Reeltime Pictures have announced their next Myth Makers documentary, an interview with ace artist Colin Howard, will be released on 24th October 2026.
Recorded earlier this year, this latest release in a long line of brilliant Doctor Who-inspired interview-centred productions, stretching back decades is directed and edited by Rob Thrush, standing in for Keith Barnfather, and presented by Neil Cole, curator of The Museum of Classic SciFi in Allendale, Northumberland.
Recorded in July Colin Howard’s Myth Makers focuses on his long career as an artist primarily known for his Doctor Who work. Many fans will know him best for painting the covers of some thirty VHS covers, but his highly-detailed work also graced Doctor Who Magazine, Doctor Who Classic Comics, the BBC Books ranges, calendars, and more.
“It was lovely to be asked,” Colin noted earlier this year of the production, “as I almost started my ‘Who’ professional career with the cover for Who on Earth is Tom Baker back in the early 1990s!”
Sadly, Colin suffers from Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a neurological condition that causes damage to the nerves in the brain and central nervous system. It’s meant he’s effectively had to retire from creating art, but it has given him time to to look back through his portfolios and rediscover paintings and illustrations dating back to the early 1980s, most recently represented in Timeslides II, published by Candy Jar, featuring many never-before-seen pieces.
As ever, Colin’s partner, Michelle Howard, who launched her own Yoga for Carers YouTube Channel earlier this year, was involved on the recording day.
“When your life has involved the creation of artwork (in whatever medium that may be), actually having the chance to talk at length with the artists who touched and inspired your own work is a blessing,” Neil Cole says of his involvement in this latest Myth Makers.
(Neil himself was the focus of the The Monster Man documentary from Reeltime, released in 2024, and Tooth and Claw, released earlier this year).
“As an artist and lifelong, passionate Doctor Who fan – with zero ‘connections’ to the production or creation of the artistic worlds around it – I only ever looked from afar at those directly involved.
“In particular, as a painter, I (naturally) always closely followed the artists of the seventies, eighties and nineties, who produced such beautiful hand rendered artworks, expanding our visions of the televised show itself. I never expected to meet and talk to these people. Thanks to my initially professional friendship with Keith Barnfather and Reeltime Pictures, who so kindly saw the value in what I was trying to achieve in my little Museum, opportunities to actually discuss art… and so much more with some of the artists who inspired me became a reality.
“To ‘get the gig’ to interview and spend a day with Colin Howard was a blessing, and one I will always cherish. I always felt a distant kinship with Colin – even before we met…. our lives share so many similarities!
“I simply can’t wait to get the chance to see the finished DVD. I also can’t wait to see how Rob Thrush managed to edit a full day of Colin and I talking everything from comic strips, desperate motorcycling, metal and of course…. Doctor Who!”
• Read our review of Timeslides by Colin Howard
Formed in 1984, Reeltime Pictures boasts a wide range of highly regarded broadcast, business and home entertainment programming, uniquely funding nearly all its home entertainment productions itself. This has led to a portfolio of over 200 programmes, many Doctor Who-related, owned outright by the company, available through their sales platform at timetraveltv.com.
Keith Barnfather, founder of Reeltime, co-owned with writer and director Anastasia Charalambous Barnfather, best known for conceiving and producing, the Myth Makers interview series, was recently the focus of an interview himself about the 40 year history of the company…
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as 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, Doctor Who, downthetubes News, Other Worlds, Science Fiction, Television
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