Back in the 2000s, Alistair McGown, today a designer/writer for Panini’s Doctor Who specials and bookazines, and part of design team at Fanderson, conducted three interviews with stalwarts of the much-loved, much-missed weekly comic, Look-in, “The Junior TV Times“. With his kind permission, we’re delighted to represent them here, rescued from the WayBack Machine over at the immensely appreciated Internet Archive… the first is with artist Martin Asbury…
The 1950s may have had The Eagle, the 1960s TV Century 21 but what the TV21 staff did next was pitched somewhere between comic strip action and the teen pop poster mags of the 1980s like Smash Hits. Quality ephemera charts the times like few other documents and in the 1970s and early 80s, Look-In, “The Junior TV Times’ covered it all. Gloriously opportunistic, everyone from Donny Osmond and David Cassidy to Debbie Harry and Diana Spencer, every ITV show from Man About The House to The Man From Atlantis was in there at some point.
Martin Asbury was one of the biggest names in British comic art in the 1970s. Drawing the comic strip, “Garth” for The Daily Mirror from 1976, he contributed a wealth of dynamic action strips to Look-in between 1973 and 1981, most notably “Kung-Fu“, “The Six Million Dollar Man“, “Dick Turpin“, “Battlestar Galactica” and “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century“.
When Alistair interviewed Martin in February 2008, he was working as one of the world’s best known names in movie storyboarding, and had just come off the set of the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace when he took time out from his busy schedule to talk about his work as a comic strip artist…
You grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s – a time of ubiquity for comics in Britain. What comics did you read as a kid? Did any particularly inspire or influence you?
I was addicted to American comics. I had had a spell in hospital when I was a kid, and I think it was my mum who gave me some large pulp reprints of, especially, Tarzan by Burne Hogarth. These just blew me away, and from that moment on I wanted to draw and wanted to draw comics especially. I trawled any and all newsagents, bookshops and even places like Woolworths, where I found reprints of Classics in Pictures. I didn’t know who the artists were, except I saw Joe Kubert’s name on Jesse James comics. I thought he was fab!
Then came the English copy of Classics called Classics Illustrated. These influenced me greatly, and were a fantastic informative and instructive medium, and I still think there is a place for such publications, even now.
Then, along came the Eagle and I was blown away all over again! You must remember there was no real TV at that time so a weekly dose of “Dan Dare” etc was extraordinary and exciting. I was an avid reader for the first three years of its life, and was of course influenced to a certain degree by Frank Hampson.
When you went to London’s famous St Martins Art School, was it your ambition to want to work in comics then? Did you think St Martins would help you in that ambition and was that the case? It’s renowned today as a hotbed of very esoteric and creative bohemianism – but what was it like in the 1960s? A pretty crazy place, one imagines?
I was there in the late 1950s and early 1960s, studying both painting and illustration. For a very brief period, I thought I wanted to make it as a painter but quite quickly, due to my lack of ability and incipient laziness coupled with the daunting ability of others, decided against the idea.
When you left St Martins, what sort of work did you get at first?
I remember thinking at the time of leaving St. Martin’s that I could be God’s gift to the advertising world and so bowled into the leading Ad Agency of the time (Hobsons? or Bensons? Can’t remember) and asked if there was someone who could see (and therefore marvel) at my portfolio. There was a guy walking through the foyer at the time, and he said: “Sure, I’ll have a look”.
I followed him up to his office little knowing that he was one of the foremost designers of that time, one Bob Gill (who had done some terrific things – notably a huge campaign for White Horse Whisky). He cleared a desk and I put my vast A1 type folio (the sort that had fastening bits of ribbon around it ) and ceremoniously opened it. He literally bent over the sheaf of drawings and paintings and flicked through them by the corners. He straightened up, looked at me and said: “Burn it!” turning away to his secretary, and ignoring me thereafter. I was left to gather my work together, tie up my folder with its annoying ribbons and slither under the door and outside to slit my wrists! And of course he was absolutely right – the work was complete crap!
The first work I did (apart from a sheet music cover for the Maigret theme) was illustrations for a give-away comic in small independent shoe shops around London at that time. It was a written serial, taken from a children’s book called Kor and the Wolf Dogs [the book, by Robert James Green was first published in 1956, illustrated by Geoffrey Dean Lewis – Ed]. That finished pretty soon and I then managed to get work as a fill-in artist, painting flat areas on cardboard cut-outs which were used as semi-animation diagrams on TV. I was absolutely hopeless! I took a lot of stick from my fellow workers, as I claimed to be an artist but couldn’t even lay a flat area of grey paint! Ho hum …
I then saw an advert in a magazine devoted to advertising seeking an assistant for an “international strip cartoonist”. I was very excited by this and immediately applied using my Kor and the Wolf Dogs pictures as samples of my work. On the basis of these and much to my surprise, I got the job. (I later found out it was because I was the youngest, cheapest and most malleable of all the applicants!).
The strip turned out to be “Flash Gordon” – a daily syndicated strip by King Features. [At the time, strips Martin worked on, such as “Fisher Dolphins of Venus”, first published in 1960, were written by Harry Harrison – Ed]. The “international strip cartoonist” was one Dan Barry and I worked for and with him for six months in Austria.
Needless to say, I wasn’t very good and he thought that I was “British Shit”, and said so on numerous occasions. We fell out after he stopped paying me and I returned to England. It was a miserable time, and I was very sorry for myself!
I was back again, sponging off my parents, and casting about for work. I had been drawing a few ha-ha greeting cards for friends and, on impulse, took them to Hallmark Greeting Cards which at that time had a base in this country and was not far from my home. By luck, I was offered a job there, which I gratefully accepted; drawing the border designs round the edge of satin padded cards. Pretty ignominious I thought, but actually all I was worth. It was here that I met my wife-to-be. A happy time there and, eventually, after a few years I graduated and became their chief designer – designing those long, tall “Contemporary Cards”, shop fronts, sale banners etc.etc.
Seeing no future there for me and never giving up my ambition to draw comics (and a deep desire to eventually have a daily newspaper strip of my own) I decided – big decision – to go freelance. I found myself an agent and slowly but surely eased into the comic strip world – scary, scary …!
My first regular strip was “The Secret of the Sheridan Sisters” in DC Thomson’s Bunty comic (I wanted their secret to be that they were rampant lesbians and worked in the sex industry – but no such luck). I must have caught someone’s eye ‘cos I was then given a boys’ adventure strip in Wizard, “Soldiers of the Jet Age”, and I did series one and then series two, and one other long-running strip called “The Crimson Claw”. Then along came TV21 …
Yes, the earliest comic work of yours known to me is “Forward From the Back-Streets” which appeared in TV21 & Joe 90 from September 1969, stories of a tough young Glasgow orphan, Val Hudson, now a triallist for top London football side Kingsdown United. Were you aware of how things like football strips were a huge departure for TV21 away from the comic’s SF roots?
At first I was asked to draw the occasional ‘one-off’ encapsulated story – a few “Joe 90” strips, and a couple of SF tales – and then came “Forward from the Back Streets”. All I can remember of it was that it was fairly arduous, in that I didn’t and still don’t understand football and ran into all sorts of trouble from the readers. For example, I had no idea what or where a penalty spot was, how large a football pitch can be, what offside consists of and in some cases how many players should be on the field! And I wasn’t really aware that a football strip was a departure for TV21 – sorry!
I think it’s fair to say TV21 quickly declined from this point on, with much material being bought in from Marvel. Could you see the writing on the wall – was that frustrating as you perhaps saw yourself starting to become an established comics artist? Or were you perhaps more aware that you had to be light on your feet and go where the money was, like all freelancers?
You say that TV21 declined – all my fault, the Hand of Doom – and I was definitely aware that the work situation was dodgy, but of course being freelance it was always dodgy – that comes with the territory. I was not at all confident with my potential or whether indeed I had any worthwhile talent at all. Therefore I was most anxious – being freshly married – about my future and was ready to do anything in the art/illustration/ comics/ advertising world.
Countdown, an older boys’ SF companion paper to Polystyle’s TV Comic, was something of a “Phoenix from the Ashes of TV21” when it launched in February 1971 – you provided some black and white strips of “Captain Scarlet” here, an occasional SF strip and some colour work for the annuals I believe (a “UFO” strip is, possibly, yours and a text story). Did you feel more comfortable with drawing hardware-driven SF action than sporting heroism?
God, I am awful – I cannot remember ever doing Captain Scarlet in black and white, but maybe I did. I would have to see it to know, but if it is mine, it will make me squirm.
[I show Martin a sample, clearly accredited to him]
Yes. Yes. It’s mine alright … squirm … squirm.
The only thing I do know is that they were running reprints of dear old Ron Embleton‘s “Scarlet” and had lost the artwork or plates/copies of a particular episode. I was asked to reproduce the lost episode (maybe it had been damaged, I don’t know). I did this and was so happy that it was exactly like Ron’s work that I put a tiny ‘MA’ in each frame to prove that I had done it!! What an idiot!! How very sad.
Yes in answer to your question, I much preferred drawing action, especially SF action and was indeed much more comfortable and exhilarated by doing it. I seem to recall that commissions from Countdown were not very regular and really wanted to ‘get in.’ John M. Burns was doing some really ground-breaking stuff and was blowing my socks off! I was not very good and gladly took what was offered feeling I was rather a stop-gap for them at that time.
Not that much is written about the editor of Countdown and several other Polystyle titles, the late Dennis Hooper – any memories of him?
Most of any dealings I had with Dennis were usually job related, but I liked him a lot. He always sported a beard I remember, was fairly tall had curly dark hair and wore glasses. He had a dry sense of humour and an acerbic wit. A good man, decent and fair.
Countdown never quite took off as an SF title and ended up retooled as TV Action at the beginning of 1973, with an emphasis on TV crimefighting. You worked on “Cannon” here, the adventures of the overweight private eye (played by William Conrad). Were you glad that now you had a regular gig for perhaps the first time?
Oh yes … “Cannon” … I did feel more established when I got that and enjoyed consolidating my work, making the first real attempt to draw what – as a child – I would have liked to see.
It also gave you an early opportunity to occasionally work in colour didn’t it? Colour seems such a vital part of your strip work.
I was a little timorous of colour at first, but actually loved the way it helped to expand the atmosphere and could create a greater texture and richness. (How grand that sounds!)
Comics must have seemed a precarious – or at least fast-moving – business by now. TV Action folded in Autumn 1973, having faced sustained competition from Look-in since January 1971. What did you know of Look-in? What impressed me even as a kid reading Look-in in the 1970s was the quality of the colour paper and printing – was this a draw to the top artists of the day? Knowing they’d get good colour reproduction most of the time (some of the newsprint colour repro on TV Action was pretty horrible and it was still a comparably lavish title in British terms)?
How did you get to work on Look-in? Colin Shelbourn seems to claim he ‘discovered’ you! Did you have to do some grovelling or were you headhunted?
I was unaware of Look-In (don’t ask me why) but as soon as I realised how successful it appeared to be was very excited when they made contact. It was I think Alan Fennell or it may have been Colin Shelbourn at the behest of Alan who made the call. I had met Alan now and then in the past, and I guess he must have suggested me to Colin.
And what was the first work you did for Look-in? I’ve got an issue from October 1973, where you’re providing a two-page “Follyfoot” strip. Its usual artist, the venerable Mike Noble, had this beautifully developed, romantic comic strip style on “Follyfoot”, but some of the characters like Steve and Dora didn’t really look like the actors, more like stylised comic creations. I thought you made it a bit more gritty and more like the TV series itself? Was this your trial period?
Yes “Follyfoot” was the first thing I drew in Look-In, and I am pretty sure that it was a trial period. I didn’t like the subject but, hey!, it was work and work on the leading comic/magazine of the day too!
Colin and company must have liked you, because they gave you the regular artist’s role on their adaptation of the new US martial arts series’ “Kung-Fu” in Spring 1974 (number 12). Do you feel this is where you really “arrived” as a “name” artist? In terms of discovering your technique and getting regular colour work every week? There were some great Western style panoramas to it (one horse towns, railroads, paddle steamers), some energetic action fight scenes and even those psychedelic bits where Caine’s mind went back to revisit his teachings (very St Martins!?).
I was thrilled, flattered and excited when invited to draw “Kung Fu”. I had seen the series on television and liked it a lot. To be the first artist to do it, to have a regular job, to have the strip in prime position – a centre page spread and in the best comic of the time … Wow! It was fantastic, and I was that proverbial dog with those two tails! It was then in my euphoria, I guess, that I allowed myself to think I was ‘on the scene’ as it were and that the top artists of the time would now know I existed. And on top of it all – “Kung Fu”! I just loved doing it – just loved it!
It was such a hit on TV and the strip really helped boost Look-in‘s sales figures to what was then an all-time high.
I was completely unaware that the sales figures had risen and it would be nice to think that what I did then contributed to that situation.
Were there any problems with the violence in the strip (the irony being that the show preached tolerance, anti-violence and ‘the empty hand’)? Look-in ran a Bruce Lee cover in 1974 and I know they got into trouble for that, for promoting violence and ‘X’ films.
As far as I’m concerned there was absolutely no problem with that at that time.
Now, I’ve long wondered why you left “Kung-Fu” for a spell in early 1975 and ended up working on “Doctor Who” for TV Comic for 15 weeks? Dennis Hooper was writing the strip at that point and you’d know him well from your Countdown/TV Action days – was this a distress call from an old friend?
In December 1974 and early 1975 I went to visit my sister in Canada, which resulted in a reluctant absence from “Kung-Fu”, and Mike Noble stepped into the breach.
[Noble’s strip “Black Beauty” soon ended up in a procession of hands, including I think – to my eyes at least – Leslie Branton and Stanley Houghton, while Mike Noble took over Martin’s post at ‘Kung-Fu’ before Noble in turn had to turn down colour work due to family illness – Al]
Any idea what happened at TV Comic, and why you were called in? It’s long been thought that Gerry Haylock gave up “Doctor Who” after one strip with Tom Baker because he felt he couldn’t grasp the likeness or character after several years successfully drawing Jon Pertwee? Did you ever find out why you were suddenly roped in to draw “Return of the Daleks” and “The Wreckers” (published April-June 1975)?
Yes, on return from Canada I jumped at the chance of doing “Doctor Who”. One of the challenges, I guess, on these TV spin-off strips was to get the likenesses, but I didn’t feel I was too bad at this and threw myself enthusiastically into any and all such commissions.
I think I was told at that time that Gerry Haylock had gone to Sweden or some such country to do some lucrative illustrative work – but I am not sure. He was a great strip artist I always thought, one of the very best. Then of course I returned gratefully to Look-in and “Kung-Fu”, and then to “The Six Million Dollar Man”.
This is perhaps the Look-in strip you are most associated with, seeing as you drew every episode for the next three years.
I had a fabulous time drawing and colouring “Six Million Dollar Man”. I was crazy about the action I had to do and immediately started to concentrate, trying to create interesting and dynamic layouts. As previously stated my guiding point – my yardstick – was to be inventive with the visuals and exciting with the layouts which I felt would have thrilled me when I was 12. That was the object of the exercise.
The strip always seemed to have one big action scene per week – Steve jumping off tall buildings or punching someone’s lights out. Was this now reckoned to be your forte – explosive action? Was this a case of Angus Allan playing to your strengths? How closely did you and Angus Allan work? You seem to be one of a handful of artists – along with Arthur Ranson and John Burns – he really got on with and respected. With some he liked their work but they rarely met at any sort of personal level.
Yes, it was here that I actually got to know Angus Allan well. Of course I knew he was around – after all, he wrote every strip every week for Look-In, and was so prolific and, but for his inventiveness, the comic would not have been where it was. We hit it off immediately and started to collaborate on story ideas which thrilled and/or amused us both.
What can I say about dear Angus? A lovely guy – creative and amusing with a quick mind and jolly tales who dressed sharp, lived large and topped this all off with a wonderfully infectious laugh. He has sadly left us and I miss him and his friendship.
In those days as I said, he wrote I believe all the strips every week for many years! [in general there would be just one strip each week he didn’t write – Al]. It was an incredible feat and a wonderful example of how ingenious he was, with his many plots and storylines.
And I notice that for several episodes of “The Six Million Dollar Man” you added signature credits for Asbury and Allan – but apparently Shelbourn stopped this when you began putting in “Written by Angus Allan” credits. He thought it a step too far!
I did put a writing credit for him on the strip for a while – I just thought that he deserved the recognition he didn’t have and especially as what we did was indeed a joint effort. Together we created Laszlo Cernatz, “The Toymaker” (one of our favourite characters) and we reprised him later for a story we did for “Garth” in The Daily Mirror.
It was initially stories about checkpoint-dodging, Commies (both Russian and Chinese), nuclear submarines and the like but what I loved as a kid were the diversions into more lurid and insane territory. My favourite “The Six Million Dollar Man” strips – which I remember so vividly from my childhood, with these leering, crazy figures all over the place, included those two Toymaker strips (crazed inventor creates an army of robot toys to terrorise America’s kiddoes!), a werewolf story “The Wolfman of Waldstein”, with gothic castles and all the horror cliches, the crackpot master magician Mandini … In many ways, my childhood memories of the TV series pale beside the Look-in version.
A little aside – while you never worked on “Space:1999”, for Look-in, Angus and Alan Fennell had you provide three strips for the World Distributors annual published for Christmas 1976. Those strips were in black and white, one colour.
Puzzling … I cannot remember, but believe you anyway!
That’s amazing to learn there was a Garth/Steve Austin crossover. It would be remiss of me not to mention the strip for which you are perhaps best known worldwide. In September 1976 “Garth” artist Frank Bellamy – one of British comics’ most respected artists – died suddenly, and you were drafted in as full-time replacement on the Daily Mirror newspaper strip.
I was so, so thrilled when I got the commission to draw – and eventually write – “Garth”. I was, I felt, extremely fortunate to land the contract. Daily continuity strips were still very popular then in 1976 and having a contract for a year was a fabulous feeling. After Frank Bellamy’s sudden and shocking death there was quite a scramble of competition to gain this prized commission, and I was delighted and not a little surprised, to achieve this goal.
I had always harboured the ambition to draw a daily newspaper strip and had tried unsuccessfully many times to get one. For instance, I had drawn about twelve weeks of a strip that never saw the light of day, commissioned by The Sun called “EuroCop”. I had drawn two different adventure strips off my own back, in the hope that someone would like at least one of them, plus a comedy strip which although continuity, had hopefully one laugh-out-loud joke a day. So I did loads of samples but all to no avail.
I still would love to do “Modesty Blaise”; I don’t know why, after all this time but still would like to have a go … John Burns had a fair old go at it and very good I thought, but that all went wrong and John left.
And I believe you’d previously worked on the popular newspaper strip “Jeff Hawke”, in 1973?
I had met the creator/writer Sydney Jordan and we had become quite friendly; I loved the way he talked and his different take on life. Thanks to Syd I was asked to do a coloured SF strip for an African educational super comic – it was called Orbit, a sort of equivalent of Eagle, and I drew the frontispiece strip, “Space Safari”, a sort of black Dan Dare. Syd sometimes wrote these stories for me to draw and that was quite a fun time for me.
“Jeff Hawke” was Syd’s real tour de force, though; it was inventive and quirky. It stretched the mind and the characters were interesting sometimes amusing but always believable all within stories which were both exciting and thought provoking.
On occasion, I had given him story outlines for a couple of adventures and once I remember I stood in for him, drawing the strip for a week or two when he was away.
A short while after a started drawing “Garth”, the then-editor asked me to draw the life story of Elvis Presley as a daily strip to be run concurrently. This I did and opted to do up to five panels a day, set within a squarish box, frame thus enabling me to create some sort of varied layout within that square every day. That ran for only about 13 weeks and also at that time I did a “Teach Yourself Tennis” strip with Bjorn Borg, which featured in the Daily Express, and then a few years later I started working in the film industry.
Working on both “Garth” and in films was quite hectic as sometimes I would be on locations abroad and had to find ways of sending artwork back to England for deadlines, plus drawing the strip before and at the end of a working day then of course drawing “Garth” all over the weekends, when the rest of the unit would be resting. But I just revelled in it all!
Odd though it may sound, I just lived for “Garth”. He was the anchor in my working life. I grew into being with him and began to live and breathe what we would do together, the other worlds we inhabited. New stories would pop into my mind whilst I drew previous ones and he became almost an entity within me. He and I journeyed along happily for over 20 years until eventually Piers Morgan, a new editor on The Mirror – a new broom that wanted to be seen sweeping clean – axed the strip.
In retrospect, it was probably for the best – continuity strips were becoming dinosaurs. As I say, “Garth” featured a large part in my working life and I miss him still.
Presumably Frank Bellamy had been a big influence on you, so to step into his shoes must have been quite special?
Of course Frank Bellamy was arguably the greatest English strip cartoonist of his generation. One only has to gasp at “Fraser of Africa”, his version of “Dan Dare”, “Thunderbirds” and the fabulous “Heros the Spartan”.
There were many other influences … Frank Hampson, Ron Embleton. John M. Burns, Gerry Haylock, Jean Giraud (Moebius), Paul Gillon, Tacconi, Sergio Toppi and more and more … Too many to name them all, I just know without them I could never have made it. I look up at them with admiration and awe.
There was another perhaps ill-judged rival to Look-in, in the shape of Target in 1978, an attempt by Polystyle to produce another action/crime paper for older boys in the vein of TV Action. It has a few gems (a terrific “Hazell” by Harry North) and nicked other Look-in artists such as Arthur Ranson, but the cheapo production values were absolutely atrocious. Did Hooper ask you to work on this at all? Your “Cannon” strips from TV Action ended up reprinted, but I don’t know of any new work you might have done. (Target lasted all of 19 issues.)
No – Dennis Hooper never asked me to contribute to Target and I guess he had enough artists on call and he probably thought I was busy which indeed, fortunately, I was.
One presumes Target was a fly on an elephant’s hide as far as Look-in were concerned, as they went from strength to strength. By March 1979 you were working on another colour strip, the fondly remembered swashbuckler “Dick Turpin”. You really seemed to capture the quirky lightness of the character as played by established sitcom star Richard O’Sullivan. I liked the way you exaggerated Sir John Glutton, really selling the idea of him as a vainglorious, er, glutton!
“Dick Turpin” I found to be quite a challenge – a little alien to what I had been doing, but an interesting departure nonetheless. I knuckled down and gave it my best shot and at the end was not unhappy with the result (not sure what the editor thought though!).
“Dick Turpin” was quite sporadically shown on UK TV and so didn’t last too long in Look-in. In October 1979 you moved on immediately to a new strip.
Luckily maybe, “Dick Turpin” was dropped in favour of American SF show “Battlestar Galactica”, and again, I was teamed up with Angus (we hadn’t really communicated much whilst doing “Turpin”).
We had a great time on “Galactica”, both he and I just had a ball! However it never really showed much on British TV and so the strip was dropped.
No, indeed, movie rights postponed UK TV broadcasts of “Galactica” for as much as a year which can’t have helped its fortunes in Look-in, even thought it was a good strip in its own right.
ITV’s next big SF import had a primetime Saturday teatime network slot – “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century”. And you kicked off this strip in October 1980, initially in black and white before moving into colour. It was this series that got me renewing my newsagents order for Look-in after a year or so of more fairweather buying (Star Wars Weekly and Doctor Who Weekly had been vying for my pocket money in 1978 and 1979!). Arthur Ranson later took “Buck” over and it became quite a moody piece but your version was probably truer to the on-screen version than his take – colourful, cute and full of action?
This was another super SF strip with fast action, a lightness of touch (supplied by Angus) and a rich and varied storyline. Again I just loved it, drawing with great pleasure and enjoyment.
Like I said, Arthur Ranson took over after a relatively short run by you, drawing “Buck” from no. 19 1981 – as of this point you were gone from Look-in as a regular artist.
By this time Colin Shelbourn, as editor, was having misgivings about my work, about the possible violence featured and in retrospect, I would guess, about the very publication itself.
He started to criticise the likenesses of the main characters in the strip, much to my chagrin. But I accepted the concerns voiced and doubled my attempts to make the faces true to form. Despite my efforts, his complaints became more frequent and worrying. We had quite a few conversations where I tried to understand exactly what it was that he objected to and what I was doing wrong. But having tried every which way to “improve” what I was doing on the strip, I was told that I was to be dropped and would no longer be required on the publication.
After all this time and reconsidering the work I did then I cannot help but think that Colin felt I could not give the strip as much effort and consideration as he would have liked and expected. He did not like me drawing “Garth” at the same time, so I guess he thought my attentions were split and in any case I wouldn’t starve if he got rid of me. I think his criticism was ill founded and motivated by attitudes not involved with the quality of the actual work. I felt that then and I feel that now … so there!!! After that Colin, and therefore Look-In, did not use me again.
I know of only one further strip you drew for Look-in – a four-part “Buck” story in November 1981.
I do not remember the four part “Buck Rogers” you refer to in November 1981 – don’t think it was me, for the above reasons.
[I sent an example to Martin to attempt to clear this up – the page shown above – suggesting it was perhaps held over and later used as ‘filler’ – Al]
Yep – definitely did it! Sorry, don’t know when. As you suggest, it was probably shelved earlier in the year and dug out later.
That’s a big surprise, I must say. Colin maybe felt he wanted artists who were 100% committed to Look-in … maybe as an Editor you worry that artists who are working elsewhere at the same time are going to play one end off against the other and leave you in the lurch? All the same, I’d always thought it had been your choice to go elsewhere.
I was sorry not to see your work every week any more – I remember being delighted by the odd cameo like that great spread you did for TV Times when ITV premiered Star Wars in 1982 – I still have that issue kept from the time.
I’d read you next became an in-house artist for a new design studio set up by British comics publishing legend Dez Skinn, Studio System? How did that work out for you?
I was always very fond of Dez but as far as being an “in-house” artist for his new design ‘studio’ – that was never the case. He created and ran a comic-magazine Warrior for some months. A bold venture and I understood reasonably successful especially considering the financial climate at the time.
Is it true that Skinn got you into movie storyboarding and thus opened up a whole new career for you? Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes was your first assignment (US rel: Spring 1984)?
I think I was the only guy Dez knew then who actually did “storyboards” (I had started infrequently to do a few for TV commercials) so when he was approached by Production Designer Stuart Craig who was prepping a new film about Tarzan and was seeking a storyboard artist, Dez naturally suggested me. It was Dez who introduced me to Stuart, and it was therefore Dez who got me into the film industry and for that I will always be grateful to him. I hope wherever he is, he is doing well … Bless him and bless his little cotton socks.
You’ve worked on a few small arthouse projects since – movies no-one’s probably heard of, like Labyrinth, Chaplin, Goldeneye, The Saint, Interview With The Vampire, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Tomb Raider, the Harry Potter films, Chicken Run, Batman Begins, The Da Vinci Code, Casino Royale … I think it’s fair to say you are probably the top British artist working in movie storyboarding today? You work in both the UK and Hollywood don’t you?
Tell us how you work – basically you draw the film shot by shot to help the directors envisage and make some sort of permanent record of their visual ideas.
Storyboarding for a film is a weird process in that obviously every film, director, and problem is different. Usually the storyboard is the first time a director and producer see anything visual concerning the proposed film. Of course, very often speed is of the essence. The director will either ask for a complete ‘off the cuff’ pass at any given sequence (usually dictated by the existing script) or he will be most specific on what he wants – sometimes it is in between both of those. An average sequence can be as much as 300 to 400 pictures and can be required in two or five days.
The job I think is essentially to get into the director’s head – to think the way he does – to turn his mental image, his vision into pictures that all can see. These will become the kicking off point for discussion, revision, addition and rejection. On the basis that one picture tells a thousand words, the whole crew and shooting unit will know what we are all trying to do on any given sequence.
The other aspect is of course to save money. Storyboards can show whether an action will take place on location or set, and if the latter how much will need to be built, how long a sequence will take, how dynamically it can be shot, where explosions and special effects will take place or where computer generated images will be required. Boards can even show what will be seen using different lenses favoured by the Director of Photography. They can show in an action sequence (like in a Bond movie) how the camera can follow the star and not show his face (except for cutaway close-ups). In that instance Bond can be played by a stunt double and Daniel Craig can be off shooting another sequence in another place at the same time – thus clearly saving time and money.
I could go on and on – I love storyboarding and it has taken me all over the world. I have met some wonderful people and made great friends. But I will not bore you further!
Having said that, I should say that storyboarding could possibly be a dying art with the advent of a process called Pre Vis. This is a computer process where all the known parameters of set, location, effects, lighting, lenses etc. etc. are fed in, and any given sequence is created like an animatic. Once the information is processed, sequences can be viewed totally accurately and how they can be shot is shown with any given lighting, timing, camera height and lens, at the touch of a button. It is much more different in that it is so accurate.
As I said a storyboard is a starting point – will give more of the feel and atmosphere and hopefully reflect the director’s initial concept of the story. At the moment Pre Vis takes much longer and requires two or three technicians taking two or three weeks to produce. But the gap is narrowing …
Hm, that sounds absolutely loathsomely efficient. Drawing by computer – yuk!
What exciting projects are you working on now?
At the moment I have just come off the latest Bond film (Quantum of Solace) and am currently working on a film for Richard Curtis about pirate radio in the 70s which I am thoroughly enjoying [This seems to be currently titled The Boat That Rocked – Al].
I am just wondering, as a postscript to this, how you managed to retain some of your Look-in artwork? You are selling some pieces off via your new website martinasbury.com, including examples from all of your major Look-in strips. IPC sold off the remnants of their art archive to a dealer last year (in 2007) and this is now being sold to fans piece by piece, so how come you have this in your possession? John Burns (Look-in artist on “The Tomorrow People”, “Space:1999”, “Magnum PI” etc etc) was quite vocal about strip artists’ rights and I believe he was instrumental in getting art back to artists?
All rather vague as usual I’m afraid. I think it was John Burns who rang me and said that Look-In was about to jettison all artwork from our strips and virtually “bin” them. We had approximately half an hour on a given day to retrieve anything we could. I think we met Arthur Ranson, and the three of us got what we could. A bit of a mad scramble. I remember being horrified at the tale that IPC was using Frank Bellamy’s work as backing for parcels! (probably apocryphal) But that sort of tale spurred me on.
And yes, John was concerned and vocal concerning artwork return, but at the time I was somewhat ambiguous about it all, initially of the mind that the work had been purchased and therefore belonged to the purchaser. However there had been, I was told, a test case between a national newspaper and an artist contributor in the 1960s or 70s and it was deemed that although the printing and reproduction rights remained with the purchaser, the actual piece of artwork – the art board and the original scribbles thereon – belonged to the artist. Certainly The Daily Mirror people always returned everything I did at their own initiative.
I am saddened at your tale that IPC “sold off” their archive to a dealer. I think it is shameful and without thought to those who contributed to its success.
Without those wonderful artists Look-in would have been a much duller place. Thank you for your wonderful contribution to its pages on the likes of ‘Six Million Dollar Man’. A million thanks for giving me this interview – or should that be six million?
God, I have gone on and on. You must think I am very vain! Thanks for showing such an interest but you did ask!
Martin Asbury, thank you!
• Martin Asbury is online at martinasbury.com
Further Reading
• Illustration Art Gallery – Martin Asbury Profile
• 2000AD writer Michael Carroll’s guide to Harry Harrison’s “Flash Gordon” strips
• Look-In Fandom Wiki – Six Million Dollar Man Strips
• Discovering “Orbit” – Zambia’s unique science and comic magazine
• IndexFX: The Matte Painting Encyclopaedia – Martin Asbury Storyboard Credits (see Martin’s web site for examples of his storyboard work)
Alistair McGown is part of the design team on Panini’s range of Doctor Who bookazines and special editions, and also designs the Fanderson newsletter, FAB Express.
The Fanzine Book – his look back at the history of the golden age of Doctor Who underground fanzines in the 1970s and 80s – was published by Telos in 2023 and is due out in paperback later this year.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.
He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: Art and Illustration, British Comics, Comic Creator Interviews, Comics, Creating Comics, downthetubes News, Features, Film, Other Worlds
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