series but it came out the same week
the series ended. Poor distribution didn't help either. The second Commando annual
came on sale about the time of the shootings at Hungerford and
a buyer from WH Smith went on her personal anti-violence crusade so they
wouldn't carry it. Sales plummeted and we didn't do a third.
downthetubes: Hornet and Wizard are
not as well known as their siblings Victor and Hotspur.
How would you define the difference between Hornet and Wizard and
the other boy's titles of the time?
Bill: I think
that Hornet was launched to cash in on the popularity
of Victor and Hotspur but
I felt it never really had an identity of its own. The name Hotspur was
well established and it made the transition from text story paper to picture
strips quite well. Victor was easily identifiable
by the true life war stories on the front and back covers. The Hornet covers
kept changing and I think the title didn't help. It was really old fashioned.
It was pity, because it had some really good stories like the first picture-strip
versions of Wilson and It's
Goals That Count.
The relaunched Wizard was originally
meant to be all colour printed in gravure instead of our usual letter press.
But the management took cold feet at the cost and it went out in the usual
letter press form. The stories and artwork, with a few exceptions, were
poor. The boy's paper market was declining by the start of the 1970s
and Wizard looked tired before it had even hit the streets. Again,
an old title didn't help.
downthetubes: Other than Code-Name
Warlord, Union Jack Jackson was the only character to appear in each of the Warlord annuals. Was
he the most popular Warlord character with the readers?
Bill: I think
it was neck and neck between Union Jack and Code-Name
Warlord in the readers'
polls for the entire life of the paper. I preferred Union
Jack Jackson. I
thought Lord Peter Flint was a pain in the backside.
By the way, Union
Jack Jackson first
appeared in The Hotspur in 1962 without making much of an
impact.
downthetubes: How did you come up with the grittier characters
for Warlord such as Heinz Falken, Big Willi, Wolverine and Sergeant Rayker?
| "We didn't want to tell
stories about the Brits slaughtering the enemy in amazing feats of
derring-do. We wanted to tell stories about all the fighting men in
the major conflicts in a more realistic fashion." |
Bill: Up until Warlord, the war
stories in British comics were nearly all very jingoistic. We tried to get
away from that, though we had our battles with management, all of whom had
seen service in World War Two. We didn't want to tell stories about the Brits
slaughtering the enemy in amazing feats of derring-do. We wanted to tell
stories about all the fighting men in the major conflicts in a more realistic
fashion. I have to confess Code Name Warlord wasn't
all that realistic, which is why I wasn't so keen on it.
downthetubes: Free gifts are an integral part of the modern
comics, but back in the days of Warlord and
the others when they appeared they were a pleasant surprise. These were often
paper or generic items, plastic snap together planes and cars for instance,
but with Warlord there were some title-specific
items, like the Signal Sender or the plastic name tag. Other than at the
beginning of a comics run, why were free gifts considered and who came up
with the ideas for what was to be given away?
|
Warlord sticker given away free in Issue 121 |
|
Free gift given
away with Warlord Issue 178 |
Bill: The
tradition of free gifts goes back to the 1920's, when our text papers used
to give away cards featuring famous footballers and other sportsmen. We
knew them as "pushes" which papers would have every six months or so. The
idea was that lots of kids would buy the paper to get the gift and a fair
proportion would like the paper enough to keep buying it.
DC Thomson has
a department which sources gifts. Usually, you just took what you were
offered but on Warlord we insisted on good
gifts which fitted in with the paper's image. In the first years anyway,
we had some cracking free gifts like the collection of famous medals in the
first two issues.
downthetubes: IPC's response to Warlord was Battle
Picture Weekly. Was there a satisfaction within the Warlord staff
of developing and producing a comic that IPC felt that they had to
respond to so quickly?
Bill: I heard
a story that the day Warlord came
out, the managing editor of IPC called all his boys' paper editors together
and threw a copy of Warlord on
the table and told them they had to get out their version as soon as possible.
Battle came out about six months later. I hope that story is true. We were
certainly chuffed when we heard it! I still think we were better.
downthetubes: In its later issues, Warlord began
to reprint its own strips, such as the Union Jack
Jackson origin story or
the Killer Kane Banshee fighter stor. At
what point did this become an option? Were the reprints a cost cutting move
in the later issues, and did a certain number of years need to pass before
a strip could be reprinted?
Bill: I had
moved on from Warlord by
the time they started reprinting. It would probably be a way to keep costs
down but DC Thomson always had a policy of reprinting popular stories after
about seven years. We reckoned that there would be a whole generation of
new readers after that time.
downthetubes: The Warlord annuals
and summer specials continued on for several years after the weekly title
had been amalgamated into
Victor. Did the Warlord staff
have any input into the annuals or specials and were they, as for instance
the Beano annual is today, commissioned so far in advance that their publication
was not totally dependent on the continuation of the weekly comic?
Bill: The
staff on Warlord/Victor would have had an input into the
specials and annuals. You don't really need a weekly comic to justify an
annual. It all depended on sales before Christmas. If there had been a
Warlord annual last Christmas and it had sold well, you can bet there would
be one this year.
|
Andy from Crunch - in reality
DC Thomson editor Euan Kerr |
|
Revealed at last: Fireball
from Bullet - in reality, DC Thomson staffer Garry Fraser,
who gets ribbed about it to this day... |
|
Black secret agent
Ebony from The Crunch, originally to have appeared in a very
different girls comic to DC Thomson's usual girls titles, but was never
launched. |
downthetubes: The Crunch had
an
"agony uncle" in the photographic form of ‘Andy'. Who was Andy? For that
matter who was Fireball from Bullet?
This
is where I give away one of the great secrets in DC Thomson. We used a
photo of a very young [editor] Euan Kerr! We thought he looked like a really
nice guy (which he is).
Fireball was Garry Fraser who was on the staff of
Bullet and still works for DC Thomson. He still gets ribbed about being Fireball!
downthetubes: It
has been mentioned that the character of Starhawk was inspired by a 1950's
Western story. What led to The Crunch team coming up with the story of
Mantracker and its main character Bearpaw Jay, "the Indian warrior who
became a Bounty Hunter"?
Mantracker was a completely new character. He wasn't based on anyone. I just came
up with the idea of a modern day bounty hunter who was a Vietnam veteran.
This was just a couple of years after the war in Vietnam ended.
downthetubes: In Ebony, The
Crunch ran the stories of Ebony
Jones, a black female secret agent. Was there a female audience for what
we would consider to be boy's comics and, since some issues of The
Crunch have letters from girls in the letters pages, was this character
an attempt at boosting a female readership?
Bill: In the
mid 1970's I had been involved in the development of a new girls' paper
for DC Thomson. This was going to be totally different from the likes of
Bunty and Judy -
no
ballerinas and ponies, the heroines were going to all-action characters.
One of these characters was Ebony Jones.
The paper was abandoned but Ebony was
too good to waste, so I brought her into The Crunch. It wasn't a conscious
effort to attract girls as readers.
downthetubes: Some issues of The
Crunch have the somewhat cheeky
tagline "THE PAPER WITH MAXIMUM THRILL POWER!" Was 2000AD seen
as the biggest competitor for The Crunch?
Bill: You
know, I had never thought of that before. We used to try and think up different
taglines from week to week. I remember we did one which was a spoof of
an ad for Pepsi, the one that went - Cool Tastin', Lip Smackin' etc...
But no, we didn't see 2000AD as our biggest
competitor.
downthetubes: The Crunch never
had any annuals or summer specials before it amalgamated into Hotspur but
Crunch characters appeared in the 1983 Hotspur annual. Were there plans
for a Crunch annual with commissioned stories going into the Hotspur annual instead or were these commissioned directly for Hotspur?
Bill: Crunch never lasted long
enough for us to plan an annual. The Hotspur editor
at the time would have decided which stories to run in the annual and if
he thought that some of the former Crunch characters
merited inclusion, he would have had commissioned the stories.
|
Buddy, a comic aimed at younger readers. This issue
featuring Billy the Cat is cover date 8 March 1981. |
downthetubes: Was Buddy aimed at a younger audience than
The Crunch and the other adventure comics of the time?
Bill: We knew
that boys were stopping reading comics at a younger age, so we had to appeal
to a younger readership.
downthetubes: Buddy reprinted Beano's Jonah in colour on the back cover, as well as featuring stories from many older
Beano adventure characters such as General
Jumbo and Billy The Cat. Was
the reintroduction of Beano characters a deliberate policy to draw in a
Beano readership?
Bill: No,
it wasn't. It was simply thought that characters like General
Jumbo and
Billy The Cat would appeal to the younger reader. We used characters who
appeared in some of our other publications who also fitted the bill, like Limp
Along Leslie. I was told to put a comic story on the back page and
I thought that Jonah was very funny indeed.
downthetubes: Buddy also
ran a strip called Young Starhawk based
on the earlier adventures of the Starhawk character.
The sort of prequel stories seems to be something of a DC Thomson trait
with Warlord running
Young Wolf for
instance, the childhood of the Wolf
of Kabul. Was this seen as a way of expanding the characters or more
simply a way of creating more stories about popular characters?
Bill: Both
really, plus I like prequels and I thought it would be great to learn about
the early days of Sol Rynn.
downthetubes: Buddy ran
biographical comic strips of a wide range of footballers, actors and
entertainers amongst others. Was there a logic to the choice of subject?
Bill: The
choice of personalities was solely determined by how easy it was to find
biographical material on them!
downthetubes: Why did Spike have
such an eclectic range of stories?
Bill: Here's the story behind Spike.
In the the halcyon days of the 1960's
it became the norm for our publications to build up a stock of stories.
These would often lie in the cupboard till the editor decided to use them.
By the 1980's, we couldn't afford to keep such large stocks so it was decided
to publish a paper to use some of them up. That was Spike.
To beef it up we commissioned some new stories like The
Man In Black, which
itself was a reworking of Wilson.
downthetubes: Buddy was
amalgamated into Victor while Spike was amalgamated
into Champ and then Champ went into Victor. How far in advance would
such amalgamations be known about within the editorial teams?
Bill: Usually,
it would be a month or two. Sometimes it was a lot less. I think I got
about two weeks notice that Crunch was
going into Hotspur.
downthetubes: Champ has
a higher percentage of sports story pages than the earlier titles. After
the experiences of Buddy and Spike, were the sports strips
seen as being more popular with the audience?
Bill: I think
it seemed like Champ had
a higher proportion of sports story pages because of the nine-page story
We Are United. But I don't recall us making a deliberate decision to make
Champ a sports story paper.
downthetubes: IPC never published a long running sporting digest
yet DC Thomson's Football Picture Story Monthly was popular enough to run
from 1986 to 2003. Was the concept of a sporting digest seen as a risk
at the beginning when there was no direct equivalent from any other publisher?
Bill: I had
been advocating we publish a football digest (we called them libraries)
since the early 1980's. I reasoned that the two most popular subjects were
football and war. As we already published Commando,
why didn't we do football?
I got nowhere until a note came in from our
circulation rep in Cardiff (I think). This guy had noticed that Commando sold
well. Why don't we do a football library? It was enough to make you weep.
Anyway, I was given the go-ahead and we launched in time for the 1986 World
Cup. I recall we sold out a print run of 42,000. But, like Starblazer, Football
PSM suffered from poor distribution. We never gave a thought to what any
other publisher was doing.
|
Football
Picture Story Monthly Issue 276 |
downthetubes: Football PSM used
colour tints in some of it stories in the same way that colour tints
were used in some DC Thomson boy's annuals, but Commando and Starblazer never
did. Was the football title aimed at such a different audience to the
others that it was seen to need at least some colour?
Bill: No, we just wanted to make the artwork as
attractive as possible. But, when sales started to fall, we dropped the
colour for cost reasons.
downthetubes: Some issues of Football
PSM contained more than
one story, not like the IPC combat picture libraries of a 58 page followed
by an 8 page story, but more evenly divided on page count. Again, this
was not used on Commando and Starblazer. Was there a decision
made to try out shorter stories on the readership to see if this increased
sales?
Bill: There were two issues of Football
PSM every
month. One carried a 64 page story, the other carried a 48 page story and
a 16 page story. The reason for that is simple. Some stories merited greater
length than others. Others were worth only 16 pages.
downthetubes: Football PSM used
characters from other DC Thomson titles such as the footballer Jon Stark
or the United team, while Starblazer used the Starhawk character
in three issues. Commando never used DC Thomson heritage characters in
the same way. Were these characters used on the two digests because you
had used them in titles you had previously worked on and was it intentional
to have recurring characters?
Bill: Yes. I thought these characters were too
good to let go to waste. Plus, they were all my characters! We decided
to have long running characters in Football PSM. We reasoned that
if a character is good, our readers would want more of them. I encouraged
the same thing when I took over Starblazer.
|
Starblazer 126 |
|
Starblazer 155 |
downthetubes: Starblazer appears to be one of the most fondly
remembered of the various titles that you have worked on and is now being
revived to a certain extent with the Starblazer
Adventures role playing game.
Since it did not have a letters page to encourage the readers to write
in, did it get letters and other feedback from its readership?
Bill: We did get some feedback, but not a lot.
downthetubes: How did Starblazer come about?
Bill: I spoke to my old friend and colleague, Bill McLoughlin, about the origins of Starblazer.
He was in on it from the beginning.
Back in the late 1970's, a man called
Jack Smith was the editor of the My Weekly libraries,
a spin-off from the DC Thomson weekly women's magazine of the same name,
full of couthy stories
for ladies. Jack was a great Sci-Fi fan and, according to Bill McLoughlin,
he went to his boss, Gordon Small, and suggested we publish science fiction
in picture strip form. Jack got the go ahead and Starblazer was
born.
Now here is the weird thing. Gordon Small was the managing
editor of DC Thomson's women's publications department and Jack worked for
him. So Starblazer was
officially part of our women's department! Bill was actually transferred
from the children's department to become Jack's Number Two.
Bill thinks Starblazer was a working title which just sort
of stuck. It was almost certainly inspired by Star
Wars.
downthetubes: How did you become editor?
Bill: Jack took early retirement in 1985 due to ill health and, when Starblazer was moved into the children's department, I took over as editor. Bill McLoughlin remained on Starblazer as my deputy.
downthetubes: Are there any stories you remember particularly and if so, why?
|
The Robot Kid - Starblazer
204 |
Bill: I could go on and on about the stories I remember but here are just a few - The
Ardarian Knight, written and drawn by Casanovas Junior, The
Robot Kid series written by Mike Chinn and drawn by Garijo and the Carter stories, first written by Mike Knowles and later by Dave Taylor and Alan Hemus and illustrated by Casanovas Junior. All were very well written and brilliantly drawn.
Oh, and everything illustrated by Enrique
Alcatena.
What an artist!
downthetubes: Perhaps the most unusual thing to happen with
Starblazer was the publication of a credit listing for all its issues in
its final days. Since this listing seems to be unique within DC Thomson,
why was it done and was it something that was important to the editorial
team to do perhaps as a thank-you to the artists and writers?
Bill: That's right. I thought it was important
that we acknowledged all these talented people. And I have been agitating
for the last couple of years for us to put out the Best
Of Starblazer,
pretty much as we did with Commando. I am convinced there is a market for
it. There is some wonderful stuff that people never got the chance
to see.
downthetubes: DC Thomson's girl's titles are generally
poorly documented in comparison to the boy's. Was there a cross over
of writers and artists between the boy's and girl's digests or was there
an obvious demarcation, say between artists who were best at football, tanks,
aircraft or horses?
Bill: Obviously,
there are artists who are more comfortable with subjects like war and sport
amd the same goes for writers. But you might be surprised by the number of
writers and artists who can handle both.
The most prolific writer of picture
stories scripts that I knew was the late Ron Carpenter. He wrote just as
easily for Warlord as he did for Bunty.
Ron churned out high quality scripts -- boy's
and girl's -- for us for years and he still found time to write for
IPC.
Barrie Mitchell is, in my opinion, the best football artist
ever. Yet, now he draws Wendy strips
for me. I could go on and on.
downthetubes: Writer Pat Mills once noted that girls' comics
were better written than boys' comics because the former could rely less
on violence to move a story forward. Do you think that girls' comics were
better written than boys' comics?
Bill: No.
Since I started editing Wendy I
have read quite a few of the girl's stories published over the years. They
are often mind-numbingly repetitive and the plots are full of holes and
amazing coincidences.
Here's the typical girls' story plot. Girl is happy.
Circumstances change and girl is miserable. Unexpected benefactor appears
and girl is happy again. That's why I think Wendy has
been so successful. I, and many of the staff in the early years, were trained
on boys' papers. The stories are better plotted with two or three story
lines in each episode - and there is very little violence.
|
Wendy could be regarded as DC Thomson's
surviving girl's title, even though it is published by Egmont - and
only on the continent. |
downthetubes: Wendy is
one of those titles that often gets a passing mention by artists working
on it but, being published outside the UK, little is known about it here.
Where is Wendy published and for how long has it been going?
Bill: Wendy is published weekly
in Germany and fortnightly in Denmark, Sweden and Norway by the various arms
of Egmont. It is also published under licence under other titles in France
and Holland (I think quarterly). The magazine called Wendy was
first published in Germany in 1986, using stories reprinted from our girls'
papers. The character Wendy first appeared
in 1991.
You are right about it being little known
in this country. I had a phone call asking me what Wendy was just last
week. And that was someone working in another department of DC Thomson! I am not
kidding.
Wendy is huge in
the territories where it is published. Along with the magazine there is considerable
marketing. A
range of toys based on the characters was launched last Christmas and I believe it won Toy Of The Year in Germany.
downthetubes: What artists have worked on, and currently
work on, Wendy?
Three English artists have worked on the
story: Barrie Mitchell, Jim Colthorpe and the late Phil
Gascoine.
The rest are all Spanish: Jaume Forns, Rodrigo Comos, Jesus Pena, Antonio
Perez and his son David, and Joaquin Romero are all currently working on
the strip. We've also used Rojo, Roca, Blase and Redondo.
downthetubes: With Wendy you continue to originate British
comic strips albeit for foreign markets. Do you have any ideas on why the
British comics market is in such a parlous state nowadays?
| "The standard of literacy in
children in this country is appalling. If you can't read, then you can't
read comics." |
Bill: There
are several reasons. The standard of literacy in children in this country
is appalling. If you can't read, then you can't read comics. I was reading
text story papers when I was still in primary school. One of my staff has
an honours degree in English but she admitted she has learned more about
grammar and spelling working with me.
24 hour television hasn't helped.
Kids can watch cartoons all day long. And computer games are so realistic
nowadays that kids can act out adventures rather than read about them.
Then there is the domination of the supermarkets. Publishers
have to pay them to get their publications on their shelves. In the old days,
you could just go round to your local paper shop and buy your comics.
downthetubes: What is the best thing about working for
DC Thomson?
Bill: I have described
what it used to be like working here earlier, but it's not like that now.
The best thing is the people. Great comic talents like Euan Kerr and Morris
Heggie, previous editors of The Beano and Dandy.
And Martin Lindsay, who is now our licensing manager but who was a very talented
sub-editor, especially on football stories. And, of course, our office five
a side football game which has been going on every Wednesday for over thirty
years!d
downthetubes: ... and the worst?
Bill: There
isn't the same atmosphere there once was in the office. It is like working
in what I imagine an "ordinary" office must be like. We seem to be obsessed
with spread sheets, budgets, human resources etc. Last autumn I was sent
on a management training course. I've only been an editor for thirty years!
I suppose I'm a bit of a dinosaur these days. Apart from Wendy and Commando, we don't produce picture stories. Let's face it, the market
isn't there any more.
downthetubes: What is your favourite of all the comics you
worked on and is there a title that stands out as being the one that you
are the most proud of?
Bill: It is
almost impossible to choose between Starblazer and Warlord.
I believe we changed the face of boys' papers in Britain with Warlord and
opened up the way for Battle and 2000AD.
Up until then, boys' papers would have up to 12 or 13 pictures on a page.
The first editor of Warlord,
Pete Clark, had great visual flair. He introduced the big opening frames,
some taking up the whole page, and cut the number of frames per page to 6
or 7. The artists could then produce great action-packed scenes, ideal for
war stories. I really enjoyed a lot of the stories such as Kampfgruppe
Falken and Union Jack Jackson.
Before
I took over Starblazer,
it was purely sci fi. I thought we were missing out on a lot of good story
material so I introduced the fantasy element -- sword and sorcery. It
was a pleasure so work with artists like Alcatena, Ian Kennedy, Colin McNeil
and Casanovas Junior plus writers like Mike Chinn, Alan Hemus and David
Taylor. I am proud of a lot of the work I did, along with Bill McLoughlin,
on Starblazer.
I
am proud of the fact that the Wendy stories have been so successful over
the years but my favourite is Warlord. My happiest time in this business
was when I was the editor of that title.
Bill, thanks very much for your time and your work in British
comics.
Additional questions by Matthew Badham, John
Freeman and Colin Noble.
Football PSM
• www.britishcomics.20m.com/foottitles.htm
• www.britishcomics.20m.com/foot1986-1988.htm
• www.britishcomics.20m.com/foot1989-1991.htm
Hornet
• 26pigs.com/hornet
• The Hurricanes
Wendy
• www.wendy.de
Here's
a video
advert for the German Wendy comic
• Wendy Toys
Warlord
• 26pigs.com/warlord
Wizard
• 26pigs.com/wizard
This link is
mainly about the original story paper version rather than the comic strip
version
• Jim
Gilchrist tribute to Ian Gray